LIZ TAYLOR AND ME

Liz Taylor died yesterday, at 79. That is amazing to me. She was a movie star when I was a child. I remember in high school her movies were playing, it seemed, all over town, all over the world.

I was impressed, like everyone else. Her picture was in the newspaper and she was on TV. She was hugely famous, a big deal, even in the 50s. I graduated high school in 1956, and she was a famous beauty then.

When she died, yesterday in Los Angeles, just a few miles from here, at the hospital where my neighbor used to work, Ms. Taylor's age was not that different from my own. She was 79, and I am 72. When I was young, and Liz Taylor was everywhere, she seemed like a grown-up, from a different generation. She was an adult, and I was a child.

But as you get older, those differences narrow and disappear. Seven years now seems like nothing. It's bizarre, like a time-warp. She and I were virtually the same age.

What does all that mean? It has something to do with the difference between the way the world seems when you are young and the way it turns out to be when you grow up.

The meaning of fame changes, for one thing. On the one hand, as the old song says, "celluloid heroes never really die." Liz Taylor's image and movies will live on. On the other hand, her fame will diminish, I believe, as new heroes and heroines take her place.

Nobody occupies that place in my world now. There are no more Liz Taylors, or Paul Newmans, or Jackie Gleasons, not in my world. I look at the magazine covers at the grocery store, and I have no idea who those people are. And I don't care.

The few famous people I've met were totally unimpressive. I liked Allen Ginsberg, but just because he was smart and thoughtful and seemed to really care about people. He seemed OK, but no more interesting than my friends, who were artists and writers and musicians and interesting in themselves.

There is a difference between the image of someone, especially someone famous, and the real person. Which do you want to know? Which do you care about? Myself, at this point in my life, I only care about real people. Fame doesn't interest me or impress me, and it hasn't since I was a child. I don't know why it impresses anyone else.


 

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle