Limitations

[poliphilo]

That meme about things I've done and you haven't. I'm tempted to try it but it makes my head hurt to remember all that stuff.

Every one of those things I've done and you haven't is just another brick in the wall.

Personality is a prison as much as its a romper-room. The more colourful I am, the more I'm stuck with myself.

I'm Quentin Crisp. No-one is ever going to ask me to haul a sleigh to the South Pole.

As a writer I keep coming up against my limitations. I bang against them like a vacuum cleaner butting against the skirting board.

The least limited writer ever was Shakespeare. He creates an illusion of knowing everything. We haven't a clue what he was like in himself.

One of my favourite scenes from the movies is Rita Haworth and Edward Everett Sloane in Lady From Shanghai. They're in the mirror maze, surrounded by multiple images of themselves. He says something like "I'm awfully tired of us, lover." Then they start shooting.

Glass everywhere.

Comments

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

That meme about things I've done and you haven't. I'm tempted to try it but it makes my head hurt to remember all that stuff.

FWIW, I felt that way at first. But then it was hard to stop!

Personality is a prison as much as its a romper-room. The more colourful I am, the more I'm stuck with myself.

The first sentence is definitely true, but as for the second... I don't think there's a correlation between colorfulosity and how much you are stuck with yourself. I think we are all stuck with ourselves, even if we're boring. How much better to be stuck with someone interesting!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I was thinking- at some level- of poor old Hunter Thompson, stuck out there on his fortified ranch with his paranoia and his guns.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

I think it was just pride, an overweening desire to go out with a bang and not a whimper, that did him in.

I don't think he is less (or more) tragic than someone who lives a boring life and dies peacefully in their sleep. It's the fact that we are stuck with ourselves that I find tragic.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

But not to be stuck with oneself is also tragic. I'm thinking of an actor like Peter Sellers- who was brilliant at being other people, but never sorted out his own identity.

Ah, the human predicament!

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

How do you know he never did?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm going by hear-say.

I love Peter Sellers and have so liked him to be happy.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

I like Peter Sellers, too.

I think it's clear that he *LIKED* playing other people--maybe preferred it--but I don't think you can assume that he didn't know who he was. But I suppose he felt less stuck with himself than some of us.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think he said something once about not knowing himself- and all the stories about him suggest that he was a terrible psychic mess.

I haven't read the Biography, but I've seen the film that was based on it- with wonderful Geoffrey Rush.

It's like there was a Faustian pact.

Because his screen characters are so vivid- so supernaturally vivid.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I saw Peter Sellers one time on the OLD Dick Cavett show. He was a MESS, I never saw anyone look so uncomfortable. Cavett said to him "What's wrong? I'm not known for my rudeness to my guests." Sellers said, with tears in his eyes, that he had to be himself for the interview "And I don't know how to do that. I'm always playing a part, I can hide behind the character." I eventually turned that interview off, the vibrations he gave off even on television were very distressing.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

This is what I was thinking of. Thanks for the chapter and verse.