I figure no one's going to be reading this, but I still have that odd fervor, somewhere deep down, buried, not yet gone - and for some reason, I feel like I'm drawing close to remembering why I'm here, as odd as that might be. I mean, me? How could I have forgotten?
Not that it matters. But, opening myself up, allowing myself to be vulnerable, one part of a whole, an organ of this strange phenomenon we've come to call civilization... why should I quit, knowing so many others have fought and died for less? And this fight, this one I deem to be righteous - isn't it important to hold onto a part of you that you've defined as yourself? If just a memory, it still matters, because like the stories of old, we are our own worlds which cast long, permanent shadows. For better, not for worse.
I'll be signing off with my name from now on, because I feel that this project doesn't deserve to have just me, but maybe, someday, someone else, too. And don't get me wrong, I know that I'm far from alone, far from being the only one moving things forwards, but months without communication grows taxing. It is, as one might say, what it is, and there's nothing to be done but work with the hand you're dealt.
So we move on.
- Nilop
End of February Blog Post
Before Noise
BEFORE NOISE, THERE WAS NOTHING
There and back again, but where is there, and how do we make it happen?
“Name once known.”
What does that phrase mean to you?
It’s hard to imagine a world where you don’t exist. A world where not a single person knows of you, can connect a name to your ego, your touch, your breath in this world - would you consider that kind of world to be sad? Of all the things you did with your life, the make or breaks and never agains, mist-from-mouth mornings and toe-in-sand sundaes, it had to have meant something. The loss of self, this fear of annihilation, complete extinction. Does anyone deserve that?
To get up in the morning should mean something, even if it’s just some soggy memory - it’s still something. More than nothing. It’s still you, isn’t it? And that you is life, and life is story, and stories are what make up a history that builds culture, the foundation of civilization, the great game that will go on for all time. That should go on for all time.
To lose an ounce of it, well…
From 1945 to 1991, the era commonly referred to as the Cold War was well underway. No one might live to remember the World Wars by the end of this decade, but the 80s? As the defining era of our generation, this time period should be well known and understood by pretty much everyone, right?
The idea is as sad as it is simple.
A war with no battles, but as much lost life as any other. A war with no monuments, but with enough heroism and drama to span countless lifetimes. Casualties counted not in the dead, but the forgotten.
No one deserves to be forgotten. Especially those lives, those stories so close to our own.
TELL ME A STORY
Founded by a civilization of fiction and machine, where will our vehicle of history die?
It is understood that history is the study of the past. Archeology, etymology, cosmology… it is divided in many different flavors, all of which go beyond the scope of my generalizations. I like to imagine that history, our history, began with the beginning of documentation: writing.
Writing. The ticket to immortality. A way to speak from the dead. Eternal, as long as language exists, the word has been the means by which we not only record our lives, our stories, but develop fiction, as well.
Separating us from other forms of life is not only our use of machines, by which we shape our environment, but also our use of fictions. It’s what made Homo sapiens different from Homo neanderthalensis, Homo erectus, and all the other human species out there. Our use of fiction has brought us such things as marriages, bank accounts, presidents, routines, nouns, numbers and perspective. We cannot escape our social norms, no matter how we try. The human mind is forever tainted by our exposure to established fictions. We need fiction to survive.
Fiction, and machines.
Machines make up everything. Clothing is an invention. Hammers, nails, houses, too. Joysticks, keyboards, cars… planes, paper, iron and anvil. You get the idea.
Fiction and machine. Combined, we can find connections.
The vehicle of connection I choose to drive will be seen from the tallest mountains, brought to life with the will to conquer the ocean. The flourishing of a global humanity is made possible only through our oceans. Importing resources, exporting products, importing ideas, exporting disease.
The ship is an icon of humanity. A crew is a fiction. Wood, rope and sail makes a machine. Body and soul. Combined, we have the story of water. The story of us.
GIVE ME A NAME
If they have a voice, can language be my instrument?
A compassionate winter. A proud tree. A breathless temple.
Personification is an element of fiction that has remained decisively human since the foundation of language. Our relationship to our machines breathes life in the way we attribute meaning to nothing. Creation: a simple foray into divinity.
Romeo and Juliet. Helena of Troy. Mickey Mouse. Characters, an element of fiction, surely, but no less real than you and I. They are a product of fiction, and humanity’s relationship to fiction is inextricable. In the same way companies can be given legal status as a person would, what’s stopping a character from touching a life akin to you and I?
When we give a name to a team, an organization, a community, we capture not only their collective achievements and purpose, but their ego, too. When we plant a flag and fight for a cause, we are rooting for an idea - an idea not beholden to a single person, place or thing. Nothing can take this idea away from us but ourselves, but nothing can stop this idea from living a life of it's own. Nothing can stop an idea from evolving, so when it comes to the way stories are told, isn’t it right to expect the means to change?
When we take a ship, a vehicle of connection, of community, of cause, and if we give it a name, if we give her a name, can we reimagine this life, this history, this instrument of story - can we keep her story alive a little longer?
Give her the means to speak and she will have a voice. Give her the means to touch and she will write. Give her the means to remember and she will carve out new story, new meaning, and maybe, just maybe, reimagine what it means to have a name.
Give her a name, and someone will sit to listen.
DEEPER THAN LISTENING
Where did our apathy begin?
Isn’t voice beautiful?
The beauty of creation. The horror of lament.
To shed new light, I hope it is. To breathe new life. To wonder, time and time again, had I gotten you right? Is this the life you’d have wanted to live? Is this the you that you wish you could be, the person you never were, a life less lived as it was experienced. As a collective, as an individual, as a history, your story speaks to me in the same way I’d hope it to speak to others.
But this is the point of imagination, of fiction, to reimagine a person in the place of one that never was. To plant seeds of inspiration to bring someone new to love something more, as if you could reach out and touch it, fingertips, lost lips, breathless, if not before then here, now, but never again.
Or so I’d hope.
Bewildering, breathtaking, when all it took was a whisper, isn’t it just beautiful?
From Square Zero. Believe in it.
There was a reason, I swear there was, and if I could home in, identify, burn through and achieve some measure of success, I'd be there, find there, land there and understand, finally understand, or at least that's what the allure of fiction has me believing. If there was one way through, I'd find it and make it my own, at least, that's what I'd say had I known any less. If there was something I could say to make this web of lies into a reality, I'd string it, spooled, spalled, fragmenting across fabrics I wish I could feel, never too soft yet gone too long, names, they were, and will be, reinvented