Good evening Travellers-

A few years ago, my favorite blogger, Molly Wizenberg, posted a link to what I have to say remains one of the most memorable interviews I have ever read. It’s been 4 years since I read it and it still haunts me. Yesterday, the interviewee, Karl Lagerfeld, vacated planet Earth. In case you don’t know, he is one of the most famous fashion designers who ever lived. Love him or hate him, there was no one else like him.

When I saw that headline, the first thing I thought of was this interview. And that it needed to be unearthed again in all it’s glory. It is worth every second of the three to five minutes it take to read, so go ahead and I’ll be here waiting.

I’m not a big believer in fame. I don’t believe fame will buy your way into the afterlife or a next life. I don’t watch reality television, any of it. I cringe when I’m in the grocery line and see all the tabloids. I feel abit. guilty if I ever even curiously read about someone getting married because I don’t think being famous gives the rest of the human population the right to leer, judge and dissect strangers lives. For sport. Because it seems it is a sport for the paparazzi. And these people are all just humans. Plus, I’m big on that whole ‘Do unto others as you wish done unto you.” I wouldn’t want my life to be fodder for other people’s constant opinions, insults, threats etc. would you?

When I think of fame, I think about the movie Notting Hill and this scene, in particular when she says, ‘The fame thing isn’t really real you know?” That was long before the Kardashians who have made a business out of fame. And “reality” television and social media. It feels anymore like we’ve forgotten that fame is indeed not real, but merely a cog in the wheel of the 24 hour news cycle. It feels like our preoccupation with famous people lends itself to a sort of escape. Why is everyone trying to escape their lives?

Why do people spend so much time talking about, reading about, and generally fixating on people who spend their lives essentially playing professional pretend? Or  artists in general? The worlds that artists occupy tend to be vastly different than our own. Should our heroes be people we personally know? I believe there is a vast difference between professional admiration and personal adoration…

Back to Mr. Lagerfeld, the thing is with this particular man is not only was he wildly succcessful and famous, but he appears by all accounts to be a man who was comfortable being who he was, no matter how alien, knowing he was abit of an outsider, and he completely embraced it. In the interview I linked above, the part, besides the cat, that has stayed with me all these years was the line, “I take myself with me wherever  I go, thank God,” At first glance, it rubbed me as absurd, but later on and even now, I rather envy him because I think he meant he was never alone, because he had himself and he was at home in the me.

Famous or not, isn’t that kind of realization why we are all here??

My pussy cat, Faline Dion, doesn’t make millions in European ads, but she is the most beautiful to me…

Topically speaking here, the movie you should watch is, “The Devil Wears Prada”. There are so many reasons why, so just go to it…