A Thought About Humans
Wednesday, 9 August 2006 23:05![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apollaI'm watching the DVD that comes with the George Harrison box set, right... and they're great music videos he made for 'This Song' and 'Crackerbox Palace' and 'Faster' and the two different versions of 'Got My Mind Set On You' (one of which features a very young Alexis 'Wesley' Denisof) and such...
And I am reminded that while George was a very environmental sort of fellow, big on gardening and the planet and stuff... he also liked Formula One racing. I am reminded more, though, of the way people call it a 'contradiction', that he was a very contradictory sort of person- curmudgeonly and yet funny, F1 yet nature, anti-ego yet egotistical, etc etc.
Well, colour me fucking surprised, OK? That's what ALL humans are like, not just the famous ones. I mean, some people are more contradictory than others perhaps... some of us seem to be more coherently one person than others- I am here reminded of Marilyn Monroe's remark that she didn't just have voices in her head, she had "a whole committee".
I wonder if people really are contradictory. I always remember how sad I felt reading cultural criticism of some kind at Irvine. The gist was that we will never get more than fragments of our celebrities, of the famous. We don't get to see the whole picture, no matter how much we learn. For some, the fragments are hard to come by- the passage of time is a bitch, especially for those whose heroes existed before video and the like. Good luck trying to get a real picture of exactly who the hell Alexander really was, right?
Then again, do we ever really get anything but fragments of anyone? I don't believe it is necessarily possibly to truly know another person. Maybe it is and I just haven't bothered... but it's all just fragments. Perhaps the people who appear contradictory just have more varied fragents, and those that seem to be 'together' just happen to have their fragments better organised.
And I am reminded that while George was a very environmental sort of fellow, big on gardening and the planet and stuff... he also liked Formula One racing. I am reminded more, though, of the way people call it a 'contradiction', that he was a very contradictory sort of person- curmudgeonly and yet funny, F1 yet nature, anti-ego yet egotistical, etc etc.
Well, colour me fucking surprised, OK? That's what ALL humans are like, not just the famous ones. I mean, some people are more contradictory than others perhaps... some of us seem to be more coherently one person than others- I am here reminded of Marilyn Monroe's remark that she didn't just have voices in her head, she had "a whole committee".
I wonder if people really are contradictory. I always remember how sad I felt reading cultural criticism of some kind at Irvine. The gist was that we will never get more than fragments of our celebrities, of the famous. We don't get to see the whole picture, no matter how much we learn. For some, the fragments are hard to come by- the passage of time is a bitch, especially for those whose heroes existed before video and the like. Good luck trying to get a real picture of exactly who the hell Alexander really was, right?
Then again, do we ever really get anything but fragments of anyone? I don't believe it is necessarily possibly to truly know another person. Maybe it is and I just haven't bothered... but it's all just fragments. Perhaps the people who appear contradictory just have more varied fragents, and those that seem to be 'together' just happen to have their fragments better organised.