Some notes on the admittedly complex process
through which the Songs of the Greater Men were produced:
1) The texts that were generated through
performance of a particular manuscript
were rarely or never identical, although
they were very often quite similar
in character in comparison with the texts
generated via performance of other
manuscripts. If a particular score,
for example, required five performers (along
with an additional five individuals
to transcribe the five performers' mumblings),
the outcome would be five very different texts,
although they were usually related through
imagery, coherence of tone, or length.
2) With respect to length, it should be noted that,
though the mumbling would go on indefinitely
if the performer was not awoken
from the semi-conscious state in which his or her
mumblings were produced, in each case there would arrive
a moment easy for the transcriber
to identity at which the text would begin
to repeat ad infinitum, with but minor
variations in syntax and phrasing.
Frequently the basic text (BT) was quite short,
consisting of no more than a few sentences
or phrases; at other times, in contrast,
the recitation of the BT might take five
or six minutes before it began to repeat
and would necessitate extra pages
of transcription.
3) The texts produced by any
given performer were never identical
from this performance to that performance.
If the performer produced ten consecutive
performances of the same piece, the collection
of texts thus transcribed would assume the form
of a set of variations (V1, V2,
V3, and so on) that grew more and more remote
from each other as time went on and as
further variations intervened (for instance,
V1 was inevitably more similar
to V2 than V1 to V7).
The Songs of the Greater Men must be considered
an anthology in that it has collected
those transcriptions adjudged most readable
(or most interpretable) by the transcribers.
We owed our great interest in the Transcriptions
to an extraordinary circumstance:
It very soon became apparent that the texts
that were generated in the performances
of the manuscripts referred – directly
at times, at other times through allusion – to what
of moment was going on in the world outside
the formerly peopled and bustling Floor
(of which we were now the sole remaining tenants).
Although we never succeeded in our mission
to recover our old music, the texts
that were created in our efforts to do so
provided a vivid running commentary
on events in the outside world and on
occasion even appeared to make predictions
concerning the current goings on in that world.
This was particularly striking due
to the limited connections that we maintained
with the Outside (as we now called it). To be sure,
there were some of us who wished to deny
that we'd maintained any form of contact at all
with the youth after the Dispersion; however,
this was not strictly true. From time to time,
particularly in the beginning (and then
sporadically until a great deal later),
visitors would arrive from the Stations –
sometimes out of curiosity as to what
had become of us, sometimes because they'd gotten
lost while exploring the overgrown trails
that at one time had led to the Periphery
from the Floor – and we would thus receive reports on
the many wide-ranging vicissitudes
of our less and less youthful progeny. Often,
the savants among the youth would return to us
and request copies of the Manuscripts.
For the LA (or what became of it, that is)
had lost all interest, upon abandoning
the Floor, in maintaining their steely grip
on the formerly coveted and contested
legacy of the Breach – the Reservoir, that is,
and the Fragments. Apparently, there was
too much to attend to out in the open air.
They'd taken with them only the many copies
they had made of the scriptures and left us,
to our great relief and even greater dismay,
the Fragments upon which the scriptures had been based
(and the Reservoir as well, to be sure,
which they couldn't have kept unless they'd taken us
with them). Most of us were quite enthusiastic
to share what we had with those who returned
from time to time, wishing that they'd return to us
in greater numbers and perhaps one day submit
once more to our instruction. We also
made copies for them of the transcribed “songs,” which they
carried along with them back into the Outside.
It was they who gave the Transcriptions their
collective title, The Songs of the Greater Men.
For they imagined that the Greater Men had been
communicating to us through these songs
from their heavenly abode – since the Dispersion,
at least, if not earlier. Eventually
the Songs would become the gleaming focus
of the same manner of scholarly attention
that had wrought the scriptures and the Commentaries
on the Analects of the Greater Men.
Note the purposeful sense of mystery, evoked
with an apparently intentional vagueness,
that fills the sixteenth song, “Down in the Grass”:
“Why did they imagine the margins and corners
to be theirs, rather than the songs that were their own?”
On the one hand, the text laments what had
actually been the case with the songs before
the Dispersion that ended the Early Venue.
The songs as they appeared in manuscript,
in short, had meant nothing to the youth apart from
the cacophony they churned up in performance.
Yet the LA indiscriminately
utilized the empty spaces in the margins
and between the ledger lines of the manuscripts
after taking them into their control
for jotting down notes on joke-interpretation,
on the Commentaries, the Life of Menahmen,
and so on. At the same time, however,
this snatch of verse can be metaphorically
interpreted as a competent prediction
of what in fact much later would occur
with the Song Transcriptions – commentaries on which
would provide a basis for the literature
of the Middle Venue. Central both to
the Songs and to the Commentaries based on them
is the great theme of youth. Whereas the Songs often
mourn the youths that have departed the Floor
and air concern that, unguided and on their own
out in the unknown, forbidding Periphery,
they'll encounter hardship and frustration,
the Commentaries in contrast lament the loss
of youth itself in the Dispersion. Only in
the shadows of men and women may youth
be found, and these shadows are themselves the shadows
of their youthful selves – much the same as the Elders,
abandoned to the ancient Venue Floor,
now dimly recalled, were shades of the Greater Men.
[Next: The Shadows of the Greater Men]