Saturday, May 7, 2011

Tale in the telling

Van Gogh’s appearance is readily explained. The man has been on my mind for much of my life. But I can’t as easily explain how I came up with the grand narrative in which he stars. It grew organically, holistically, from the jigsaw’s bit and pieces.  It’s a thought experiment that grew in the experimentation, I suppose.

I did not start it deliberately. Admiration for my hero would have led to some idle speculation. What if I was once he? Others also have claimed kinship with historical figures. That would have led me to explore the concept of reincarnation. And that fifty year gap between Mijnheer Van Gogh and me would have got me to wonder what might have gone on in the interim.

And so you have this pattern starting to repeat: What if A? How could that work? But that would necessitate B. How could that work? But that would require C . . . You get my drift?

But that drift drifted off on a side track. And that track led, once again, to the overlap between what I’m looking at here and conventional thinking: God and Religion. It’s time to clear the desks of them both, once and for all.

No comments:

Post a Comment