Thursday, March 1, 2007

The Three F's: Fame, Fortune, and Failure to Attain Either

This is my friend Damon. He is an American that was born in the nation's capital, and then moved to Thailand three years later. Much to his chagrin, he was shipped back to America at seventeen to attend college.

Damon's not a big fan of Americans. Like many third culture kids, he disdains both the ignorance and arrogance of a large cross-section of Americans who think their country is, without exception, the best country in the world ("How can you even qualify that?!" he used to complain to me, angrily). He likes to think of himself as Thai, but the truth his he is far more American than he realizes. He is av avid tabloid reader, obsessed with Nicole Ritchie, and his ultimate goal is, of course, fame and fortune. I don't think it quite matters to him how he achieves it. He is currently pursuing modeling, but is also working on building up his song catalogue by constantly recording new material on his Mac-powered program for aspiring musicians, Garage Band.

I should qualify all this by saying that Damon isn't a shallow person. He is very intelligent, and his pursuits are backed up by genuine talent as well as hard work. However, he's had a difficult life, and his dreams have been the only thing to keep him going. To start things off, he was born with epilepsy. He grew up in a low-income family,working alongside his mother in the horrour of an AIDS orphanage. He attended the missionary school by right of his father, a Christian translator, and there came under many assaults, both physical and emotional, by schoolmates and teachers alike. He developed an eating disorder at twelve as a result of his epilepsy medication. He is gay, and was sent to counseling to overcome it for most of his life until he tired of trying to change himself and came out of the closet to the dismay of his family. He developed a brain tumour when he was eighteen and had to have surgery to remove it. He is currently living in the middle of the worst year of his life; a culmination of events has left him jobless and unable to afford food in favour of paying the rent. His dreams have always been to him a representative of escape - so much so that he has failed to realize it is this unflinching dream of fame and fortune that is causing him so much trouble in the reality of the here and now.

I met Damon when he was eighteen, and he is now like the wayward little brother I know I'm going to have to watch out for the rest of my life. He called me at three in the morning sobbing earlier this week, having lost another job which rendered him unable to eat for another week, and it had already been four days since his last meal. "Why don't you just come home?" I asked. "I can't give up," he said. "I have to do this." I have never quite understood his manic quest to prove himself, nor who exactly he is trying to prove himself to. Certainly not me, or his parents, or any of his other friends. Probably to himself, if we're honest.

Since his biggest in a long series of breakdowns, Damon has agreed to move back if things haven't improved by the time his lease is up in a month. The plan is for him to go to nursing school. It is, as he says, "his back-up plan."

I haven't yet told him that I don't think modeling is a good idea for him. He is good-looking, but as someone who's already struggled with an eating disorder and with a self-confessed tendency toward vanity, modeling stands out to me as an extremely dangerous career choice, and furthermore, I have never been entirely convinced that he would be happy doing it.

He would make a great nurse. He is good with people, quick to learn, and understands how to deal with patients because he has so often been one. So why is it just a back-up plan? The answer was obvious enough - because it wasn't enough of a creative outlet for his artistic leanings. But he's also an amazing photographer. His best work is undoubtedly his portraiture (which is, incidentally, how we met - I was the subject of one of his first portraits), but he has a wide range of impressive photos that call to mind masters of postmodern photography like David LaChapelle. Photography, however, isn't the dream either. Why? Because Damon, as much as he would like to deny it, is an American and was born with the birthright of an enormous chip on his shoulder and a point to prove. And as with so many people, fame is his way of proving it.

"I think I'm failing here," Damon wrote to me. "I think I'm in denial, and I'm slowly starting to lose hope in myself and my abilities. My fortitude has been a facade and every inch of the supposed confidence with which I write to you is counterfeit in full. Sometimes, no matter how much you hope for something, it never ends up happening. You can plant a thousand seeds in the richest soil on earth, but if there's a drought your hard work was in vain and there is truly nothing you can do to six the situation. The 'starving artist' idea is appealing (and tolerable) for a while...but not for five months. Five months with no real friends. Five months with no real jobs. Five months of dream chasing and I haven't moved an inch. Maybe it is time to throw in the towel, because sometimes dreams just weren't meant to be in the first place, and I think mine
might be one of them."

The failed American dream is the subject of more literature than its predecessor, and it is perhaps more relevant than the original ever was. The American dream is alive and well in its death, proving once again that it might just be time to revise it for the rising generation.

A place to live, food on the table, money in your pocket, and an education to back it up doesn't sound like too bad a dream anymore, does it?

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