Do you ever seek a break from yourself?
No divorce – repudiation – reproach: sad serious verdicts on one’s result. I’m delighted by my result, as I may have mentioned. Programmed wrong, I course-corrected (says he humbly): go, Carll!
I seek only a minivacation from the self I shaped and tend. No more Saint Carll – or moral Ivanhoe – or Mister Nice Guy. One reason authors turn to fiction is to try on masks. The greatest storytellers inhabit all their cast of characters, not just their heroes: Shakespeare was Othello and Iago, Lear and bloodcurdling Gonorrhea (I meant Goneril). He could wake from his lurid dream with a sigh of relief.
I’m no good at inventing characters: all my versions are visions of me, though sometimes in an ill-fitting fright-wig. I live in a carnival funhouse, where every wall’s a mirror, groaning with Shakespeare’s Richard II,
Thus play I in one person many people,
And none contented,
but never venturing far from the guy we both know.
This is observation, neither boast nor lament. We are who we are. Even folks “of two minds” are Siamese twins, joined at the gut.
I’m OK being me – only now and then I get bored of my act. This ennui overcame me as I reviewed my production of words over the last three years. “Oh no, not that again,” I rolled my eyes. It’s not that my words were inept – not usually – only, ho-hum, what I’d expect. Among Henry’s copious gifts is the difference between his worldview and mine. Henry is not Carll as a cockapoo, but Henry, with his own viewpoint, attitude toward existence, and hierarchy of values. That he sounds like me can’t be helped because he no more speaks human than I Italian. But his self is his own – and perfect, in his assessment.
I seek a break, too, because I’m sick of my nation and the purported humans in charge. No eager Jeremiah with his jeremiads, the world I favor, like the music, is harmonious, uplifting, serene. Bach and Handel would have had a rough time making librettos out of today’s headlines. The present proliferation of ghoulish movies is no accident.
Where would I head on his vacation from me? I’d be bolder than I am, less constrained, polite. I’d say no more often, and let jerks know what I really think. T.S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock wrestled with comparable remorse:
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I’ve eschewed boldness because I dread ostracism. I need people more than Thoreau did: not for me years alone in a lonely and comfortless cabin. I need you in person, not just in mind. I need Jane and my kids and grandkids and pals to remind me why I exist (which I tend to forget). I’m stuck being a person I hope you might admire.
Conformity is deformity: I quote myself. It is also comfort. We humans recoil from the anxiety of originality, the glare of candor. I sugarcoat my ache so no one will notice. “Are you OK, Carll?” “Sure. Dandy. Why do you ask?”