Jeanne-Claude and Christo did a great presentation last night, but the highlight was when they answered questions from the audience. Jeanne-Claude said anybody could do anything if they worked hard enough. The hard part was figuring out what one wanted to do.
At one point Jeanne-Claude said something like this...that there was an article in Sunday's paper and there were beautiful words but it talked about 'volunteers' passing out fabric samples and that was wrong...they pay everyone. Immediately I thought, "Damn. I bet I used the word volunteer here ."And this morning I looked it up and I did. I know better. I know they pay everyone involved. Still...it all seems so much like a labor of love that the people do seem to be volunteers. Indeed, they don't seem to have a needs test (Ann Richards helped with The Gates for Central Park) and a lot of people do it because they want to. Still, I was devastated that I made such a mistake. I could go to the book signing today and apologize in person. But I'm thinking that surely someone else in town made this mistake. The Chronicle comes out on Thursday and is dated Friday. It's just a hippie rag after all. Albeit one that has started one of the biggest music festivals in the world. I don't remember anything in the Sunday Statesman and I couldn't find anything online. So I'm either thrilled (Jeanne-Claude read something I wrote) or humiliated (I wrote something that was wrong and I know better and worse yet Jeanne-Claude herself read it). Or I'm flattering myself and she didn't read what I wrote at all.
Ah, the price of fame! J-C and Christo get misunderstood. They don't just wrap things. No new wrapping projects have been started since the seventies. (Although it took over twenty years to complete the Reichstag wrapping project.) They don't accept sponsorships or 'raise' money. They just sell Christo's original drawings. They don't have volunteers. They pay everyone. They never do the same thing twice nor do they start with anyone else's ideas.
I'm glad I'm not famous. And with my AADD I'm unlikely to become so! And those Chronicles will go to recycling and the WEB content will fade. You don't think Jeanne-Claude will remember my name, do you? Yikes! Nah. It couldn't have been my little blurb that she read.
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