Popularity

 

Like a recurring condition, I have been worrying about popularity again. It flares up like a skin rash. I have made art my whole life, but I have never been very... popular. Every once in awhile I make something I expect to be popular, or I even take a stab at being popular, but I'm not. Sometimes I think this means a lot. Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't.

A co-worker of mine started making portraits of famous people out of little bits of junk. I was encouraging about these because I thought they were just great. Then she had a show at the library like I did, and they are up in my library right now.

They are way more popular than my pictures were. Mine were mildly popular, certainly more popular than any other show we had. But these new ones by my co-worker are on a whole other level of popular. People love them. They pour over them. They constantly photograph them. They ask how long they'll be up for. As I said, I like these pictures too. But pretty quickly I felt a little funny about them, or maybe I just wondered if I felt funny about them. I wondered if I was jealous. 

I don't think I felt jealous, but I felt like I could feel jealous.

Today I was out at the front desk with another co-worker and I said "Aren't these portraits just great?" 

And my co-worker responded "Eh. They're really not my thing."

Wow.

I was so surprised.

But also relieved.

I didn't share the feeling, but it made me feel strangely better, calmer, not jealous. Maybe I never felt jealous. I just needed one person who didn't care, one variable, one thing that made it all a matter of taste and I felt...

fine.

Did you know (yes, you did) my whole damned country, hundreds of millions of people, held one of the most important popularity contests in the World, maybe ever, who knows? It was for the person to have the most power theoretically on Earth, or close to it.

And get this: Like 50 percent voted for a completely disgusting, notably stupid, asshole (and I'm kind of pulling punches here), which, fine, that's bad enough, but like 48 percent of the people, me included, voted for a person who, while perhaps nice enough in a personal context, I don't know, clearly lacked any fundamental wisdom, creativity, vision, moral courage, or personal integrity (again, pulling punches). The remaining stragglers and non voters functionally only voted to allow the horrible person to win.

Which is to say, and the reason I drag you through this bitter, bitter memory is to say:

We had a kind of high stakes popularity contest with hundreds of millions of people voting and precisely ZERO of us voted for a really good person.

Zero.

So there's that.

And yet Pride and Prejudice is intensely popular.

Poirot.

The Beatles.

Frida Kahlo is popular, and my co-worker made a junk portrait of her which is also popular.

Cathy's Song is popular.

And so is Moonstruck.

And why wouldn't they all be. Their popularity is justified.

And so in conclusion:

Popularity is very meaningful.

and

Popularity means nothing good at all.

But most of all:

Popularity...

Is popular.