{"id":11170,"date":"2012-06-13T06:56:28","date_gmt":"2012-06-13T10:56:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=11170"},"modified":"2012-06-13T06:56:28","modified_gmt":"2012-06-13T10:56:28","slug":"always-surprised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/always-surprised\/","title":{"rendered":"Always Surprised"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/lucysurprise.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Lucy, cartoonishly surprised\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/lucysurprise_sm.jpg?resize=250%2C189&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"189\" \/><\/a><span class=\"dropcap\">T<\/span>he Missus has told me on numerous occasions that my astrological character &#8212; Gemini, born in the Year of the Rabbit &#8212; has doomed me to an intense, lifelong hatred of being bored&#8230; and a desperation to be otherwise, even unwisely so.*<\/p>\n<p>Assuming that she&#8217;s right (generally a safe assumption), then a corollary to that proposition, of course, must be that I <em>like<\/em> nothing more than <em>not<\/em> being bored. Indeed, that&#8217;s one of my favorite things &#8212; maybe my single most-favorite thing &#8212; about writing fiction: how reliably the result catches me by surprise. (I&#8217;m no longer surprised to be surprised, which isn&#8217;t quite the same thing as saying the surprise has become boring.) It almost never ends up quite as I&#8217;d imagined when I first set out on the project, and the surprising element(s) almost always seem improvements.<\/p>\n<p>(To qualify: I don&#8217;t make everything up as I go along. I <em>do<\/em>\u00a0plan, some. I just try to&#8230; how you say&#8230;? to <em>stay alert to the possibility of sudden changes in direction<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<p>When I started working on <em><a title=\"The Propagational Library: Table of Contents\/Overview\" href=\"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/the-propagational-library\/\">The Propagational Library<\/a><\/em>, here&#8217;s what I had in mind:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I wanted to write a science-fiction(ish) story: I&#8217;d been reading and re-reading SF again, so I had that much to go on.<\/li>\n<li>I wanted the story to occur mostly in space: I&#8217;d also been reading a lot of non-fiction about the history of the universe, the stars and galaxies and such, and watching re-runs of BBC and PBS mini-series on the topic.<\/li>\n<li>I wanted a story focused not on characters and plot, but on <em>ideas<\/em> (not that I necessarily enjoy reading such stories; I just didn&#8217;t want to write an essay). Specifically:<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>A question I&#8217;ve occasionally thought about: why write (or create at all), given that it&#8217;s all (everything: space, matter, time, energy) going to end sometime?<\/li>\n<li>The notion that what defines a given cultural artifact (story, painting, song, etc.) isn&#8217;t the object itself &#8212; the sensory <em>thing<\/em>\u00a0&#8212; but all the ideas behind it, including:<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>how it&#8217;s made<\/li>\n<li>what it &#8220;means&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>what it represents in the real world<\/li>\n<li>what it &#8220;stands for&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<li>The puzzle-challenge of how to preserve human art and culture long after (preferably forever after) the passing of the human race&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>&#8230;even after the end of the solar system, even the end of the <em>universe<\/em>\u00a0of space and time itself<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So I didn&#8217;t have a specific plot in mind, and certainly no characters to act it out. I had no idea how all of this would tie together. I stewed about it for a few days. Clearly, to collect every physical object ever made by artists, writers, composers, etc., would require not just time travel, but also some kind of giant (infinite?) storage facility &#8212; a supersized version of Borges&#8217;s <a title=\"Google Books: 'Ficciones,' by Jorge Luis Borges\" href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=1FrJqcRILaoC&amp;pg=PA79#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\">Library of Babel<\/a>. (That, after all, held only all possible <em>books<\/em>. <span style=\"color: #888888;\"><em>*yawn*<\/em><\/span>) And anyhow, if the warehouse, or whatever it was, existed in physical form, then it would cease to exist at the same moment the universe did.<\/p>\n<p>So now the rest of the puzzle came down to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>you&#8217;d need to be able to travel back and forth in time;<\/li>\n<li>you&#8217;d need some way to capture all artifacts of human culture, regardless of their physical medium, in some <em>non-physical<\/em>\u00a0form; and<\/li>\n<li>you&#8217;d need to be able at least once to escape the (temporal, spatial) bounds of the universe altogether.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Furthermore, because I didn&#8217;t want the story to play out in some utterly far-distant future &#8212; when the total universe winks out, and &#8220;humans&#8221; (if any) look and behave like the gods only know what &#8212; I needed a way to wipe out the human race and all traces of its culture <em>now<\/em>, or nearly so.<\/p>\n<p>Given all that, I figured, I had enough to just sit down and start writing. Which is what I did&#8230; on the morning after I had a peculiar dream. In this dream, some sort of formless human-type creature drifted among the stars, towing a cloud of silvery particles. The Earth had been destroyed, rather suddenly and unexpectedly, and only this creature (with his &#8220;luggage&#8221;) remained&#8230; a librarian, and a vast, sparkling, immaterial nimbus.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">T<\/span>hose of you who were around back in February, when I started writing the story, may remember my wondering why I was writing it as I did &#8212; posting a first draft of each (very casually researched, imperfectly polished) chapter, on the day that I wrote it. What was my hurry?<\/p>\n<p>The answer to that riddle didn&#8217;t come along for a while, and eventually\u00a0(in the chapter in which\u00a0<em><span style=\"background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 90%; line-height: 1em;\">[ spoiler redacted ]<\/span><\/em>) got incorporated into the story itself.<\/p>\n<p>I remember that I couldn&#8217;t wait to start that chapter; that little twist had occurred to me\u00a0completely out of nowhere, and I wanted to share it as soon as possible with whoever had been following along. (I even remarked on it at the time: eager, but uncertain if what I planned to do in the next installment was as cool as I thought it was, or corny and obvious &#8212; <em>apparently<\/em>\u00a0&#8220;cool&#8221; only because I hadn&#8217;t had time to look at it from a distance.)<\/p>\n<p>But then I had my favorite surprise in the whole process: suddenly realizing <em><span style=\"background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 90%; line-height: 1em;\">[ spoiler redacted ]<\/span><\/em> &#8212; the &#8220;big reveal&#8221; in the last chapter. Again, I have no idea if that surprise is honestly interesting, something that would&#8217;ve tickled me as much if someone else had written it.<\/p>\n<p>But, ah well, what the heck. It kept <em>me<\/em>\u00a0from getting bored. <span style=\"color: #888888;\"><em>*hops away to nibble at next carrot or head of lettuce*<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8212;-<\/p>\n<p><strong>Aside, for regular readers:<\/strong> I&#8217;ve posted (I think without fail) a <em>Mid-Week Music Break<\/em> entry every Wednesday since January 4, 2011. I started the practice:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>because I really like music,<\/li>\n<li>because regular readers seemed to like it when I wrote about music, but also<\/li>\n<li>because I knew my work on <em>Seems to Fit<\/em>\u00a0was about to heat up, and<\/li>\n<li>hence I wanted to spend as little time on blogging as possible (given that I had no desire to give up the Friday posts), and<\/li>\n<li>yet I still wanted to keep posting <em>something<\/em>\u00a0regularly.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Over the last couple of months, the music breaks have come to feel more like an obligation, and to absorb way more of my time (and forethought) than I&#8217;d originally meant them to: looking up back stories of performers and individual songs, researching lyrics&#8230; They&#8217;ve become scheduled research projects: an obstacle to <em>creative<\/em> work.<\/p>\n<p>I won&#8217;t give them up entirely. But starting today, the series will just shift to occasional status.\u00a0At the very least, I&#8217;ve got other things I&#8217;ve been wanting to write about here &#8212; including posts in long-neglected other series. More importantly (to me), I&#8217;ve got other things to write <em>off-line<\/em>, too.<\/p>\n<p>__________________________________<\/p>\n<p>*\u00a0<span style=\"font-size: 90%; line-height: 1.25em;\">She may have told me on many more occasions than that, even. But who knows? once the message sank in, I&#8217;m afraid I rather nodded off <\/span><em style=\"font-size: 90%; line-height: 1.25em;\"><span style=\"color: #888888;\">*grinning-ducking-and-running*<\/span><\/em><span style=\"font-size: 90%; line-height: 1.25em;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Missus has told me on numerous occasions that my astrological character &#8212; Gemini, born in the Year of the Rabbit &#8212; has doomed me to an intense, lifelong hatred of being bored&#8230; and a desperation to be otherwise, even unwisely so.* Assuming that she&#8217;s right (generally a safe assumption), then a corollary to that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16,2252,5,372,2810],"tags":[1558],"class_list":{"0":"post-11170","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-themissus","7":"category-midweek-music-break","8":"category-06_writing","9":"category-style-and-craft","10":"category-propagationallibrary","11":"tag-surprises","12":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-2Ua","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11170"}],"version-history":[{"count":37,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11207,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11170\/revisions\/11207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}