Who are your idols?
Martin, Cologne, Germany
Do you want to be famous one day?
Valerie, Dublin, Ireland
🌟
Dear Valerie and Martin,
I admire many people, or maybe I should say I admire the work of many people. There are books, films, albums that I believe are sublime and I am fascinated by the process by which these works were brought forth. And am bursting with admiration for any artist (big or small) who simply shows up every single day.
But I idolise no-one.
I don’t buy merch, I don’t follow the minutiae of gossip about this or that celebrity or fantasise about meeting a famous face. My policy, on the rare occasions I find myself in the presence of a public figure, is the same as my policy for cats: ignore them, if at all possible.
While admiration is healthy, idolising another person, famous or otherwise, requires excessive devotion: in time, energy and spirit. It is an act of cleaving your own creative fire and handing it to someone else who, frankly, doesn’t need it. It is draining water from your own cup to top up a luxury swimming pool.
So I ask this: What if you kept that energy for yourself? What if you were as devoted to your own expression as you are to someone else’s? Your creative voice is — and please believe this — equal in every way to David Bowie’s, or Taylor Swift’s or Sally Rooney’s.
I know that the creative industry, existing as it does under faulty capitalism, requires people to obsess enough to buy tickets and products, it allows many artists to keep going; and of course fan art is a wonderful and satisfying creative outlet for many people.
But still, I can’t help but wonder: What if die hard fans put the same devotion into their own soul’s unique creative expression?
Idolatry corrupts
Almost without exception, your idol will let you down — because fame is no good for the famous.
Again, once admiration transforms into idolatry, it corrupts the idol. Being told you are an outstanding genius for years or decades does bad things to your brain. First to go is your humility and then you’re on a downhill slope that ends with revelations in Rolling Stone.
Valerie, your question came with some very generous compliments about me and my work which I haven’t included. Thank you, but please let me use this opportunity to gently reject your devotion.
I pour it from my cup back into yours.
Until another Sunday soon,
