Inconsistency
Feb. 11th, 2023 09:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloConsistency is overrated. Just because I started out as a mad bohemian poet, doesn't mean I'm stuck in that mode for life. Perhaps I can drop all that and become a North African gun-runner- which is what Rimbaud did.
Most of our fiction- popular and less popular- is a celebration of the person who changes. This book I'm reading at the moment- John Buchan's Huntingtower- has as its hero a retired Glaswegian grocer who goes for a ramble and ends up heroically shooting at people. We don't have to let our antecedents cow us. We can, if we choose, become the opposite of what we were- or less drastically, work endless variations on an original theme.
This is (one reason) why we find actors so fascinating. They make a living out of becoming other people. We wish we had their freedom- only we do, we do. All it takes is a little courage...
Inconsistency is glorious.
Most of our fiction- popular and less popular- is a celebration of the person who changes. This book I'm reading at the moment- John Buchan's Huntingtower- has as its hero a retired Glaswegian grocer who goes for a ramble and ends up heroically shooting at people. We don't have to let our antecedents cow us. We can, if we choose, become the opposite of what we were- or less drastically, work endless variations on an original theme.
This is (one reason) why we find actors so fascinating. They make a living out of becoming other people. We wish we had their freedom- only we do, we do. All it takes is a little courage...
Inconsistency is glorious.
