I was just re reading notes from the Vinyl Cafe today, in particular a story about a particular bookstore in Victoria that Stuart McLean has a particular fondness for.
The owner, a friend, has a picture hanging in his office of a group of friends on a boat that had been taken many years before. To be precise the picture is of the bookstore's proprietor and his friends wife and son and their son's friend. The son's friend happened to be the one and only Bill Gates when he was just a boy.
I work backwards in my abbreviated version of this tale, (because I really think you should buy the book written by Stuart McLean as it has some great stories of life and love).
But I digress.To work backwards, I was thinking about a phrase coined by Andy Warhol " In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." Everyone knows of Bill Gates, well maybe not everyone but he is without argument world famous and has had more than his 15 Min's.
The Owner of the sail boat, Marvin Evans and his wife, Mary are named in Stuarts Story thus arguably through at least the telling of the story by Mr. McLean are world famous by that alone as I'm sure Stuart himself must be.
Jim Munro, owner of the bookstore in Victoria (although not known to myself other than through this story) would count as the same. I would also put forward that in a vibrant and touristy city such as Victoria, having its share of world travellers, many of those travellers I imagine have entered the store and probably met and taken with them stories of Jim and his bookstore along with others of the printed kind.
That leads me to the son of Marvin and Mary Evans. That's where it ends. I have no idea who he is and neither did Stuart or apparently Jim Munro as he told the story to Stuart.
All we know for sure is that he was mentioned almost as a mere prop to get to the meat of the story that as a young boy he had brought a friend (Bill Gates) along on the sailing trip.
Also that he spent more time talking of computers down below rather than living the moment and experiencing the trip and its surroundings.
So what about his 15 minutes I wonder?
I thought, what if that was me Stuart was speaking of. What if I was Samuel or Adam or Frank Evans or whatever the hell his name is. What if this was his only chance at 15 minutes of fame, at least through proxy of a story in Stuart McLean’s notebook.
Would I be shouting at the book, hey it's me. Robert, I was the kid.. why am I being left out?
Then I thought, oh well, that's life isn't it. Maybe the 15 minutes we are given is more like a Frank Capra story. Where our hero is not the center stage type but world famous no less in other more regular day to day events.
It brought me back to my own time spent in Victoria with my son Jesse. A time I'll truly cherish for my history.
While we were there, a lady on a motorized cart made a sweeping turn far too fast on a short but steep curve up to the counter of a parking lot ice cream stand. She tipped over and crashed to the pavement. She ended up breaking her collar bone, but more lasting to me was that her son and daughter were both in other cities up the coast.
I stayed with her until the ambulance arrived and tried to comfort her as best I could. Who knows, maybe that story went home with visitors from other cities from other countries even, certainly to her children.....that is world famous in a way of thinking.
Then I thought that more importantly to me, that the act itself was shared with my son and all the other moments of that trip and a lifetime of memories with him are worth more to me than any 15 minutes could ever give.