How To Disappear: a memoir for misfits

by Duncan Fallowell

‘The trouble with the English is that they are suspicious of compliments.’ He was right. The English tend to associate flattery with corruption, insincerity, and the lower forms of sexual seduction. They prefer charm. The trouble with charm is that only some people have it, whereas everyone can pay a compliment.

You meet someone – and if it’s the right person it is always unexpected. One can never scheme for meeting the right person. It is always by chance, an accident, but you know it’s the special one because suddenly life throbs with colour and opportunity and meaning. Your deepest needs are fulfilled. You have everything. You’re in heaven. Seconds later – it seems only seconds – that ‘someone’ closes their heart to you. The vistas vanish. All is cancelled. None of it makes sense. But you are in Siberia. You spend the rest of your life trying to grasp what on earth happened, or poisonously seeking redress.

It was not that she merely wanted to associate with the great, it was that her whole life was a campaign to become one of the great figures of the age, and doomed on that account, because she never really did anything except social-climb. You can’t be great by association.

I would assert that the essence of magic is that it not be commonplace. Yes – conformism and magic are enemies. Magic demands the shock of the unexpected and the vibration of difference, not the comfort of sameness. Magic can be upsetting, is inconvenient, marks you. For those who don’t want that, there’s glamour. Paris – Monte Carlo – Hollywood – New York – Venice – these places have glamour before you go and after you come back, but strange to say, they usually don’t have it while you are actually there – this is because when you’re there you are too busy trying to photograph your experience with your mind.

I don’t believe in going back to places you’ve loved, to places where you’ve been very happy. I think it’s always a mistake to do that.’

History is nostalgia with teeth.

At the root of Western literature is The Iliad which is about leaving one’s home to go out into the world and realise oneself in the battle of life. Only after, as a sequel, comes The Odyssey, the attempt to return, the wandering search for home once again – and hoping to recognise it when you find it. These great seminal books told us long ago: expect to be surprised by the human adventure, expect to be hurt, expect to be moved, upset, mirthful, angry; and give love, find love.