Fame

Way back in 1980, Irene 'Flashdance' Cara came up with one of the truly iconic songs of the 1980s boom generation — Fame. The song, with its adrenaline-laden lyrics and vibes, soared to #1 and has never quite been forgotten. I remember waking up as a teenager and walking around with it echoing in my ears.

Many years have passed. Since then, I've learnt to detect the signs of fame-hunger in myself and others — a need to see one's name on everything, from notes to papers to slides to blogs to tweets to... and of course, the opposite reaction, a shunning of any spotlight whatsoever. Fame is fleeting, but many of us seize what we can get, it seems.

I think that the right way is a simple acknowledgement of work done. You don't muzzle the ox when treading the grain; the workman is worthy of his hire. If somebody did stuff for you, acknowledge the doing of it. No need for glitz and neon, just the simple naming of who was responsible for what.

Beyond that of course, we learn to be decreased that others might increase. This is a harder lesson; it is one that humans existentially resist — very few normal humans have a desire to be diminished. And yet, John Donne wrote, "... each man's death diminishes me." It implies that each life that you enrich will have the opposite effect.

And that's the sort of fame I guess I personally cannot resist: I want to have done something for other people. It doesn't matter if nobody else remembers, but I can't help but hope that people I have helped will remember that I helped them, even after I myself no longer live and breathe.

I wish I could be more humble than that, sometimes. But even the patriarchs and heroes of the Bible were not resistant to this; in fact, that dashing 'James Bond' character of the Old Testament, the man called Nehemiah, keeps repeating the phrase, "Remember me, O my God..." (see especially Nehemiah 13.)

Some things don't change very much. But I should hope to resist the overweening kind of fame-seeking that ends up in pathetic defeat — the lesson of Shelley's Ozymandias:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."