Why do some rise and fall, while others just plod along in life? Today is the anniversary of Anne Boleyn's execution. Her headless ghost is said to drive a carriage, walk Tower Green, and haunt Blickling Manor and Hever Castle. But it's her ability to symbolize the hazards of a woman not like the others that seems to engross people. Perhaps it's as simple as what goes up, must come down. Perhaps we are not free to remake ourselves, because negotiating our recognition by other people is a stickier wicket than we expect. How does that happen?
Four hundred seventy-nine years and 12 hours ago as I type this, Anne Boleyn's head watched the last thing it would see: a gawping crowd that had come to watch her head die.
A decapitated head may still process images for a few seconds after decapitation. When the executioner raises the head, it is not to show the crowd that the woman's dead; it's to show the dead how the living took it.
Small wonder she walks, if scorching emotion at death is what makes a ghost. If we can only die when we are no longer remembered, then Anne Boleyn may be immortal for as long as English is spoken or Shakespeare is read, since she is recognized as a human without a human face.
To this day, we watch some glittering few rise and shine, fall and fail, and all go out at last. Why do we do this?
"Why do people tell stories?" asked a writer addressing a conference I attended some years ago. "Because this is how we find out where danger is. This is how we find the lion in the grass."
Well, why do we read, hear, and tell stories about each other? Is it to find the danger among us that wears a human face?
There was a thread somewhere on the board that discussed the problem of oversharing and gossip. I think there's a distinction to be made between them, and I suggest it's this:
Gossip doesn't have to be true to hurt. There was never any proof or probability that Anne Boleyn slept with her brother George to get a second child for her husband Henry. But the gossip was delicious: see how far from the norm these celebrities are, how justified our hatred is? When they broke so many of the rules we rely on to know how to be human?
Gossip that is true reveals the predatory person: the bully, the thief, the rapist, the criminal before discovery: the lion in the grass, the hyena: the one that has only two legs. Gossip is timely, because it waits not on proof, and so gets the warning out; and yet it's also deadly, since it cannot remove the danger, as only evidence and justice can.
Gossip is the gasoline of human relations. It is most of the content of ambassadorial dispatches--and the major reason those dispatches are secret, and their authors immune. It's essential to the socially self-aware, because we have come to know that to be ignorant of status is dangerous, and that some of us are simply dangerous. Gossip constantly tests the cohesiveness of the group by testing a given person's reputation for place in the group, the trust that can be invested in them. We decry gossip, often on religious or moral grounds--but can we be social without it?
Related:
Learning from the Dead: Remembering Mary Stuart, and What I Learned from Her
Four hundred seventy-nine years and 12 hours ago as I type this, Anne Boleyn's head watched the last thing it would see: a gawping crowd that had come to watch her head die.
A decapitated head may still process images for a few seconds after decapitation. When the executioner raises the head, it is not to show the crowd that the woman's dead; it's to show the dead how the living took it.
Small wonder she walks, if scorching emotion at death is what makes a ghost. If we can only die when we are no longer remembered, then Anne Boleyn may be immortal for as long as English is spoken or Shakespeare is read, since she is recognized as a human without a human face.
To this day, we watch some glittering few rise and shine, fall and fail, and all go out at last. Why do we do this?
- To distract ourselves from our own disappointments and hurts? To shine in reflected light, or enjoy a small and temporary superiority over how the mighty are fallen?
- To look for the danger among us, and if possible, be the danger, and not the endangered?
"Why do people tell stories?" asked a writer addressing a conference I attended some years ago. "Because this is how we find out where danger is. This is how we find the lion in the grass."
Well, why do we read, hear, and tell stories about each other? Is it to find the danger among us that wears a human face?
There was a thread somewhere on the board that discussed the problem of oversharing and gossip. I think there's a distinction to be made between them, and I suggest it's this:
- Oversharing is in the first-person. TMI = Too Much Information.
- Gossip is always third-person. Two people are sharing about a third to find out how they stand with each other as well as to agree on what's true about the third.
Gossip doesn't have to be true to hurt. There was never any proof or probability that Anne Boleyn slept with her brother George to get a second child for her husband Henry. But the gossip was delicious: see how far from the norm these celebrities are, how justified our hatred is? When they broke so many of the rules we rely on to know how to be human?
Gossip that is true reveals the predatory person: the bully, the thief, the rapist, the criminal before discovery: the lion in the grass, the hyena: the one that has only two legs. Gossip is timely, because it waits not on proof, and so gets the warning out; and yet it's also deadly, since it cannot remove the danger, as only evidence and justice can.
Gossip is the gasoline of human relations. It is most of the content of ambassadorial dispatches--and the major reason those dispatches are secret, and their authors immune. It's essential to the socially self-aware, because we have come to know that to be ignorant of status is dangerous, and that some of us are simply dangerous. Gossip constantly tests the cohesiveness of the group by testing a given person's reputation for place in the group, the trust that can be invested in them. We decry gossip, often on religious or moral grounds--but can we be social without it?
Related:
Learning from the Dead: Remembering Mary Stuart, and What I Learned from Her
