I have been working with a client who has spent a lifetime working as a session musician… Him and I have been having a lot of fun together and are great friends… He has tales which get me ecited and drooling with fascination and intrigue about what life was like in the 60s music scene and all his liaisons with famous musicians throughout the decades.
Yesterday he told me a truly hilarious story about a time he had tickets to go to see the Beatles live in concert. He took his girlfriend and her two female friends.
Today I am questioning why it is that people are so hypnotically transfixed to the life of celebrities and how they subsequently can get so amazingly worked up. My client told me that the Beatles arrived in a helicopter while the fans gathered in the stadium and they then performed to over 30,000 screaming people.
Him and I laughed like crazy when he told me that his girlfriend fainted from exhilaration; her first friend actually wet herself and her other friend cried non-stop throughout the entire gig.
Hahahahaha. I find that hilarious, don’t you?
Why are we so interested in what dresses the stars will be wearing along the red carpet, what Peter has said about Katie, how much weight another star has lots, which dancers on Strictly Come Dancing are dating their celebrity dance partners?
Why is that? It is like some mass hypnosis that seems to connect public consciousness.
maybe it is because there are so many millions of us living and working in towns and cities who cannot discus the shenanigans of those in our vicinity… We can’t gossip about the Joneses down the road in the modern world, can we?
What’s more, those who share our home life barely know our friends from work, the gym, or other social circles. The only people you and I are likely to know in common are people in the news – mostly celebrities… With the odd smattering of politicians thrown in here and there.
As social things that us humans are, well most of us… It is almost a need to discuss what is going on, for some it is a need to gossip and share information – it is one way we connect with one another, isn’t it?
Generation after geeneration throughout history has done it in a variety of ways.
With all the talk and discussions about others, we build intimacy with one another. We air our views, demonstrate our own morals and standards, learn from the perspectives of friends and family and form opinions.
So many still feel the urge to have these convivial exchanges with those around us, some might pretend they are not interested, but I reckon we know otherwise, don’t we? 😉
These days it would seem that the only way we can connect in such a manner is to is to discuss people we “know” in common. Celebrities serve this vital human purpose. Sharing experience is a very hypnotic facet, it is incredibly engaging and it enables us to measure ourselves against others in all manner of ways. We connect, evaluate and measure, we imagine what it must be like, we empathise and we loath… The variety of emotions we get to think about and experience is the full spectrum… and we tend to need that.
I think most importantly, as people discuss celebrities, we connect with friends and family, we unify our relationships with jokes, thoughts and feelings and we safely share viewpoints.
Though whether that truly describes why on earth someone would pee their pants, sob endlessly or faint at a live music concert is still up for debate, eh? Hahahaha.
