That whole thing about “Never meet your heroes” is, I’m sure, a truism for a reason; I can only imagine the number of people who have had the misfortune to spend time with those people who have shaped their lives, only to discover with an unfortunate comment (or worse, an awkward silence) that things are not going well. I’ve had more than enough experiences meeting… well, not exactly “heroes” as much as “people who I thought I admired or respected from some distance,” that started uncomfortably and ended far worse, after all.
Meeting my “heroes,” though? It’s happened no less than three times, and in a surprise twist of fate, each time they turned out to be either exactly what I wanted them to be, or somehow even better. (Technically, one of these meetings is more “talked to repeatedly over Skype, Zoom, and other forms of internet communication,” but that counts, surely…? It feels as if it should, at least.)
Rather than embarrass myself with listing all three of these experiences here right now, I’ll mention just the first, in large part because it’s the one I was arguably the most nervous about. There was a period of time around the turn of the century — I really can’t remember which side of the changeover it was, because there was a lot going on in general at the time — where I was helping out a local arts group I’d gotten myself involved in; I did their newsletter and, when I was in the same town as them (which was not often, for awhile; like I said, there was. a lot going on), I’d sit in on meetings or help out in their rented art space. At one of the meetings I missed, it was decided to get a visiting artist in to help bring people to said art space. It was also decided that that artist would be Bill Drummond.
When I found this out, I re-arranged what would I self-consciously avoided calling my schedule to make sure I’d be in town to meet him. This was Bill Drummond, after all — co-founder of the KLF, artist, musician, and for the intents of my hero worship, writer of 45, a book that was as friendly, curious, and kind about pop culture as I could imagine. He was, in many ways, who I wanted to be when I grew up. I had to meet him, if I had the chance, I thought, even as I winced at the possibility of embarrassing myself as soon as I opened my mouth.
By the time he showed up, I had managed to get myself entirely wound up by the paranoid certainty that it would go badly. I’m going to say something stupid, I thought to myself, or he’s going to be terrible. There’s no other way this can go. For days leading up to the event, I just got more and more convinced that disaster was around the corner, but I still had this need to meet him, no matter what. When would I get this chance again?
I needn’t have worried; he was charming, patient, and chatty. He was odd, and off-kilter, in the best of ways, with stories that seemed to go on too long and not long enough at the same time. I remember him as being tall, which I have no idea if it’s true or not, but feels like it should have been, just because of how it felt after I’d met him — as if something magical had happened, in the most literal sense of that phrase: something nonsensical and meaningful, but outside of the realms of logic or common sense. I remember walking home that night more clearly than I remember actually meeting him, just feeling awash with the possibilities of a world where such a thing had happened, when there was no reason why it should have.