Timeline

There is no place like here.

Higher beings transcend temporality: gods are immortal; Hollywood celebrities lie about their ages. Rather than adhere to an imposed temporal construct, these distant others privilege spatiality, a more forgiving medium. They are pinpricks in Deep Space, jewels in so many receding heavens, ephemeral smiles within the confines of a dark theater. If eternity is the quest, then time is a cheap commodity in the pantheon of fame.

So how to forge a timeline for the project of Celebrity? We lie and misrepresent. Depicting ourselves against various barometers of fame--from Davy Crockett to R. D. Laing--we offer two contexts: collective memory and personal celebrity. Collective memory is the Mass Dream, those formative events which frame our culture, however briefly. Personal celebrity refers to the formative events in our own lives: moments of conception, birth, first words, first kisses, and so on. However, these lives--our lives--are not real. Rather, in a gesture of "self"-preservation, we have recreated our existences, appropriating these moments of significance from a mediated Elsewhere--from actual celebrities, characters in film and television, song lyrics, and so forth.

We do not regret this shameless misrepresentation. Such lies are not intended to perpetuate disillusionment or a loss of faith. On the contrary, these lies of Celebrity are designed to protect you, keeping you safely wrapped in a spatial womb devoid of time. The truth, after all, is transient. Or at least, not entertaining.