“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” This line, credited to Andy Warhol from a Stockholm exhibit catalog in 1968, has gone through several attributions and convolutions over the years, including being ascribed to Marshall McLuhan. Where ever it originated, it has become a kind of hereditary promise for generations of Americans and most of us have indeed had our 15 minutes of celebrity, plus or minus.
My own fifteen minutes came in 1974, when an exuberant young man came up to me at the end of the first Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in Sedalia and asked for my autograph. For the next 43 years my wife humorously teased me remarking, “Yes, Lawrence had his fifteen minutes, though it was more like fifteen seconds, and he has managed to stretch it out in his mind all these years!” (It used to embarrass me, but I’d sure like to hear her say it again just one more time…)
