People who know people

Posted by Josh Friedlander | No Comments

How to articulate this? Increasingly, I’m experiencing this problem of knowing so much about people I don’t know that I feel like I do know them. It’s worse than celebrity stalking because the people aren’t really celebrities. Why do I need to know so much about a couple of famous-in-blogland bloggers? But I do. So if I met them it would be odd for me, because I’d be up to speed, and does one pretend not to be? Or does one just jump in? It’s a similar problem to Googling one’s date (definitely not advisable).

But it’s an entirely different type of weirdness to wake up and discover that the rest of the world now knows someone you know. Because how does one react to that? There can be a sort of jealousy in the same way one is upset when a favorite but obscure band is no longer obscure. There’s an entirely undeserved sense of ownership, but that’s not exactly the right word, and the feeling that there’s been a type of theft, which is related to an equally undeserved sense of pride (I found it first!). But when these feelings relate to a person they are obviously different than losing a restaurant or a hidden vacation spot to the unwashed masses.

These feelings are all the more confusing because their strange sense of melancholy is mingled with the recognition that this is New York, and I’ve met and befriended so many fascinating people here. And that this concentrated intermingling of talent makes our lives more intriguing than living in Duluth.

And when I think about it that way I get the sort of starry-eyed Pollyanna stare that comes on me sometimes when I’m crossing Park Avenue at night and look downtown at the Helmsley Building with its golden rooftop aflame in lights. Or when I look out my office window at my obscenely perfect view of the Empire State Building, and realize that people in crazy little places around the world dream of coming here, and then I feel bad about having been too busy to remember.

So, it’s City Mouse/Country Mouse in a way. The price of knowing those who never yawn or say a commonplace thing is accepting that they will not long remain open secrets. So, here’s to one of the most unique and uniquely likable people yet spawned and to the giddy thought of all those who will get to meet her in print for the first time.

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