So I’m sitting in a hotel room reading this book thinking it’s just too good to be true.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the nature of memoirs today.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re made up.\u00c2\u00a0 Like that guy who wrote Andre Agassi’s book, J.R. Moehringer?\u00c2\u00a0 The tennis player tracked him down because of J.R.’s memoir, "The Tender Bar"…\u00c2\u00a0 A good read, but would you apply for a job at "The New York Times" in a bloody shirt?\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t you think it would be so important that you’d change? Especially if you went to Yale?<\/p>\n
I think so.<\/p>\n
Which is why I don’t believe so much of "The Tender Bar"<\/a> and didn’t believe "Let The Great World Spin"<\/a> was true.\u00c2\u00a0 Too much coincidence.<\/p>\n Then I learned it wasn’t.\u00c2\u00a0 That it was a novel.\u00c2\u00a0 Which impressed me. Because if you can create it out of thin air and it reads real, you’re quite an artist.<\/p>\n Speaking of thin air, that’s the device.\u00c2\u00a0 The whole book is set around Philippe Petit’s walk between the now deceased twin towers.\u00c2\u00a0 Have you seen the movie, "Man On Wire"?\u00c2\u00a0 Not quite as good as the legend, but still very interesting.\u00c2\u00a0 Especially what happens after he’s arrested.\u00c2\u00a0 You can stream it on Netflix.\u00c2\u00a0 Fire up your iPad!<\/p>\n And there’s this great scene in the book where Petit is practicing in Colorado and he jumps off the rope into a pile of virgin snow that’s so deep he’s locked in to the point of near death.\u00c2\u00a0 I doubt this was real, but I loved it. The joy of jumping into the snow, the fear of the consequences of messing with Mother Nature.<\/p>\n But I haven’t been sure I could recommend "Let The Great World Spin", whose real title is "Let The Great World Spin: A Novel", you’d think I’d have caught that but I was so engrossed in the words I didn’t look at the title after I began reading, but now that I’m two-thirds through it’s coming together.<\/p>\n And I could wait until it’s done to make a final judgment, to render a complete opinion, but there was a quote in the book today that was so marvelous, so right on, that I just had to tell you:<\/p>\n The context is not really that important.\u00c2\u00a0 Tillie, a prostitute, is talking about her pimp, who had a crimp in his walk.\u00c2\u00a0 But the fact that it’s about something physical…\u00c2\u00a0 What’s that analogous aphorism…\u00c2\u00a0 Your imperfections make you beautiful?"<\/p>\n Somehow we’ve lost the plot in America. Everybody’s trying to fix themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 They scrub away everything that makes them unique, that makes them lovable.<\/p>\n Whether it be Jennifer Grey erasing her nose or Leeza Gibbons doing the same thing, you end up looking just like everybody else, instead of yourself.<\/p>\n And it’s not only people, it’s music too.\u00c2\u00a0 Yesterday I heard "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" on the radio.\u00c2\u00a0 I still wince at the line "I knew we was falling in love". And Paul McCartney used the wrong tense on that Beatle album and…you just can’t forget it.\u00c2\u00a0 The imperfection reveals so much.<\/p>\n McCartney’s not afraid to leave in the mistakes.\u00c2\u00a0 I think that’s part of what makes "Band On The Run" so great.\u00c2\u00a0 But everybody else is.\u00c2\u00a0 And now technology allows you to squeeze all the imperfections out, to our detriment.<\/p>\n The main complaint should not be that auto-tune allows anybody to sing, but that people are no longer allowed to sound normal, to sound real on record.\u00c2\u00a0 People don’t auto-tune themselves in regular life, why should they do this on record?\u00c2\u00a0 It actually distances them from the audience.<\/p>\n You can’t stop looking at the flaw.\u00c2\u00a0 Just like you can’t stop looking at a great performer.\u00c2\u00a0 Because he or she is just a little bit different.\u00c2\u00a0 If you saw Rod Stewart in the beginning, back in ’71, you’d have become a fan overnight. The way he strutted, the way he fell back and caught the mic just before it hit the floor and bounced back up like one of those ducks you see dipping its beak into water in those Times Square novelty shops…<\/p>\n Actually, those shops are mostly gone now.\u00c2\u00a0 Replaced by chains.<\/p>\n Chain restaurants make the same meal everywhere.\u00c2\u00a0 I can see the appeal if you’re in the middle of nowhere and want edible food, but there’s no character in that.\u00c2\u00a0 We want to go to a restaurant that takes chances with its cuisine, that titillates our taste buds as opposed to giving us what we want.<\/p>\n Your flaws make you unique.<\/p>\n And being unique makes you a star.<\/p>\n There are other great lines in "Let The Great World Spin".\u00c2\u00a0 Like:<\/p>\n I went to college with the rich and privileged but everybody jockeyed to appear poorer than the next.\u00c2\u00a0 "I can’t afford it."\u00c2\u00a0 "My father’s a bank president and I’m broke."\u00c2\u00a0 Huh?<\/p>\n This is like people being proud of getting less sleep.\u00c2\u00a0 The "Wall Street Journal" did a study, turns out everybody lies, but why is it a badge of honor not to sleep?\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know about you, but I function so much better on a full night’s rest, and isn’t it about the work product as opposed to protesting that you’re burning the candle on both ends?<\/p>\n That’s self-explanatory.\u00c2\u00a0 And true.<\/p>\n These are the people we want to know, the straws that stir the drink.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not about naked ambition, it’s not about a need to be famous, rather it’s a weird blend of charisma and energy.\u00c2\u00a0 You just feel better when you’re around them.<\/p>\n That’s a real star.<\/p>\n And these stars don’t all look like they came from the pages of a magazine. Some are fat, others too hairy.\u00c2\u00a0 But we get a bounce in our step just thinking about hanging with them.\u00c2\u00a0 They make our lives better.<\/p>\n A good book makes our lives better.<\/p>\n And great art inspires.<\/p>\n You don’t want to replicate it, but use it as a jumping off point.\u00c2\u00a0 The same way Suze Rotolo inspired Bob Dylan to write "Blowin’ In The Wind".\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, he was ready, but his flame was ignited by her background, her energy. She didn’t look like a movie star, but without her, we wouldn’t have "Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right".<\/p>\n It’s truly a great world out there.\u00c2\u00a0 As Sly Stone once sang, everybody is a star.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why people are drawn to Snooki.\u00c2\u00a0 She resembles a troll but she embraces it as opposed to trying to be something different.<\/p>\n If you want to have success, embrace who you are, warts and all.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s a much better road to follow than trying to be like everybody else.\u00c2\u00a0 And the odds of triumph are much higher too.\u00c2\u00a0 We don’t want somebody just like everybody else, that’s just people in suits trying to save their jobs, real artists aren’t worried about losing their jobs, they can’t, because being an artist is a lifelong pursuit that you cannot deny, no matter how hard you try.<\/p>\n\n
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