Having no idea where she might have acquired such misinformation, I assured her that like most persons who own a digital camera I'm an enthusiastic taker of snapshots, but among the thousands, aside from a few cases when the subject, lighting, and the spasm of my trigger finger coincided serendipitously, there are no masterpieces among them; that my ignorance of the technicalities of photography approaches the profound; and that no one has ever paid me a nickel for taking a photograph, nor have I ever attempted or hoped to receive compensation for doing so. In short: No, I am not now, and never was a professional photographer in any sense of the word.
To keep the conversation rolling, and because I intuited to some degree what she may have heard inklings about, I added that my artistic career was limited to curtailed attempts to compose music, during part of which efforts I did indeed live in New York, but that was a very long time ago—the late sixties and early seventies. I added that it was not utter failure to be any good at it that brought that phase of my life to an end, but the need to remove myself from an unhealthy and destructive environment. Most people of my age and older are well aware or can imagine that the popular music scene in New York City in the sixties was eminently life threatening—physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually—to anyone who got caught up in the thinking and conduct of that mad era. Having no reasonable alternative that would allow me to stay in the business, I simply got out.
The friend, who seemingly understood what I said, then added the question: "Was Mozart around there at that time, too?"
Mozart? Working in New York in the sixties? She thought perhaps I might have known him? Briefly words failed me. Finally, I was able to choke out the reply: "No, my dear. Mozart died in 1791. He was a contemporary of George Washington and the other Founding Fathers of the United States. That was two hundred years before my time. I'm a contemporary of Bob Dylan, not Mozart." "Oh!" she replied, apparently unfazed by the time gaffe, probably unfamiliar with the name Bob Dylan, but disappointed to realize that I had not rubbed shoulders with the particular celebrity I had named.
I love this dear lady, who was only trying to be friendly, and attribute her parochial naïvety to a deliberately self-inflicted withdrawal from contact with worldly society to a degree and for reasons that seem appropriate to her. Still, I have to wonder how one's Weltanschauung can become so discombobulated that a person's recognition of essential historical figures is skewed by centuries. The episode constitutes yet another demonstration of how easily a fundamentally ignorant person, by a simple misstatement can lead others to think, "If you don't know that, what do you know?"
Lemme see ... did the apostle Paul ever appear before Bill Clinton? Maybe I'll check that out on Wikipedia.
4 comments:
What I wanna know is how did you get through the flood if you weren't in the ark!
Riding on the back of a pink plastic flamingo.
It was great meeting you at the 24 Hour Race to the Future. You are a legand! Good luck in the future.
Ummm ... Jeff, I was not at the 24-Hour Race to the Future, and am sorry to say I don't know who you are. But thanks for the compliment!
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