THIS WORLD FULL OF US

Paul McCartney explained the lines from the Beatle's song, "Fixing a Hole:"

See the people standing there
Who disagree and never win
And wonder why they don't get in
Silly people run around
They worry me
And never ask whey they don't get in my door.

"If they only knew that the best way to get in is not to do that, because obviously anyone who is going to be straight and like a real friend and a real person to us is going to get in; but they simply stand there and give off, 'We are fans, don't let us in.'"

There is definitely a weird dynamic separating fans and stars. That fans put themselves in a "one-down" position, worshipping the rock star is a commonplace. But there is another side to the equation.

When I did my first search for NIN-related web pages, I came across "Trent Rezner's Homepage," as have many others. The real author, Blackrose, in minimizing the role of deception on his part, suggests that only a real idiot would be fooled by this page. Well, Blackrose, I was one of the idiots. I was fooled. I was skeptical at first but I set my skepticism aside for several reasons. For one thing, I didn't think anyone could get away with posing as Trent Rezner. For another, the very down-to-earth characteristic of some of the statements attributed to him had to ring of truth for their very improbability. I reasoned, someone pretending to be Trent would never have said this or that. Be that as it may, I found my own responses interesting. On the one hand, I was happy that Trent was so accessible and unpretentious. How refreshing. On the other hand, part of me didn't really want him to be so real and immediate. That part of me wanted him to be an icon, safely remote so that he could be what I want it to be. Since I found out that the page was a hoax, I was both disappointed and relieved. Trent isn't that well-defined person on the web. He's safely embedded in my albums and videos where I can take him out when I want. But the brief experience of believing otherwise gave me the opportunity to experience this reaction. There's no way I can pretend otherwise. I was now forced to confront a very strange paradox in the relationship between a fan and the object of fan-worship. On the one hand, we experience an instantaneous sense of communion with the artist as he expresses our own innermost feelings. We also yearn with all our hearts for something real to come through of Trent, the real person. But, on the other hand, we fear such a real-life connection, we don't know how to behave in the presence of such a special human being.

Trent has expressed a similar sense of estrangement from the other side of the joke. He told Huh Magazine's Mark Blackwell (February 1995)

"...looking back it's always like there was the club. And I was like always almost in there. Never had much close friends or anything like that. Now I'm the president of the club. And they think they know me."

"And you've sort of volunteered to give yourself to them," I surmise.

"Yeah, and I don't get anything back so..."

"Except money or fame or..."

"Or being treated like a freak, you know. Which is not what I want most of the time."

His video, Wish shows him in a cage while fans make their assault, trying to get to him. He sings, "wish there were something real/wish there were something true/wish there were something real in this world full of you." Apparently, he is addressing his fans. Could it be he is as trapped in his role as we are in ours? How do we get real with each other?

Why do we need to set some people apart like that? Why do we need people who are larger than life in one way and are smaller than life on the other hand, that is, as manageable as a compact disc that can be stored on the shelf until we're ready to play it? (We do the same thing to our gods.) Perhaps the communion we experience with the art of Nine Inch Nails is so total, so perfect, that anything added to it by a real life confrontation would spoil that perfection. We believe in our hearts (don't we?) that Trent understands our deepest selves. That we share that understanding. We would want him to recognize this inner-self of ours if he were to ever meet us. We want to express our understanding so flawlessly that he will recognize us. And the very anxiety that we could be misunderstood, that he won't see who we really are inside, would make us blow that perfect moment. Of course there is also our own shame, our own sense that we're not worthy. So we bang on the door, yelling, "Don't let me in! I'm a fan." And he doesn't.

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