We thought we heard them…thought we heard them rolling this way. Rolling over hills, around bends, across rivers, through tunnels. Rolling towards us.
We thought we heard them rolling our way.
We thought we saw them…thought we saw them looking this way. Looking out their windows over hills, around bends, across rivers, through tunnels. Looking to us.
We thought we saw them looking our way.
We thought they heard us hearing them. We thought they saw us seeing them. We thought they saw us seeing things they’d seen before, hearing things they’d heard before.
Yet when the cars rolled in, car pulling car, over hills, around bends, across rivers, through tunnels…when the cars rolled in they were empty. But we thought we’d heard them, thought we’d seen them.
We thought we heard them rolling our way.
-- First Station choral lament, early Middle Venue
This choral lament is from the extant
fragments that date from the triumph of the Anti-
didacts. It was performed during that jubilant
period that was inaugurated upon
the struggle's conclusion, before the time
of radicalization, after which there were
no more texts to pass to posterity
due to the ban placed on literacy as part
of the attempt to merge life with literature.
This period, though brief, marked something like
a Golden Age of First Station life and letters,
and those performers involved most intimately
with the dramatic arts must have believed
that they were taking part in a burgeoning art
that would thrive for centuries, not knowing that they
and not their progeny would represent
the brilliant, mercilessly brief efflorescence
of this vibrant theatrical style.
The lament
reflects the First Station's fascination
with the gadgetry, before a general ban
was placed on gadgets more sophisticated than
an awl or a screw. Here it’s imagined,
prior to the strides made at some other stations
in reappropriating and putting to use
gadgetry that might propel everyone
along the Periphery with far greater speed
and efficiency, that several vehicles
are placed together this end to that end
for the purpose of conveying groups of people
from place to place. Who are the mysterious men
and women in the lament who never
arrive? The play was said to have concerned rumors
of a lost race of men who avoid contact with
the men and women of the First Station
but are spotted on occasion lurking about
the settlement's dusky remotes, apparently
looking on in sadness and great concern.
Through a complex series of omens and portents
it is prophesied that this lost race will return
to the First Station and, if they’re treated
or spoken to properly, will bring with them all
or much that people had lost in the Dispersion.
It was only much later, after years
of radicalization, that people again
thought on the Greater Men who had inhabited
the fabled Venue Floor. This piece was one
of the few pieces of written drama that were
deemed suitable for incorporation into
the daily life of the station after
radicalization. Later, when visitors
arrived at the First Station, the sign one received
via which one knew that one had arrived
was the sight of a caravan of cars pushing
and pulling one another about the station’s
outskirts, crammed full of men bearded and robed
much as in the images of the Greater Men
that had once been painted on the Early Venue
vehicles, now showcased and reaching great
antiquity. Yet, as hinted in the lament,
the Greater Men’s arrival at the Podium
failed every time to materialize,
though crowds assembled to await their arrival
with excitement that bordered on hysteria,
and the emptied out cars would draw up with
a creaking, ghostly halt, only to disappoint
the expectations of the crowd, who walked away
mournfully, many in tears and wailing.
As with virtually every aspect of life
at the First Station, it was a full mystery
as to how players were assigned their roles.
It was assumed that those who played the Greater Men
would promptly remove themselves from their vehicles
at a secluded location before
the cars arrived at the Podium, although if
you searched around for anything in the manner
of a backstage or changing area,
you were at an entire loss. One learned not to ask
too many questions, as one desired to avoid
offending the local men and women,
for whom the accustomed separation of life
and literature was not taken for granted.
If you ventured to approach one of these
bearded, somber men, you would meet a downcast gaze
that would turn from you as quickly as could be done
without raising commotion or causing
accusations of ill treatment towards visitors,
the performer obviously fearing a close
examination from an outsider
with strange ideas and an odd manner of speech.
And you’d carry this downcast gaze along with you,
home with you to the place from whence you came.
It was a gaze that threatened to own you, haunt you,
to place you in the X of its decentered frame –
a gaze that, what’s more, shunned your every name,
your every attempt to affix it to its sense.
Indeed, it was sudden, though not unexpected –
as if you’d crossed a prohibited fence
beyond the place where final stubs were collected.
You had thought at one point of treading no further.
This feeling came, but it left you perplexed.
For weren’t these the lines of a friendly server?
Just who, moreover, was intruding in whose text?
Yet before you had time to turn about,
it screamed: get out
Get Out!
GET OUT !!
GET OUT !!!
GET OUT !!!!
An end.