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Fame | Nov 08 2005

Over the course of a single hour, as K and I strolled through Prospect Park, she pointed out three different famous people, none of whom I knew, not that I know many famous people. Evidently famous people are everywhere in Brooklyn, one need only open one’s eyes to see them.

Notably all three famous people were shorter than K had previously imagined. This made me wonder if fame makes one smaller. I mean this seriously. Could it be that one shrinks from all the attention? The mind, as we know, is immensely powerful and has a profound effect on the body. Thus it wouldn’t surprise me if the desire to walk one’s child’s in the park without being gawked at might result, after enough repetition at a high enough degree of intensity, in a measurable reduction in physical size.

Admittedly this isn’t a scientific sampling, but I recall seeing Curt Gowdy (a legendary sportscaster, for those who don’t know) in Rockefeller Center, and he was tiny. This would have been around 1977, at the height of Gowdy’s fame. He was walking down the street eating a pretzel he’d just purchased from a street vendor, and the pretzel looked bigger than his head, that’s how small he was—or had become.

Also I once had a conversation with David Byrne on the downtown A platform at 59th Street. This was in 1983, just after the Talking Heads released Little Creatures. Bryne was carrying an enormous black book. I gushed about how much I loved his music, and then added, out of nervousness, that I hadn’t imagined he took the subway. Bryne, doubtless noting my distress, smiled and said that in his experience the subway was the fastest way to get around. “Ah, yes, of course,” I replied, nodding a bit too vigorously.

It wasn’t until later, when I was on the train home, replaying what had happened, that I realized how small Bryne was. He couldn’t have been taller than a ten-year old child. And this explained why his book had seemed so huge: it was huge in proportion to his little bitty hands.