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Mirror, Mirror

Ah, fame. For most, alas, that shiny notion is ever fleeting. Especially these days, when folks get famous simply for showing up. It wasn’t always that way of course — once upon another time you actually had to have done something notable to become a bold-faced name — but the era of earning your place in the constellation seems to now be more the exception rather than the rule.

Or maybe not. In Astoria, Queens, on the site of the old Kaufman Studios, there’s a place called The Frank Sinatra School of the Arts. I know this because it was founded by the great Tony Bennett and his wife, public school teacher Susan Benedetto. I had the great pleasure of shaking seven answers out of the legendary saloon singer prior to his Arsht Center engagement early last month. And it was there where the man himself bemoaned the fact that kids these days seldom have a chance to develop their talents before being thrust into the limelight.

Call me a fogy if you want, but I think they’re on to something. Someone suitably trained in the arts will have a much better chance at maintaining the poise it takes not just to make it, but to keep making it. To stay on top past the usual 15-minute expiration date. And perhaps, to have a career as illustrious as that of Mr. Bennett, who’s been staging for six decades.

Think about it. That’s nearly three times as long as the lives of the current crop of young Hollywood stars. I won’t pretend to know whether or not, say, Zac Efron or Blake Lively will be breathlessly spoken of 10 or even 20 years from now. But I will say this: without being grounded, there’s a damn good chance that they — and those like them — will fly off the map the minute the next big thing comes along.

So what, right? That’s Darwin for you, and it applies to all kinds of species, no matter how much they may or may not be fawned over. Still, there’s something a little less than fortifying about all this sugary insta-fame. And a steady diet of celebrity snack food can’t possibly leave us — or them — nourished enough to handle whatever life brings.

And therein lies the rub. Life, in all its myriad joys and disappointments, loves and losses, hopes and dreams and fears, that’s really what it’s all about. Not how many folks see you or know your name, but how you live when no one’s looking. What kind of code you adhere to (if any), and the way you move through this world of ours. If you’re worrying about how your hair looks in front of a sea of paparazzi, it’s unlikely you’ll be thinking about the center of your own gravity.

So, what to do? Well, there’s that mirror of course, which each of us has to face each day, not to see how we look, but how we see ourselves. How to see beyond and beneath and into the deep within. It’s a daring and difficult place to peer into, which is why few manage to do so. Yet, it’s a cinch that if you summon the courage to face yourself, you can face anyone and anything, anywhere, ever.

Go ahead. I dare you.