I have never wanted to be famous. Anybody I loved – famous – I watched the world tear them apart.
This week I spoke to somebody who is famous. Not world-famous, but a name people know. And the things they said to me made me feel so uncomfortable.
You see, in my past career I met famous people regularly. I never felt awkward about it. I never pestered them for photos though. I saw the stress they went through back-stage and I didn’t want to add to that. Meeting them was all that mattered.
“You’re the only person who hasn’t asked for a photo today” – this was a genuine line said to me. I was just happy to grab a line for a news article. Maybe I should have just done what everybody else did, I don’t know.
And the person I spent time with this week. Somebody hiding away at a place I know before a festival. I felt so bad when they told me about the invasion of privacy they were experiencing just because two people discovered where they were.
So I didn’t ask for a photo. Didn’t push them for anything. It was just a conversation with somebody who I have only ever seen on TV and in the papers. Those mediums make this person come across as the opposite to what I experienced.
And the person I met, such a wonderful human being.
Fame. I’d never choose it.
And it also made me think a lot about a place that has been on my mind. Anime, NJPW, Sega, Sony, plus the culture and the food of Japan. A place I cannot stop thinking about for more reasons than I can say at this point. Made me think a lot more, about how sometimes just going and doing a whole life in a place that you feel connected to and yet somehow have never been to – maybe it is right.
God I love Japanese food.
I can do what I do, wherever I do it. That alone feels like it’s right.
Basho.