I’m fascinated by the idea of transformation: the idea that a person might be born one thing, and then through intention, will, perhaps practice, become something else.<\/p>\n
If it happens at all, true transformation is exceedingly rare, although to appreciate how rare you need to look past appearances. Consider the picture painted by this review of a biography of Ava Gardner (“Ava Gardner: ‘Love is Nothing’,” by Lee Server<\/a>), online at the Literary Review<\/em>. Reviewer Frank McLynn writes that Gardner<\/p>\n exemplified the classic rags-to-riches fable. The seventh child of a North Carolina sharecropping tobacco farmer, she was what the unkind describe as poor white trailer trash, with accent and ambitions to match. The height of her aspirations was to be a secretary in New York, but she was ‘discovered’ from a chance snapshot in a photographer’s window and whisked away to Hollywood for the big star build-up, purely on the basis of her looks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Her physical circumstances were radically altered. Yet if you read on in the article, you learn that Gardner lived the sort of chaotic, alcohol-sodden life that you can glimpse by flicking on an episode of Cops. The changes to her life were purely superficial.<\/p>\n A contemporary with a somewhat similar experience is Archie Leach — aka Cary Grant. Like Gardner, Grant was born into near-poverty, went to Hollywood, and assumed a life of wealth and glamour. As part of his apparent transformation, Grant changed his name as well as his accent. But was he really transformed? I don’t know. But he seems to have had doubts himself; he’s quoted as saying<\/a>, “I have spent the greater part of my life fluctuating between Archie Leach and Cary Grant, unsure of each, suspecting each.”<\/p>\n McLynn concludes his piece on Gardner:<\/p>\n As she herself often admitted, she was at root a simple country girl, with a country girl’s values and attitudes, pitchforked into a world of unreality simply because of her beauty. She grabbed whatever she could lay her hands on, and after all who could blame her?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I can’t blame anyone for grabbing what is handed them. But I also can’t give up the idea that there should be more — that as self-aware beings we should be doing more than reacting to what happens to <\/em>us.<\/p>\n Assuming, of course, that the alternative is even possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m fascinated by the idea of transformation: the idea that a person might be born one thing, and then through intention, will, perhaps practice, become something else. If it happens at all, true transformation is exceedingly rare, although to appreciate … Continue reading