"et semel emissum volet verbum irrevocabile", or something like that, says Horace. Can you believe I'm even too lazy to double-check the scansion to see if that line could possibly fit into a elegiac couplet?
What I'm on about is that, last night, in the midst of a personality funk that would take far too long to explain, I put some uncharitable things down here about a certain person very dear to me just because I could. And, just because I could, I took them off again. Largely because, even if they approached truth asymptotically, they weren't the whole story, and I have had to eat too many of my strongly-spiced words.
Why, you ask, dear Reader, did I write them in the first place if they were mean-spirited? Well. Huh. I don't know. My inner cynic puts up a good fight. The voice of evil every once in a while (okay, often) conquers, because good is, sadly, dumb.
But dumb or not, it's good. Philon to al�thes, alla philoteron to agathon. Truth is my friend, but friendlier is the good, in a sentiment that would make Plato cry, and my wretched Attic Prose is only the start of it. I mean by this that I am all too fond of saying things because I think they're insightful, shocking, and interesting, when I really shouldn't, because they make people afraid that I don't like them or that I seriously esteem people's "failings" for anything other than explanations for the conflicts that arise between individuals. Be good, Alastair; don't say it if you're going to hurt somebody's feelings.
So anybody who saw the mysterious missing paragraph in my last essay can go shtup themselves with it. It was a load of crap and it's a credit to my superior ethical fibres that I deleted it and then made a big fuss over what a splendid person I am for doing so.
Somebody called me nice today! I protested, of course, for all the usual reasons, including false modesty and also the considerable evidence to the contrary. But, whether it's untruth or not, I'm going to choose to believe it in the hopes it makes me a better person. I was realizing today how many wonderful things I've learned by exaggerating my abilities and then swotting whole volumes to lend truth to my outrageous lies. I wouldn't have progressed so far in music, for example, if I hadn't pretended I knew way more about figured bass than I did in college. It was a way to set myself a deadline: if I told MLJM that I'd written a poem about SP, I was more likely to have it ready to show her the next day than if I'd waited around for more conventional inspiration to strike. (That may be a bad example: such poetry landed me in some pretty steamy waters). So there. My own brand of beau mensonge.
Perhaps I was too early exposed to the Mikado Explanation: the one Ko-Ko, Pooh-Bah and Peep-Bo give to the Mikado when he finds out they lied to him over executing Nanki-Poo. It goes something along the lines of:
KO. Your Majesty, it's like this: It is true that I stated that I had killed Nanki-Poo----
MIK. Yes, with most affecting particulars.
POOH. Merely corroborative detail intended to give artistic verisimilitude to a bald and----
KO. Will you refrain from putting in your oar? (To Mikado.) It's like this: When your Majesty says, "Let a thing be done," it's as good as done--practically, it is done--because your Majesty's will is law. Your Majesty says, "Kill a gentleman," and a gentleman is toddled off to be killed. Consequently, that gentleman is as good as dead--practically, he is dead--and if he is dead, why not say so?
MIK. I see. Nothing could possibly be more satisfactory!
Nothing indeed.
modified rapture,
(which I always thought would make a wonderful name for a britpop tribute to Blondie).
alastair