the Pinnacle Of Everything

     

I'm compelled to try to figure out things I can't figure out.

     (Why?  Why did he do this?  Why did she do that?  What happened?  Where did they disappear to?  Why?  Why?...)

     I "trance" on it, trying to figure it out...

     Yesterday, headlines on Internet communicated the death by suicide of Kate Spade, a very successful fashion designer.


     55 years old
     married for 24 years
     1 daughter, 13 years old
     apartment on Park Avenue


                    (pause)


        PARK.


        AVENUE.


     ("Money isn't everything doesn't buy happiness blah blah yadda yadda lah lah lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll...")

     In Internet Comments, somebody's pithy kid summed up people's typical reaction in succinct text-speak:

"why famous rich people do this?"

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     Well -- everybody's got problems.  (Then we're heading back into blah-blah-yadda-yadda territory...)

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     People look at a person like that and say, "She has everything, how could she not be happy?"

     I kind of saw it from the angle of -- she and her husband together became millionaires Doing A Fun Job.

     I see fashion designing as being similar to having a rock and roll band or being an actor or actress.  If you say you want to do that, your parents (and all other adults anywhere near you) say, Fine, but first you have to become a doctor or a lawyer or anyway have a job and get married and have children.

     To have one of the Fun Jobs (or create that job for yourself) and even to just make a living at it, is seen as rare and difficult and unlikely. ...To have the Fun Job and make a fortune at it -- (Park.   Avenue.) -- seems, to me, even more like catching lightning in a bottle...very very amazing, if you can make it happen.  Off the charts, from what most people can do, in life.

     And then to -- take yourself out?  
     Does not compute.



     I thought about it from another angle:  how much people appreciate what they're able to achieve can partially depend on where they came from.  Both Kate Spade and her husband Andy Spade have relatives in show business, so ...  some wealth and connections are floating about, there.  
     
     And so -- their standards might be different.

     Like, to me, I see living on Park Avenue in NYC as -- well -- the Pinnacle-Of-Everything.  But maybe they don't see it that way; maybe they just call it -- Wednesday.

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