What’s the scoop today?
Depth has done its job. My resting state has always been pleasantly irreverent, but now, with a lifetime of wading through the murky depths under my belt, followed by a substantual period of consolidation, in which ‘structures of depth’ were built… the resting state finally returneth!
Naturally, this is linked to Evelyn Waugh.
I’d always liked the idea of having a relatively unimportant character die (somewhat randomly) about two-thirds of the way into a little novel. I think it happens in one of Evelyn Waugh’s novels… I might be wrong.
It’s not about disrespecting life. And it’s not about being irreverent in a self-satisfied way, either. If anything, it’s about having a great respect for life and being almost too reverent.
A character, just like any person, should have the right to be treated with full ontological respect and reverence… and so should they have the right to leave this thing we call life without a tie to some greater plot.
“It was their time,” as we like to say…
“They went too soon,” as we also like to say…
So will I write my Decline and Fall now? And will one of the characters bow out quietly during the intermission? Maybe.
They arrive on their own time, and they leave on their own time. There’s the respect.
And the reverence? The reverence arrives when we remember that while they may leave the book halfway through, their presence lives on eternally in the preceding pages.
And if you want them to live again? Just read the book from the beginning.
Yes, levity dances on the liquid pressure of depth… like a pond skater. It looks like a miracle… really, it’s just (meta)physics.
MT 