Celebrity

A regular column by David Huang

I once met Daryl Braithwaite. Well, not exactly. He kinda walked past me on the street one day.   

But I still remember that moment, more than a decade ago, with the same clarity as that one time I flicked on the TV to be confronted by images of two planes slamming into a pair of skyscrapers over New York.

Anyhow, fame, fickle by nature, had long since abandoned Braithwaite by the time I had my brush with him. His solo hits were but a distant memory and Sherbet ... well, who remembers Sherbet anyway?

All the same, my heart skipped a beat and my knees went a little wobbly, and for that fleeting instant I felt an extra bit special, basking in the dim reflected glow of Braithwaite's faded and all but extinguished stardom.

If I'd just gone that tiny step further and thrown my underwear at him, you could have called me a certified groupie. But hey, that would have looked a little out-of-place on a busy downtown street in Sydney.

The funny thing is though, I'd rather gouge my eardrums out with rusty barbed wire than listen to Braithwaite's music.

OK, maybe I'm being a little harsh ... but at the same time entirely fair. I mean, when I hear the delicate strains of Braithwaite musing,

"I hear all the people of the world/In one bird's lonely cry/See them trying every way they know how/To make their spirits fly" or "Sure as the wind keeps on changin' direction/I've come to understand/There's no such thing as perfection", certain words immediately come to mind.   Inspired, profound, subtle, and poetic are not among them.

So as a reasonably mature, intelligent, and well-read adult, I find my disproportionate reaction to that brief encounter with Braithwaite completely infuriating; it was like I'd been conditioned into responding in a particular way, and was helpless to act otherwise.  

And it's not just some bizarre affliction for Daryl Briathewaite that I have. I seem to devote a disturbing portion of my mental faculties to celebrity in all its frivolous, vapid, and ultimately pointless forms.

If I could remember the names of Heads of State as well as I can recall Oscar winners or if I could retain information on the state of play in the world's political hotspots as proficiently as I can bring to mind Britney Spears lyrics, maybe I'd be working as a real journalist.

But o, rather than read an in-depth analysis in New Internationalist of the political and historical origins of the genocide in Darfur, I'd much prefer to skim the abridged version in New Idea , complete with touchingly captioned pictures of Angelina Jolie - Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, no less - spoon-feeding emaciated, fly-blown Sudanese children.

Come to think of it, those pictures would be so much more aesthetically pleasing if you took out those knobbly-kneed, pot-bellied, worm-infested kids altogether. I mean, Angelina could be spoon-feeding Brad Pitt for all I care.

David Huang