What I also felt was how easy it is to LOSE all of that. It comes along, like a tide, it lasts for a moment or two–longer if you are one of perhaps 3 dozen people in a nation of 350 million people–then it fades away. You become someone who USED to be famous. The feeling fades, and you seek to get it back.
What I felt was how precarious all that is. No wonder so many stars are so messed up. You have to be a little insane to have a drive to be famous in the first place, and then getting close, or achieving it, and losing it, must be horrible. Hollywood is filled with people who had a moment in the sun, then it was gone. They wait every day for their agents to call, but they never do, or it is terrible stuff. And the women: they get older. Those parts go to about 10 women in this country.
And I was listening to the Nirvana song an hour ago, that ends with them droning over and over “all alone is all we are”, and I got to thinking–and I think I’ve commented on this before–that being a “rock star” is obviously overrated too, for most of them. Maybe Gene Simmons has it figured out. But most of them are a bit insane, and so many of them die young. I went through Kurt Cobain, Chris Cornell and the singer for Linkin Park in 3 seconds. Then Jim Morrison, Jimmie Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Keith Moon, Nick Drake. Even Elvis belongs on this list.
Actually here is a long list, for just the 1970’s, nearly all of them premature. Even the heart attacks can in most cases be ascribed to unhealthy habits deriving from unhappiness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deaths_in_rock_and_roll_(1970s)
What can you hold on to? What lasts? What is reliable? These are very Buddhist questions. Rock and roll is not the answer: it is just a complex addiction, in itself.