I am holed up in a London hotel room, sick as a dog.  

Paging through, the Times Literary Supplement, I came across this passage:

Throughout his thirty-nine years Vian made up life as he went.  When the world declared that his invention did not fit, he spun his own planet, in a parallel orbit, where the laws of Boris applied.

People like Boris are interesting studies for anthropologists,  Because most of us are quite fully formed by our culture.  It supplies ways of seeing, feeling and acting, and we commit to these.  

We do not make up life as we go along.  We don’t spin our own planets.  And when the world is unhappy with one of our innovations, generally we say, “Oh, sorry!  What was I thinking?”  

People like Boris should be impossible.  So should have been Oscar Wilde, Beau Brummell and that guy you went to high school with, the one who was his own world.   

We need to know about how these people invent themselves and then a world.

Reference

Campbell, James.  2011.  The Prince of Saint-Germain.  TLS.  November 11, p. 17