Star recognition

Pretty Lady doesn't see too many currently acknowleged stars in her daily runabout, really. Once she ran into Drew Barrymore in an elevator at the Whitney; she experienced a strange disconnected feeling, as though she were being rude, but could not remember why. "I know that person," she thought to herself. "But there's some reason I should not say hello. What could it be? Did we have a fight? Is she mad at me?"

Sweet Drew never stays mad at anybody, I am sure. A friend of Pretty Lady's once worked as a gaffer on one of Drew's movie sets; she introduced herself to everyone in the vicinity. "Hi, I'm Drew," she would say. "We're making a movie."

That, my dears, is Class.

However I have gone astray. As I mentioned, I do not run into current stars; I discover future ones. This evening I went to hear one.

This star, Tara in fact, is the former roommate of my best friend. During the entire time my best friend was rooming with her, I knew her only as that messed-up girl who did not pay the bills. Seriously, she didn't seem to know how to pay bills. My friend would give her some money, and a week later the phone would be cut off. If she was given a deposit from a sub-letter, she would spend the entire amount on beer. She was like a child; a damaged, clueless, helpless child. I do not know how my best friend put up with her. In fact I do not know how Tara survived, from day to day, at all. Her time appeared to be spent in noodling with electronic keyboards, drinking heavily, coughing, and rearranging her toys. Literally, her toys. The living room was full of them.

My friend, though, is not quite of this earth. She has always been spiritual and more than a little ascetic; I have known her to camp for years in a room the size of a broom closet, with almost no possessions, and hostile relatives of men she was dating, living right next door. Last year she left New York perhaps forever, to become enlightened at an Academy in Wisconsin. I miss her sorely, but it is best for her, the radiant sprite. I certainly never thought to see her roommate again.

Then lo, I wandered into a club one evening, to hear my neighbor Henry sing. Henry was passable--competent and adequate, as was his friend Roger, the dear boy. I sat at the bar and nattered with Roger's actress friend, and it was all very neighborly. Then Tara took the mike.

I had a college professor who heard Janis Joplin sing, in a high-school auditorium, sometime long before nineteen-sixty-seven. The professor said of the experience, "This plain, mousy looking woman in a peasant skirt walked onto the stage with a guitar. Then she opened her mouth."

Friends, it was like that. I cannot possibly describe it. Tara opened her mouth.

You can't leave me, I'm unsteady
I'm lovin', lovin, lovin', lovin' life...

Oh. My. God. The damage, the smoke, the coughing child, all were part of it; it was as though the muse were burning off the tar at the bottom of her lungs, and the orphan in her soul. Her voice echoed off the rafters like Jesse Jackson giving a speech in the West Mall. It thrummed up and down the spine with the pathos of a thousand ruined lifetimes. She was an order of magnitude Other than her sweet friends and supporters, Roger and Henry.

I sought her out after the show, of course. "You are truly gifted," I told her. She seemed surprised. I do not think she knows it.

It is quite likely that none of you will hear of Tara from the mainstream media; I give her an 80% chance of rapid self-destruction, and an only 20% chance of rapid public self-destruction, a lá Janis. But this evening my neighbor Henry invited me again, and oh, did I go along. While Tara was singing, there were some young girls sitting alongside of me, chattering and giggling. After a withering glance or two went unheeded, I approached them; indeed, I approached toweringly, and touched them upon the knees.

"Girls, you need to know that this is probably one of the most talented artists you will ever get to hear, live," I said. "You need to shut up."

They quailed. I listened in peace.