Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)-Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 51
AUDIO: “Wedding Bells” by Hank Williams (for ambience while reading)
I can’t count how many times I’ve quoted those lines by Whitman—sometimes silently and scoldingly to my superego, but more often stridently and defensively to those pedants who point out my caprice, my reversals of posture, my mood swings. Those pedants who try to hold me to my word. The gall of it… those simpletons, those monocultures, those Cyclops of the psyche! I’m no yawn-inducing Party of One: I contain multitudes, baby!
Even in my latest post, in which I offered my torturous path to picking a Substack title as a prime example of a fool’s errand, I invoked Whitman in self-defense. When my sister commented that indecision was my middle name, I clapped back (playfully, I thought) with a reference to my multitudes. She must have read my retort as oversensitivity because she deleted her comment.
But she’s right, although mutable is probably closer to reality than indecisive. I decide with vigor. And then I vigorously change my mind. Hence the contradictions. The Whitmanesque idea of containing multitudes is just a romantic and puffed-up way of summing up one’s psyche as, “It’s complicated.”
Which segues to the point of all this. The concluding sentence of my last post read:
“So I’m sticking with Mostly Myth. But take it from me, it mostly doesn’t matter.”
That’s what you call a lie that didn’t know itself. Because here I am, not even a week later, announcing that I am hereby divorcing Mostly Myth and will imminently be changing the title of my Substack to Mythery Loves Company.
But lest I lose credibility with you, please note that I did earlier also write:
“Don’t fret over the name. You can, and likely will, change it.”
And that’s what you call a truth that didn’t know itself.
So why Mythery Loves Company?
While I prefer my misery in solitude among the high trees, in my mythery I seek ears around the firepit.
Of course, this tension between the desire for withdrawal into the silence of the woods (see Into the Timeless Woods I Go by
) and the fear of ending up as a tree falling alone and unheard in a forest is nothing new. Writers, especially, often haunt the extremes of both (think Dickinson, Pynchon, Bronte, Salinger, Proust, Lee, McCarthy). It’s the longing for both solitude and company. The longing, to loop back to Whitman again, for contradiction.Is there a takeaway here?
Yes, two. First, the desire to name-change unfortunately runs in the family. Earlier this week, my five-year-old daughter, Electra, told her mother that she wanted to change her name to something prettier.
“To what,” Caroline asked, saddened to hear she didn’t appreciate ‘Electra.’ The name, after all, had an epic origin story (and I’m not referring to the myth): the birth pangs came on in a lighting store, a lightning storm was raging during the hospital stay, and the birth was lightning fast—aside from the last bit, when the umbilical cord, which had been malevolently coiled around Electra’s neck, kept pulling her back in.
“Sparkles,” Electra replied.
The second takeaway is that A.I. struggles with puns. The other day, when I bought www.mytherylovescompany.com (yes, I have a domain name problem), the registrar offered a free A.I.-generated placeholder website. I clicked YES. Within seconds, the following website was generated for me.
The algorithm assumed I was a wedding business. I wasn’t Mythery Loves Company. I was My Thery Loves Company.
Oh, my Thery, launching a wedding business was never a dream career move, but why not? I do aim to create unforgettable memories.
Until death (or intense love affair with a new name) do us part.
Credits
A raise of the goblet to
and , whose comments spurred me to reconsider the name Mythery Loves Company.May the gods shower (hopefully not golden) nectar on Armando Garma Fernandez, a man with a pun always at hand. Last summer when I texted “Mythery” to him as a title option, he came back with Mythery Loves Company. “Use it!” he wrote. “You know you want to.” It took me six months to get there, but he was right.
And finally, all credit and blame goes to my wife, Caroline, for coming up with the title of this post. As you may have gathered, the only divorce I am announcing here is a linguistic one (although, to be fair, just last week, during one of our nastier squalls that fortunately blew over as quickly as one of my Substack titles, she did unironically yell at me, “Divorce me, and release me from this hell!”).
Glad it’s only a name-change!
I salute both this post, and the superb clickbait title. (Clap, clap, clap)