It's very easy to get caught up in this kind of life consisting primarily of whirlwinds of phone calls, autographs, paychecks, and cocktail parties. You could easily forget who you are and where you came from, so I just want to tell all of you little people down there that if you ever make it to the kind of life I get to live, remember your roots. Keep it real.
For you people who have the privilege of knowing me, you know that I love fantasy. I love fantasy books. I read any fantasy novel I can find. I don't care if it's for children or young adults or simply, adults. I don't care if it's a graphic novel. Or manga. I don't care if it is badly written or if it'd Tolkien. It may influence my opinion after I finished the book, but it won't change whether or not I read it.
But, like people say, too much fantasy keeps you from living in the real world. If you read too much fantasy stuff, you'll distance yourself from everything that really exists, what you need to be focusing on. It's not real. My job, my new status of fame balanced with the future success that I once was? That's real. My Whataburger with cheese? That's what I need to be focusing on. Fantasy entertainment only serves as a distraction for people who don't realize any better.
This is very much unlike the world of regular fiction and nonfiction, which serves as a great role model to which I should live my wonderful life. I just skimmed through an old biography of Oscar Wilde I had sitting on the shelf recently. There is a legend about the origin of one of his quotes; there is this one part of his life where he is on trial because his former lover's father is accusing him of sodomy and shouts at Oscar Wilde that he (Oscar) is from the gutter and should stay there. Oscar replies, "We are all in the gutter, sir, but some of us are looking at the stars." That quote actually comes from one of his plays, a comedy: Lady Windermere's Fan: A Play About A Good Woman. However, I have read this quote several times as being cited from this trial-- unless he actually quoted his plays during trial, this legend doesn't make too much sense. It's a nice quote, though. And for a practical thinker like me, it presents a problem. Where is the line between fantasy and fiction, fiction and nonfiction?
Oscar Wilde died after suffering from an inflammation in his brain. That's a nicer, more delicate way of saying he drank himself to death after being released from prison in France and probably contracting syphilis. What does it mean, that some people are looking at the stars? Why do people quote this so often, when it comes from a homeless, broke, and drunk adulterer, and why do they seem to like attributing it to his real life, which sucked, instead of the character in his play who never existed and can be as idealistic as Wilde wanted to make him?
Maybe it's because this quote, as people see it, has nothing to do with the play it's from. If you've heard the quote before, raise your hand. If you've never read/seen the play (or, let's face it, if you've never heard of it), put your hand down. Now, if you think the quote still makes sense and you would ideally love to apply it to your life, seeing yourself as one of those rare and special persons who looks at the stars, put your hand back up.
That is the essence of fantasy.
If looking at stars is distracting, then I suppose fantasy is distracting. I realize that I don't live in the stars, I live on Earth. But the stars are still there-- no, here, in this world. If the stars try to distract me from my Whataburger with cheese, I won't let them. My new celebrity status is too valuable to sacrifice for the sake of distant stars.
However...I suppose I could enjoy them as long as they are here.
