I thought so, too. The evidence - if that is the word - is always obscure. But then, if I was remembering from another lifetime and long ago, would I not confuse details?
Your name is not an obscure detail.
Perhaps when he was young, Barrowman read a book about a circus clown? And another about Bucharest?
Quite possibly. These things can be absorbed unconsciously from a variety of sources, even a casual glance through a guidebook. And of course, actors by profession are attuned to creating imaginative personæ.
Re: my friend Marion: The name she gave, and the time-period she described immediately rang bells with me re: a Jean Simmons film that was popular when she was young. (It was the Napoleonic era, and she said her name was Desirée; the film Desirée was about the wife of Marshal Bernadotte, later King of Sweden.) She said she then went forward, and saw herself as this character dying in bed as an old lady. Given that she had a life-threatening kidney condition, from which she died a year or 2 ago at only 60, I could see that this was wish-fulfillment. She knew that she would not live to a great age, but in her fantasy, she did. She could not consciously recall the film (or the novel on which it was based), but I think she wanted to believe the fantasy that she had glimpsed a past life.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2008-02-10 10:52 pm (UTC)Your name is not an obscure detail.
Perhaps when he was young, Barrowman read a book about a circus clown? And another about Bucharest?
Quite possibly. These things can be absorbed unconsciously from a variety of sources, even a casual glance through a guidebook. And of course, actors by profession are attuned to creating imaginative personæ.
Re: my friend Marion: The name she gave, and the time-period she described immediately rang bells with me re: a Jean Simmons film that was popular when she was young. (It was the Napoleonic era, and she said her name was Desirée; the film Desirée was about the wife of Marshal Bernadotte, later King of Sweden.) She said she then went forward, and saw herself as this character dying in bed as an old lady. Given that she had a life-threatening kidney condition, from which she died a year or 2 ago at only 60, I could see that this was wish-fulfillment. She knew that she would not live to a great age, but in her fantasy, she did. She could not consciously recall the film (or the novel on which it was based), but I think she wanted to believe the fantasy that she had glimpsed a past life.