Lacking Natural Simplicity

Remembrance

Warren Zevon died Sunday; he'll be missed.

Choices

What is more, it appears to me that this is a critical time for him, a lesser climacteric — a time that will settle him in that particular course he will never leave again, but will persevere in for the rest of his life. It has often seemed to me that towards this period (in which we all three li, more or less) men strike out there permanent characters; or have those characters struck into them. Merriment, roaring high spirits before this: then some chance concatenation, or some hidden predilection (or rather inherent bias) working through, and the man is in the road he cannot leave but must go on, making it deeper and deeper (a groove, or channel), until he is lost in his mere character — persona — no longer human but an accretion of qualities belonging to this character. James Dillon was a delightful being. Now he is closing in. It is odd — will I say heart-breaking? — how cheerfulness goes: gaiety of mind, natural free-springing joy. Authority is its great enemy — the assumption of authority. I know few men over fifty that seem to me entirely human: virtually none who has long exercised authority. — Stephen Maturin, writing in his diary, Master and Commander, by Patrick O'Brian