Thursday, May 04, 2006

Pre-Caffeine Musings

Good morning, faithful readers, of which I believe there are now a grand total of...

...two. Including myself.

Not to worry, Ms. Kinn, when I'm famous in ten years, you can say, "I read her Blog back when nobody else did".
"Well what did she write about in her blog?" Barbara Walters will ask.
"Not a whole lot," you'll respond.
"Was it interesting at least?" Walters again.
"Not particularly."


"I want to be a saint."


That is the first sentence of Anne Rice's latest (and supposedly last) Vampire Chronicles novel, Blood Canticle.

"I want to be a saint. I want to save souls by the millions. I
want to do good far and wide. I want to fight evil! I want my
life-sized statue every church."

Well I am not Lestat de Lioncourt. I'm not three centuries old. And I don't want to be a saint. I don't have any interest in saving souls, I don't have anything against evil, and I certainly don't want my statue inside every church.

I can relate, though. I want to be famous. I want people to know who I am. Oh yes, I want my name on everyone's lips. Statues in churches? No. Statues in town squares? Now we're talkin'. I want someone, two hundred years from now, to stand before my statue in Highland, Maryland and announce to a crowd of eager, camera-clutching tourists, "This is where Kayleigh Jamison, one of the most prolific authors of the 21st century, grew up."

I admit that I'm afraid of a lot of things. Snakes, worms, spiders, accidentally eating moldy cheese, heights, bridges, airplanes falling flying vomiting death loneliness...

but my all time Number One biggest fear is Mediocrity. To die and have no one attend my funeral. To have someone say, "who was she?" or "what did she do?"

No. I want the fame. I want to be heard. I want people to come forward, saying, "I knew her when..." I want someone to find my battered notebooks, filled with incoherent, handwritten scribbling. To stumble across the journals I've kept since I was 12. To find the collection of napkins, torn envelopes, and paper scraps covered with things like, "What is the deal btwn Vesh + N? Why the hate? What is mys of B's past?" I want these things in a museum, or a library somewhere, locked within a glass case with an engraved plaque that reads, "miscellaneous writing of Kayleigh Jamison". I want scholars in far off centuries to study these things as if their lives depended on decoding them.

I want bumbling, eager college students to write their theses on me. I want someone to make a movie about my life. (The tagline could read: Brilliant. Beautiful. Tortured.)

I want to be famous.

1 comment:

Heather K said...

You know, there's something satisfying about hearing someone admit that.

I mean, you write your stories for yourself, and you hope people like them, and I personally have a lot of intrinsic motivation for writing, but at the same time, you want people to buy and value your work. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.