On a family mythology

[A response to Brad Frederiksen]

What I wanted to say here, and did in fact begin to shape into words, I realised maybe shouldn’t be said – not yet (or, at least, not through this medium) – and so deleted it, thus diminishing the quality of this post. Because of my upbringing (certain specifics of which I was going to write about here but have decided not to) I have a habit of stalling whenever I approach the indecent, as if I have inside me some sort of indecency filter, which comes from what I’m not going to write about and ultimately has the effect of, in real life, getting me in knots, and is probably not an indecency filter or related to decency at all. [What I mean by decency is very specific rules related to, for example, what should be said in certain social situations or in what state of dress one should leave the house – is this even decency or are these just weird, ritualistic, socio-religious-influenced “laws” drummed into you, or, more correctly, me, as a kid?] {And the reason I’m not writing here what I was going to write – and did in fact want to write – is that something I wrote some time ago about what I’m not going to write about here today was mentioned to me by somebody related to what I wrote about then but not today, not in a mean way, and not to chastise me – it was, in retrospect, done really quite decently – but in a way that I interpreted as their way of letting me know that they’d read it, and so I probably wrongly think it would be indecent of me to again tell a story here from that particular grouping of stories.}

But then there is also a strong desire to say it all anyway – because the rules are illogical. Because I can say what I want. Because fuck off. So what happens is that not saying what I want to here itself begins to assume an ironic lean.

I think what I’m trying to say here, and what I will say here, is that I liked, in your post, Brad, that you continued on this theme that may be a subconscious continuation of my response to your post, or may have been a logical extension of that original post, which is, after re-reading it now, quite possible, the theme being the mythologies upheld and championed by families – which I already said, anyway, in the title of this post. And not as some sort of badge of honour, or not necessarily, not at its heart, because most families aren’t mob gangs or members of a dictatorial dynasty, but simply as part of a real or imagined history that is passed down from generation to generation because these are the stories we tell ourselves and each other – sometimes on blogs and sometimes, I suppose, for reasons of decency, not.