How Would One Handle Fame?

I was musing on the random question put out by Blogger as I wrote my profile, running back and forth to bookshelves, and it took on a life of its own. I had to trim it down to the quote by Martha Graham, but I thought this would be an interesting philosophical thing to tussle with. Feel free to ponder the question and share your thoughts.

"You've written a hit musical! How will you avoid having fame go to your head?"

Interesting question.

Let me share a quote from an interview with the famous dancer and choreographer Martha Graham that has always inspired me, "The search for truth is frightening. When she danced, when she speaks, and when she choreographs, Graham admits she is frightened. "You're dogged by ancestral footsteps; you don't know if you will fail your dreams, so you must keep yourself vulnerable - to a color, to a tree in the garden, to light. You can't concern yourself with the fear, only with what you have to do. You must exist in the now, on the instant, no matter what it costs you."

I imagine it is like looking at the sun as it sets at the beach over the water. You cannot stare into the sun. You can only glance and then you must look away, being aware of what is around you, the colors of the sky, how the veil of night moisture covers the landscape, blotting out all detail, the sound of sea birds as they fight over a fish. The old woman looking out to sea. The young mother and her baby, the cool lavender sky behind you with the full moon hanging like an orb in the sky. If you look too long at the sun you'll go blind. You'll miss seeing and experiencing the silent humbling harmonic connection with all that is around you, connected and apart.

The same is true for an artist, if you are to remain an artist and retain your essential soul, your connection to Spirit and Source. The philosopher Rollo May wrote in his book 'The Courage to Create' that the artist needs to be both the qualities of solitary and solidary - solidarity, connection to the world, as well as the inner worlds of emotion and the unconscious.

If you lose this, you would have nothing to give. You would increasingly feel like a fraud, and then your life would become something else, a drama played out in the tabloids as you played yourself out to your final apotheosis. That is frightening to me. I want to be there like a star in the sky, shining, and yet distant, accessible and yet unknowable. This is the way the artist serves society, reflecting the inner world, the zeitgeist of the moment, and inspiring others in a chain reaction.