Ducking the Consequences.

When I was writing my fiction I began to notice that certain of the plots were being echoed by real life happenings in areas close to where I lived. One of them involved the murder of a woman by a man from my home town who had the same name as another unsavoury character in another story. I think I made a post about it in the early days of this blog.

It reminded me of the composer Gustav Mahler, a superstitious man who believed that the making of a creative work could bring appropriate consequences to bear on his own life. It worried him, apparently, when he wrote Kindertotenlieder (Dirges for Children), but he felt driven to complete it anyway out of a sense of duty to his art. His two daughters were drowned shortly afterwards, and I doubt he ever got over it. There’s a similar, though more complex, story around his last completed work, Das Lied von der Erde.

Last night I had an idea for another short story. I remember that it considered the question of how far a good man would be prepared to sacrifice his own interests in the cause of making good prevail. How horrific would the consequences have to be before he stepped aside and allowed evil to have its way? It was pretty scary and I chose not to write it.

Interestingly, I remember none of the plot points. Frankly, I’m glad I don’t.