On the surface, it's a story about fame. Not Elvis fame. Not Paul Newman or Eddie Murphy fame. Not the kind of fame that's honed over years of practice and careful minding. No, it's about a different kind of fame. The new kind of fame. The kind of fame that can happen overnight in a world like this - where everyone is connected and everyone has a shot. Used to be fame was earned, the pursuit of it endured until out of the multitude arose the fortunate few. They became something larger, bigger than us mortals stuck schlepping this coil.
And then Andy Warhol happened. His prediction of 15 minutes, a self-fulfilling prophecy born to fruition by YouTube.
This new kind of fame seems plastic, a hollow facsimile of the way fame used to be, the way it was meant to be. A kid freaks out and posts a video telling everyone to leave Britney alone; a chimpanzee cruises through a field on a Segway; an inspirational comedian dances his way from the Charleston to the Dougie. This is the kind of fame that exists only on the surface, because if you were to dig a little deeper, you'd see the surface is all there is. There is no infrastructure. There are no load-bearing walls. This new fame is a balloon, empty and lighter than air on the inside.
But then there comes the outlier. The person riding to fame on this hollow wind, but who does not pop when probed, whose substance makes their instant fame seem worthwhile. Jorge Narvaez is like that. He's one of the new famous. He's a fad, a craze. He's a meme. On the surface anyway. He's the guy you've probably seen. You and eight million or so of your closest friends. He's the guy on YouTube singing a song with his six-year-old daughter. You don't know the song, but you wish you did. You don't know Jorge or his daughter Alexa, but you sort of want to.
In case you haven't seen it, you really should. It's simple. A young, handsome man strumming an acoustic guitar, his daughter sitting beside him, taking her turns on every other verse. The song is by a band you probably have never heard of, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. It's got a catchy little hook, a great whistle intro and a chorus - "home is wherever I'm with you" - that wouldn't make you stop and think, unless you knew Jorge and Alexa. Unless you knew that he's a full-time student, 24, and recently split with Alexa and her sister's mom. You wouldn't pay attention unless you knew that he sings the song to his daughter every night as a way of helping her deal with the pain of her mom and dad splitting up, to help her deal with having two homes. You wouldn't think much of it unless you talked to Jorge.
"Every single thing I do is for them," he says. He's on a cell phone, driving to Palm Springs from his San Diego apartment. Going to meet a guy about a thing. There's been a lot of guys and a lot of things, a lot of meetings and opportunities in the last month. He posted the video on December 31, 2010. Three weeks later, millions had seen it. He and Alexa were on the Ellen Show. A German TV station called him for an interview. Univision - Latin America's answer to Al Jazeera - sent a crew to follow him around for a couple of days. He's been on the radio in countries around the world, been offered deals and opportunities. A literary agent has offered him a contract to write a children's book. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros want to meet with him when they get back from a tour in Australia.
A little more than three weeks. A video of a guy singing with his daughter on their couch. No manager. No publicist. No contract. No money. That's how new fame works. Jorge and Alexa have played at her school, where she's become a celebrity of sorts. She's become so well known that he had to pull her out of the Boys and Girls Club where she normally goes after school. She's in private daycare now, just in case. This is all in less than a month. A little girl and her daddy, who spent Christmas unknown to anyone, are a worldwide sensation before President's Day.
Jorge's story is maybe a little familiar. He's young, 24, and has a six-year-old and a two-year-old daughter. It took him a while to find his way. He found love young. Calls the mother of his children an "amazing woman" and part of his "family," but things didn't work out. That happens. It happens a lot, too much to deserve anyone's judgment or criticism. Sometimes things just aren't right. But Jorge doesn't dwell. He's the kind of guy who seems to look forward a lot. It's why he's gotten his life together, gone from a 1.5 to a 3.6 GPA at UCSD. It's why he dreams - of being an influential photographer, of being an academic, of being the best father he can be.
For a guy like Jorge, the first in his family to finish high school let alone dream of becoming a professor, dreams are important. They are landmarks. He may never have dreamed of being on Ellen or getting calls from Germany, but he has dreamed of a better life for he and his daughters. Talk to the guy for more than a minute, have him call you 'bro' and you know there's something about him. But only if you've also seen the video and imagined his life to this point. Because a guy from San Diego calls you 'bro' you think one thing. A guy sings with his daughter, you think another. A guy works hard in school and has plans for the future, you think something else. But when a guy does all these things, you realize even the new fame - the shimmery surface, the undisturbed pond, the taught balloon - isn't necessarily as hollow as you may think.
It's easy to assume superficiality. It's easy to get jaded by the kind of fame that makes American Idol look substantive. The Star Wars kid, the Double Rainbow guy,the Numa Numa kid. It's easy to assume some desperate play for attention, a grab for the new kind of fame. And there's enough of that out there, enough to assume that that's all that's out there. But every once in a while, along comes Jorge and his daughter Alexa and that song, that moment. Pure love. A father's love and his pain. And you get caught thinking that maybe there is something out there, a balloon that won't pop because it's propped up.
Jorge will probably never be the old kind of famous, but I get the sense talking to him that he never wanted to be. He never really wanted to be the new kind of famous. It just sort of happened. And it's nice to see that fame - sudden and fleeting - can happen to someone who wasn't looking for it, some who didn't see it coming. Not even out of the periphery because their focus, his focus, was on the faces of his family and on his future. It's nice to see that even with fame, Jorge's focus remains where it should be. Maybe he's creating something new, a new-new kind of fame.
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