They say you should never meet your heroes, or your doppelgänger. But what if someone whose work you admired, and even worked in the same field, shared your name? I don’t know, just plucking an example from thin air, what if there were another journalist specialising in politics called Miranda Green? And she was . . . really good?
I’ve been pondering this coincidence anew because, although for some years “the other” Miranda Green and I have exchanged wry messages about the emails we get that are meant for each other, recently an FT colleague floated the idea of hiring her. Cue a strange existential panic on my part, not least because of a youthful fascination with gothic literature.
Of course we aren’t really emanations of one another’s unquiet spirits, as in those dark tales. She plies her trade in Washington DC and I’m in London. Though we share a career dissecting politics, we’re not body doubles. But this hasn’t stopped the occasional case of mistaken identity. Broadcasters sometimes stick her face on to my security pass when I go in to speak on their programmes. She’s much younger, so some of them get a shock when I turn up and quickly hustle me in to make-up.
A couple of years ago, an irate chap in America berated me endlessly on social media because my namesake had successfully dug up things that he didn’t want published. Good for her. Less so for me as his chums then piled in, with me protesting in vain that he had the wrong person on the wrong continent.
So far so minor in terms of mutual mess-ups. And not that spooky. But what if the shakedown in the US media did in fact lead to the other Miranda Green turning up here, pitching ideas about SW1? In traditional myth, meeting your doppelgänger is a harbinger only of bad things, even death, though in this case maybe it would just be career death. Any conceit that turns up in stories by Hans Christian Andersen, Poe, Goethe and Dostoyevsky isn’t going to be cheery. For a taster, here’s a plot from one of the tales of Hoffmann featuring a monk “haunted by a chaotic double that in turn acts as a scapegoat and an antagonist”. Oh brother! Or rather in our case, Oh sister!
There is a homegrown version of the doppelgänger idea in the British Isles, it seems, a spectral double called a “fetch”. If we became concerned about the implications, I guess the two of us could consult an expert in Celtic myth. Perhaps I’ll just have a quick google . . . Man alive, it’s another Miranda Green. We’re everywhere.
There is something disquieting about finding out you’re not unique. I have no desire to see the Mickey 17 movie, the trailer is horrible enough, but this latest dystopian fantasy rests on the idea that 3D printing could make multiples of a human being. This does not result in one big happy family. The Mickeys are pitted against each other on some gruesome snowbound planet otherwise populated by giant menacing woodlice. It looks way worse than Poe.
Hang on, though, maybe this is an opportunity. When the news gets frantic, having one Miranda hitting the phones while another stalks contacts would be handy. And cloning would be a godsend for the working parent. One body double could do bath time and batch cook dinners, while the other was still in the office. A third might like to get groceries or tackle the maths homework. Self-care would be a doddle, too. I could commission another Miranda to keep me fit while I was napping, or even honouring the tradition of the Fleet Street long lunch. This could be the way to truly “have it all”, not to mention pursue unexplored avenues. I think there is yet another Miranda Green in Australia who’s a successful milliner. Well done her. I mean us.
One thing needs to be understood: I have to remain the original Miranda. Because which of us does not believe we are the protagonist of our own story, be it gothic tale or sci-fi movie? Even on days when our main character energy is running a bit low, that’s something to cling to.
Miranda Green is the FT’s deputy opinion editor
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