29
Aug 08

The portrait of a doomed man.

Another argument for casting your net widely is that you learn about new and fascinating things that rarely pop up in daily conversation, especially in our cloistered workaday lives. Today by way of a diary entry by Samuel Pepys, the ‘Eikon Basilike’ (full text), the “Royal Portrait”, a purported autobiography by King Charles I published after his regicide following the English Civil War.

I am not so old, as to be weary of life; nor (I hope) so bad, as to be either afraid to die, or ashamed to live: true, I am so afflicted, as might make Me sometime even desire to die; if I did not consider, That it is the greatest glory of a Christians life to die daily, in conquering by a lively faith, and patient hopes of a better life, those partiall and quotidian deaths, which kill us (as it were) by piece-meales, and make us overlive our owne fates; while We are deprived of health, honour, liberty, power, credit, safety, or estate; and those other comforts of dearest relations, which are as the life of our lives.

Though, as a KING, I think My self to live in nothing temporall so much, as in the love and goodwill of My People; for which, as I have suffered many deaths, so I hope I am not in that point as yet wholly dead: notwithstanding, My Enemies have used all the poyson of falsity and violence of hostility to destroy, first the love and Loyalty, which is in My Subjects; and then all that content of life in Me, which from these I chiefly enjoyed.

Indeed, they have left Me but little of life, and only the husk and shell (as it were) which their further malice and cruelty can take from Me; having bereaved Me of all those worldly comforts, for which life it self seems desirable to men.


27
Aug 08

History is an illusion

We sometimes take it for granted that history is a social construct. Out of the wide river of human experience, we dip out a cupful onto the ground and try to read the waters before the earth drinks it up.

History is a story we tell ourselves rather than a photograph of the past. What we include and leave out in the telling reflects who we are. Tell me your history and I will know you.

A while back, I photoshopped this image of The Smiths and included myself standing next to Morrissey. In searching through my server logs for 404 errors, I noticed that several people are embedding this image in their blogs or Myspace pages presumably without realizing that it is not really The Smiths. It’s some bizarro Smiths where I am a member, and yet across these different sites they are inserting me into history. Everyone is familiar with Morrissey, but I can safely replace one of his lesser known band-mates. It’s enough to fool several people even with a half-assed photoshop job.

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