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poliphilo ([personal profile] poliphilo) wrote2004-05-26 09:32 am
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Bad Penny

Norman rang up. I thought he and I had fallen out. Apparently not. (Actually I thought he was dead.)

Norman is a pagan. And at one time or another he's been best friends with everyone of note on the Pagan scene- starting with Alex Sanders (whom he knew or says he knew as a cross-dressing Manchester punk.) The look is grizzled old hippy. The manner is buttery. I'll flatter you and you'll flatter me back and won't we both feel good! He's a liar and a fantasist, but there's an innocence about him. He's a puppy. He's cute. He told us he was a transpersonal psychologist and we caught him out- not because we were trying to catch him out, but because we believed him and asked him if he'd use his "expertise" to help a friend of ours. These failures don't seem to faze him. He fluffs his way through them and comes out the other end smiling that twinkly-eyed, chipmunky smile. I wonder if he's ever had a moment of real self-doubt.

I put a version of him into a novel a couple of years back. He was fun to write- I invented lovely lies for him to tell- and in the process I grew fond. In certain lights he can appear almost Falstaffian. But I had to have someone shoot him at the end.

[identity profile] ibid.livejournal.com 2004-05-26 05:06 am (UTC)(link)
Ahh what would our lives be without such people!

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2004-05-26 06:05 am (UTC)(link)
Less amusing, less anxious...

[identity profile] besideserato.livejournal.com 2004-05-27 12:29 am (UTC)(link)
[Awed] You... shot him? Astonishing. In Odes, I write a fairy tale romance and then leave my protagonist a hermit. Don't you just get shivers thinking about the power you have over these things? You make history--literally!

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2004-05-27 01:53 am (UTC)(link)
Now you point it out....yes, it's scary. We create worlds and we destroy them.

One thing I find is that characters take on a life of their own and do and say things I never anticipated. That's pretty awesome too.

[identity profile] besideserato.livejournal.com 2004-05-27 05:43 am (UTC)(link)
Almost makes you not want to finish a novel. They are like our children, we want to see them reach their full crazy potential. It's wild. I love it.

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2004-05-27 11:14 am (UTC)(link)
I guess that's why I'm writing a sequel to the last one. And why the sequel may turn out to be the middle book of a trilogy.

[identity profile] besideserato.livejournal.com 2004-05-27 06:10 pm (UTC)(link)
Ah, yes, there is always the trilogies and the series to keep them going--and keep us going as well. I wonder whether India will come back. i don't think so. There is something so morbid with me, something that loves tragedy, loves to end the drums with the TNT.

She will not die. Of course not, that would be like letting myself get hit by an ice cream truck. She will drive into the sunset, of course, in a $100,000 car, and take the last word with her so you sit on that couch for a few minutes trying to sort it all out in your head.

And you won't. And that is the point. She will burn in her own way. But that is the case with all incendiary characters.