Robert Downey Jr says "I swear to God. I am not my story."

This is what Robert Downey Jr says in Vanity Fair's interview with him in their October issue. "I swear to God." However, the stylish cover insists: "How a Troubled Past Led to the Greatest Third Act in Hollywood History" (scroll to the end of part 2).  That sounds like a kind of redemption tale neatly fashioned by Hollywood itself, rather than a journalistic piece about someone who works in Hollywood. Did the writers of this subtitle (beneath the blaring "Highest Paid Actor in the World!") not hear what he was saying to them? Did he not say it as plainly as possible? Is he not practically pleading with them to refrain from crafting something similar to a movie pitch out of his life experiences? "I am not my story."

Vol. 1, Issue 128 by Marvel Comics

The problematic word here is "led". It might as well be used here as an equal sign. One thing does not always lead to another specific and easily understood thing. Our highest aims and lowest misses rarely tally up to what we have planned. I doubt that he, himself, could explain all the twists and turns of his career. And why would anyone try? It is vanity, indeed, in the sense of futile. (See previous post on the Knights of the Holy Grail.)

In this article, he is speaking in the context of his and his son's struggle with addiction. But the emphatic statement hits upon a broader truth that we are not our stories. You might think that I would disagree, being a writer, but I applaud him for saying this. We aren't our reputations. We aren't what we are generally known for and that's all. We have private selves that don't trot along nicely for everyone to comprehend. If anything led Downey, I doubt that it was his past. Rather, I think he, as a complex person, broke through his reputation as untrustworthy-- and therefore not bankable-- in ways that are unclear and don't follow a careful trajectory.

We humans can get addicted to storytelling. Most of us like stories to be unfolding all around us. We can get lost in them, and someone else's story can become a wonderful way to escape the burden of daily existence. Whenever a situation starts to feel difficult or painful or bewildering, finding some meaning in it can help with perseverance in coping or accepting the whole thing. Going through a bad time without purpose is one of the worst existential states. It hollows us out, spiritually. A sense of purpose can be the Holy Grail that we might waste a lot of time chasing. Sometimes we can only see purpose in hindsight, but we don't always have a sensation of fulfillment while we're going through it. Not everything exists for a specific purpose or meaning. To paraphrase Joseph Campbell, "What's the meaning of a flower? When the grass is cut, does it stop growing and say, 'Oh what's the use?'"

The heroic story of Man against Nature, Saturday Evening Post, August 6 1910

I imagine that going through a drug withdrawal and rehab situation might feel draining and purposeless on top of its physical and social miseries. There's no "reason" for it, and it affects everyone surrounding the person who suffers from addiction, like any bodily illness. Chemical substances are a conspicuous source for addiction, but Story is just as much as substance as any other in its ability to work on our brain's reward center.

There are times when writing fiction can feel like a drug. I sometimes muse about my characters, what I am going to make them do, what I am going to force them to go through, and how I'm going to save them or not. It feels powerful and satisfying and soothing all at once. Like a hit of godhood. I can be as capricious or benevolent as I want, and nobody gets hurt. At least I like to think so. When I am working on writing an alternate reality, I'm not in the actual one around me; the reality in which things happen even if I'm not paying attention. This disconnected state could seem fairly lifeless to anyone in the room with me, especially if I began to collect dust. So far, no one has complained, and generally, people have been positive. Writing fiction is considered a healthy outlet in the times that I live in, and that is lucky for me.

Our society did not always feel this way about stories. Storytelling is something that has gotten to us by bootleg and like many pleasantries is now not only acceptable, but encouraged and celebrated. The novel used to be considered a waste of paper and a trashy, unproductive past-time. We think about oral traditions with reverence now, but that's usually because they have some sort of archaeological or historical value determined by all sorts of scholars.

As individuals, we all judge what stories we feel to be relevant or engaging all day long, because they come at us all day long. They are our news programs, movies, books, medical journals, almanac entries, judicial reviews, quarterly reports, property assessments, blogs, your partner's day, pro tips, explanations, excuses and lies. Some stories sell better than others.

Precursor to "The Big Book" of Alcoholics Anonymous

I admire the many people who have created a space for people with addiction problems. But I am never a fan of substituting one addiction with another. I don't know enough about addiction to weigh in about the effectiveness of treatments. But I sometimes get an uncomfortable feeling that the Story We Tell About Ourselves can become the substitution. (Or hearing Stories Other People Tell About Themselves, especially on social media.) However, Story is something I am familiar with, and so I can weigh in on that much, at least.

If there is anything we post-moderns have learned, it's that Story is perplexing and changeable and subject to multitudes of interpretations. When Robert Downey, Jr says that he has inherited his addiction, and so has his son, he is speaking to a reality that exists on a cellular level that can't be ignored. That reality requires treatment, which will probably be made up of many different approaches. But addiction is only one part of his life, as is his bodily inheritance.

"What are we going to do about inherited imperfection? The answer is that we don’t change the way we are, we change the way we live."-- Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics, Evolution and Environment, University College London

Don Quixote Reading (his own "Big Books", Chivalric Tales) by Adolph Schroedter

Downey goes further than saying he is not his imperfect inheritance. He asserts that he, himself, is not a perfect story with addiction as a prominent feature. If he is a person who is not determined by his cellular reality, then neither is he determined by a "celebrity rehab" story. While I appreciate the wisdom of respecting the nature of a powerful beast-- in this case, addiction-- I can't help but anticipate the follow-up story that so often arises from the human desire to see people fall after a grand triumph. Because of that, I reject not only a biological determinism, but a narrative determinism as well. His future is not necessarily a product of his past.

"The Drunkard's Progress" an illustrative and scripted narrative lithograph produced by Nathan Currier in support of the Temperance Movement, 1846

In life, we are not following structures of a plot complete with themes, tropes, motifs and stage cues. If we were, then we would all be tilting at our own windmills, fearing that they might be giants. Sometimes a story holds too much power over us, and needs to be not only unraveled, but also un-reveled. Celebration is good, but it's never an ending point. There is far more to us than could ever be dreamed up by any philosophy, either romantic or fatalistic. People exist outside of a marketplace mentality of stats and futures that reflect the trending and consumption of the individual, which is what these interview stories are. It's important that we don't become consumed by our stories, neither by the ones we tell or the ones that are told about us.

A different kind of Iron Man altogether, Don Quixote and the Windmills, 
Illustrated by Walter Crane

Continued in Part 2