Old Songs From Nowhere

Many stories are left untold.

In this world, there are more than six billion people. All of them have stories. They all have events and circumstances that have shaped their experiences, how they learned, how they coped, and how they came to understand the areas of their expertise. No, we aren't all individual snowflakes, but we do all have unique combinations of experience, propensity, and action that leave us in our respective frames of reference when it comes time for us to make decisions. Sometimes, we have no choice. Other times, we do. Understanding the difference between the latter and the former, and understanding that there is a difference between the two, are the basic fabric from which I draw the most inspiration.

I have spent most of my life assuming that of paramount importance was recording what happened. The archival aspect held paramount. But perhaps I need to digress.

I have an exceptional memory. It is my defining characteristic. I have doubts as to my intelligence, my recollection, my judgment (most of all), etc. So far, I have yet to come across sufficient experience to say that my capacity to remember has not played to my advantage in estimations of my capacities in any other field. As such, I have little reason to believe that estimations of my intelligence, discernment, etc. have anything to do with anything other than my capacity for recall.

Art is about expressing what we all feel but can't really feel as we can adequately express. It is what I celebrate. It is what I seem unable to replicate. I want new things. I want there to be those things that we never saw coming. I want a world where we don't know what to expect. We will be better for it, should it ever happen.


I can't say whether this played into it or not, but I can say that above all things, I have found paramount that all things be remembered. Whatever else we can say is important, I have been on the side of recording and analysis. I can remember. I can dissect. I know that what happens is what has been, and what has been is what matters. We must understand what has been in order to understand what can be.

That part of me that demands that all things be recorded is very pleased by my current employment. It is my job to record exactly what people say in regards to legal, and thus by definition important, events. What doesn't jive with me is the demand that our exact records also correspond to the expectations that the record of what is, what has been said, what was meant, be understood, and understandable by, the readers that want to read it later. If they want to really understand, they have to be THERE. They must listen, and feel, and then understand. They can't read it in static, in mere words, and really understand. So much goes into spoken word that can't be rendered easily, simply, in written text. Not without commentary. Not without the listener informing the reader in ways that can't be justified in our legal system.

We must have objectivity. We must have that sense of neutrality, despite what the listener feels or interprets. We can't have a legal system without it. But how can we divorce Herodotus from his History? How can we really think that those who make the record won't feel the pain of those who suffer? How can we expect that the watchers will watch, without really being watched?

I just want the world to respond to what is true. I want the truth to rule all things. I want sanity in the world. I want the facts to determine how we act. The best way to act in light of those ideas is to say, "What has happened? In what way did it happen? How can we act to influence the way things happen to make the good things that we have determined happen?"

Perhaps this is absurd. Maybe I have decided on a course of action that reflects a hopelessly Cartesian approach to reality. But... I want a reality that can be tested. I want a reality that will withstand rigor. I want to know that I don't just accept things just because. I want there to be an objective reality that we can accept in light of current knowledge and for no other reason than because we have no alternative that is more acceptable as an alternative.