John Wilmot

Just watching The Libertine starring Johnny Depp as the Earl of Rochester aka John Wilmot aka the Libertine. Great film, actually. Not sure whether it was successful or stuff. My old friend Samantha was a great fan of Rochester, and she was always entirely accurate in her taste, and liked a bit of older stuff. I realise I'm a bit naive about the 17th century, and if the film has done nothing else, it will make me investigate. What's really scarey, is, that apart from the whores, the aristocracy, the arrogance, the theatre, the insensitivity and the nastiness, I really related to him. More, I AM him. Bloody hell. Proof, I guess, that I'm having a bad week. But, I'm beginning to think that it's a good week. The Libertine shows Wilmot as a flawed person, but an honest one, whose main problem was against the world he lived in. I realise I keep referring to things as Puritans and Cavaliers without really knowing what I mean by that. So, Spain beating Germany in the European Championships was a victory for the cavaliers, though it looked, for a while that the puritans were going to win - equally, Man Utd rather than Chelsea last year in the league and champions league. It's not one way, is it? Coldplay - a puritan band if there ever has been one - are doing well. I've a puritan in my head, with a cavalier mind, and the film made me think about what I really am. In a puritan age - which is where I think we are now - I'm Lord Rochester. There is a cost, there is a cost. I'm beginning to think it's worth paying.