Pilot's Log

I noticed a thing on my Hotmail account called "Services", through which I could connect my various online identities. I did so with my Facebook, YouTube, Last.FM, Multiply, and LinkedIn accounts as well as this one here. All of a sudden half a dozen become one, in a certain point of view. Perhaps I can use one side of my online self to leverage others. We shall see.

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I'm not sure I told this story here before. Maybe I have and if so I'll link to it. Watch this space.

*Checks*

Turns out I haven't. I've seen Lee Greenwood at least three times. The first time, I was just an ordinary fellow in the audience of a show at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater, and nothing particularly unusual happened.

The second was almost a whole decade later. His star had been eclipsed by others in country music and he was reduced to appearing at a department store grand opening occasion to sign autographs and give out pamphlets for his theater in Kodak, TN. I was on lunch break from my job, in a bookstore in the same plaza. I saw him sitting at a desk, and there wasn't anybody else in that corner of the store and he looked...hmm...like he had already signed too many autographs and didn't want to have to smile to strangers unless they were buying him a drink. And unfortunately, I was still a stranger. And while, if I had the time to buy him a drink, which I didn't, I'd still feel bad about intruding on him, because even though I know him as a celebrity, I haven't exactly been a fan of his as such. Maybe it isn't so much the dark side of fame as it is a failing of the human condition. I like to think we all have some creative skills, some desire to create, some admiration for artists who have achieved enough to make a living at what they love to do. But even they have days in which what is demanded of them has nothing to do with what they love. And that stinks sometimes.

The third time was at a TV studio. Both he and my mother were guests on a local affairs program, and as I saw him come into the "green room" I said "Hi Lee! Nice to see you AGAIN!" It really was good to seem him again--because he looked much happier than he did the second time. Sure, it wasn't the same as performing in front of a football stadium full of fans, but at the same time, it wasn't that lousy lunch break from hell either. He took a double take...after all, I'm still just a stranger to him. And perhaps I'll always be that to him. Part of my ambition is to maybe have one or two of his problems someday.

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Define "reality". No, wait...
I'm sure that when I grew up my sense of self went through a dizzying array of sub-personalities. I guess we all thirst for ROLES more than anything else. I wanted to be a fighter pilot since the beginning...almost all the way through my High School years. But then what happened to me IN High School...and I no longer felt the System that I would have had to fight for if I enlisted in the military was worth defending. (I didn't think it was worth OVERTHROWING either, which I guess makes me different from others with such alleged bloodlust.) And I also realized I was neither soldier nor killer material.

There's an old Air Force song that goes, "I Wanted Wings/Till I got the damned things..." and that both was and was not my eventual plight.

Except in the stories in which I'm basically playing myself, all my original fictional heroes need to do two things--fly an aircraft of some (cool) sort and play a guitar like a rock star. Not necessarily at the same time, of course (q.v. Basara Nekki in Macross 7!).

FP

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