There was a news item on Pitchfork Media yesterday that elicited an unusual response from me. It went something like this:
1. "Holy hell, Arthur Lee is still alive!"
2. "Holy hell, Arthur Lee is on the verge of death!"
Arthur Lee is one of those people that you just never stop to think about what he's doing now, because he stays out of the public eye. Plus he was never that famous in the first place. Anyway, I suppose my surprise wasn't so much that he wasn't dead so much as that he didn't simply cease to exist sometime in the 1970's. To me, everything in his life worth tracking down was done in the 1960's, when he was a 20-something. And because he kind of faded away, I'd simply never stopped to consider that his very existence might have continued on.
At any rate, I wish Mr. Lee a healthy recovery. I would contribute to his financial situation, but as it turns out I have medical debts of my own, to say nothing of student loan debt, and while we're at it, we'll throw in my debt of roughly half a dollar to the Free Library of Philadelphia ("free" my ass!).
Finally, since I'm into lists and such lately, here's a list of people like Arthur Lee. In short, people I probably won't think of again until they die and their obituaries run. People you forget are still alive. Not to be disrespectful to the accomplishments of any of the following (or Arthur Lee for that matter), I just find it to be a curious type of celebrity.
- Dave Brubeck
- Kurt Vonnegut
- Les Paul
- Shirley Temple
- Gerald Ford
- Syd Barrett (gone but not forgotten in my case)
- Boris Yeltsin (former political leaders are good for this)
- Arnold Palmer
- Maya Angelou
That was a hard list to make, because its subjects are by definition a little obscure (at least currently). I really wanted to put Leonard Bernstein, but as it turns out, he's been dead since 1990. I also thought of including people who are more local celebrities like Dallas Green or Bernie Parent, but decided that they should be famous on a wider scale.
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