Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2001-07-20 - 10:05 a.m.

Weird Intimacies

This is going to be a weird column for the weird space I am in currently. There is some core stuff in my thinking that I'm not ready to write, so I'm going to try to capture some of the moths flitting around the edges. Some of them look as though they may come from the same family, and since relationships are what occupy me, I'll go at it this way.

Alice wrote in my guestbook - I love Alice - that she was arranging to have Johnny Depp drop by and clean my house. She didn't say anything about Lemon Pledge or loincloths, but she knows what I like. I didn't see the message until too late, so I has been out for the day grocery shopping, running kids places, whatnot. In short - I missed him. Missed my chance. I don't think he's coming back.

I also got a lovely spirit-lifting letter from an acquaintance who is a fellow Leo Kottke devotee and more or less knows the man, which I knew she did but hadn't thought about until I missed my chance with Johnny Depp.

Where the hell am I going with this? I do have a point.

I do not know Mr. Depp in the least bit. I admire his work, and I also think he's cuter than a bug's ear (please, do not remind me that if I say bug's ear I'm older than anything Mr. Depp would be interested in - I'm age-sensitive these days.) Don't really know a thing about the man. Don't really care to. Don't really want to meet him down a dark alley with a dustcloth, either.

Now. Music. Mr. Kottke, on the other hand, I am intimate with, and have been for years. I've danced with him and sung with him and yes, dusted with him. I've sat many quiet reflective evening hours on the couch with him. I've certainly cried on him, both in grief and in awe. He's made me laugh and weep, and I can't envision my life without him.

Not that I've MET him, mind you.

People want to meet famous people, people they admire greatly, people that have touched their lives. I can't imagine wanting to meet Leo Kottke. What on earth would I SAY to the man? "Ubba, ubba, ubba, I have ALL your records." (I don't; he's prolific and I'm poor, anyway.) I mean, what could we possibly exchange in two minutes that would come anywhere near the intimacy we've had in the past twenty-five years?

I'd be gawking stupid, and I'd probably have to have something autographed - a fetish I've never understood - just to explain why I was standing there.

Why the fascination with meeting the famous? Mr. Kottke has given me so much, over the years. I've given him my support, meaning I've joined with many others who buy recordings and concert tickets. When enough of us do that, the artist doesn't have to go get a day job, and we've done our part. The relationship is complete. So little, really, to offer, for what we get in return.

So I'm musing on weird relationships. Maybe some day I will be a well-known writer, and there will be people who feel about my work a fraction of the way I feel about Kottke's. I won't know them at all, but they will know a part of me very well. Odd.

The intimacy is so one-way. I mean, if I met him, I'd probably want to hug him. He must hate that, being hugged by strangers. And it would be so weird, knowing that someone that has been such a gift in my life doesn't know me from Adam. I'd rather preserve my illusory intimacy with his incredible music. Perhaps I should write him a letter of thanks.

Perhaps I just did.

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