It really is all about who you know
I was talking with a friend the other day about the nature of success and fame in America. We were discussing a mutual friend who is a really talented musician and singer, and all during our childhood, everyone was sure that she’d be the one to make it big some day. Of course, she’s now a 40 hour per week, 2.5 kids and a mortgage mom with a husband and a house somewhere out in BFE. It’s almost stereotypically mundane, no?
And there’s the problem. Everyone knows that girl (or guy) who you were sure was just going to make it, be The Next Big Thing.
Everyone knows…
There are hundreds of millions of “everyone”s out there, and accounting for overlap, you’re still looking at tens of millions of teens who could be TNBT. There are more talented singers and musicians out there than you could fit on TV.
Seriously. There aren’t enough hours in the day for you to give each of them a video. You’d never get through the pile, and some would die without getting their 5 minutes. That’s how massive this pool of talent really is.
The same goes for acting. I’ve met some fabulous liars in my day, most of whom would be more convincing in ANY role than 95% of the actors in Hollywood. If I’ve met several 1st class liars, I assume everyone else has done so as well, and I must conclude that there are also tens of millions of good liars out there who could also work in Hollywood as an actor. Even if you follow standard TV procedure and only allow the most beautiful 10% on sets, you’d still be talking about several million potential actors from which to draw.
It’s obvious that the people who do actually make it on film, and from that supremely small subset, those who get speaking roles, must be relying upon something other than good looks, talent, and charisma, since those things are abundant, found by the spade full, all over the place. It’s all about their personal connections.
Politics is the same. I could stand up there and read lies off of a teleprompter just as easily as the current guy, and the last guy, and the guy before him… It’s all about who you know.
You can also deduce things using this logic. For example: If 1 in 5 American adults suffer from a personality disorder, then you should know 20 or 30 of these people, right? Over the course of the natural adult life, you’re going to meet a couple of hundred people, and 20% of them should have a mental illness. Do you know 20 or 30 diagnosed crazy people? I do, thus I don’t question the stat.
Or try this one. How many people do you know who have committed suicide?
In my 30 years on Earth, I’ve only known 1 person who committed suicide, and it wasn’t a close friend, she was the sister of some of my grade school classmates, and was years younger than I. But just 1 person. I’d be easily convinced that some people out there have had two or three acquaintances who have committed suicide, more if the person works in mental health.
But what I find really baffling is that the Clintons, who didn’t work in mental health related fields, had 10 close friends and associates who committed suicide…
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No. I’ve played in a few bar bands. I’ve tried to find a competent singer — just somebody who could stay on pitch, and not ruin every melody he or she sang with gratuitous, tasteless, random decoration — for a band that had better original material than 19 out of 20 bands in the city. The pool of talent you describe does not exist, not by several orders of magnitude. I would’ve settled for simple minimal professional competence, not star power. But even that was hell to find.
Most non-professional musicians can’t play, can’t sing, can’t write, and don’t know it. It’s true their friends are as deluded as they are, but if there’s that much talent out there, how come EVERY bar band you’ve seen in the past ten years was either painful to listen to, or a boringly competent generic clone band? Honestly: I’m right, am I not? If they didn’t suck, and if they had a valid personality of their own, AND if they merely stuck with it for a few years, then they ended up at least regionally famous. No exceptions. It’s like a conveyor belt.
If you’re that good AND you stick with it, you WILL end up knowing whoever you need to know, because you’re rare and valuable and they will find you.
But you have to stick with it. That’s much harder than talent. I know three people (one of them is me, two I played with) who may have had what it took, talent-wise (or quite likely I’m deluding myself, like 99.9% of all musicians). None felt like he had to become a rock star or die trying, so none got anywhere. One’s a guidance counsellor, one’s a very successful journalist, one’s a computer programmer. It’s now 20 years after I quit playing music in bands, and the only guy I ever played with who got anywhere at all was the worst bass player I ever worked with. He’s now playing in a band that works every week in a big city. Probably still has the rhythmic sense of a brain-damaged elephant. But he’s making money playing music and I’m not.
His secret? He stuck with it. He’ll never have the talent to be famous, and he’s a boring, annoying prick, but he stuck with it and got farther than I ever did. He earned his modest success honestly by working hard for it.
Inspiration, perspiration.