If I could deliver just one message to each and every person around the world, it would be this: pay more attention to the people around you. Not because it will make the world a better, friendlier place or anything like that. Because those people around you might turn out to be rock stars.
See, I went to university in Montreal with many of the people who are now in a band called the Arcade Fire. (You may have heard of them.) But did I ever talk or interact with any of them? No.
While the more sociable (or, perhaps, less self-absorbed) among my former fellow students have great stories about the time they chatted with Win Butler in the Religious Studies department or saw the Fire play at a tiny loft party, I've got nothing. I think I may have been at a party with guitarist Richard Reed Parry once, but you're not exactly going to pull at the pub with a line like that.
Mind you, I am certain that I took a seminar on Race in Latin American with Hadji Bakara, the head laptop player from a group called Wolf Parade who also contributed some blips and squeaks to the Neon Bible, the Fire's latest. But Hadji and me, we never got past the nodding-in-the-hallway stage of knowing each other. If only I had struck up a conversation about music instead of the Mosquito Indians of Nicaragua...
Apparently, I also went to high school with a guy from the Stills. I discovered this when, having somehow ended up in their green room at a concert in Toronto, said dude from the Stills passed me and said, "Hey, I went to school with you." I have no memory of this fellow whatsoever, however, which is really annoying because I'd love to have a before-he-was-famous story or two to regale friends with.
How did I miss out on befriending future rock star after future rock star? Imagine if only I had been a little less oblivious and, say, struck up a conversation with Win (BA 'O4, as my alumni magazine calls him) while eating General Tao chicken in the Shatner Building (yes, named after Captain Kirk, BCom '52) one day. We would have had stuff in common. I, for instance, play the trumpet. And I played Koko the Lord High Executioner in my university production of the Mikado. And I kind of dread the looming apocalypse, too. We could have been best buds.
"Hey, man, you're a pretty A-one guy," Win would have said, pulling back a strand of his then-long hair. "Want to come jam later at my pad with me and my girl Régine?"
Imagine. I could have been dancing about frantically banging on a glockenspiel and singing wordless choruses at the Brixton Academy last week.
Don't be a fool like me. For your own sake, turn to your left and talk to that hippie-looking guy next to you. He, too, could be a chart topper some day. (Well, number two, but who's counting, really?)
