After the initial commotion subsided,
there were those who, as if volunteering
to be the ones to fulfill any predictions
that might have been made as to how we might account
for this, claimed that, not at all unaware
that such a change had for long been in the offing,
they’d even seen it coming. In fact, they didn’t
even put it that way. Rather, they said
that they’d been waiting all along. Not for ages,
maybe, but certainly for a while. Quite a while.
And waiting precisely for this event.
For those of us, however, unwilling to go
so far as to pretend that we’d known all along,
the concern of the day was to drum up
interest among those who weren’t yet aware
of the brand new set of circumstances to which
we immediately had to adjust
ourselves. “Drum up interest.” Well, let’s say instead
that people had to be made aware, and quickly –
for their own sakes and for the common good.
Apart from this first requirement was the no less
pressing need to keep the general interest
engaged without, on the one hand, shocking
the rabble to such an extent that they would have
neither the energy nor wherewithal
to arise from their seats or, on the other hand,
presenting them with something either so bound up
with the everyday or so loaded down
with extraneous material (foreign words,
the tears and ballast of outdated sentiment,
long periods of silence and so forth)
that the same result would ensue and everyone
would forget that there was anything resembling
an exterior to this charmed circle.
(It was only the most cynical among us
who sneered that that would have been what was best for them
anyway, that it was no more than what
we all wanted, that anything beyond that was,
whether we were aware of it or not, merely
for the boon or benefit of our own
more refined sensibilities. I hope that there
were others beside myself who doubted that there
could be made any real or meaningful
distinction between who we were and who they were.)
And to considerations of presentation
and presentability was added
a sense of urgency owing to the common
understanding that this would all be registered
in the books as a first, a beginning,
only to the extent that it served just as well
as a sumptuous finale to the former
run of things. Some were taken with the idea –
and this admittedly hadn’t gone unthought of
prior to this needling crisis – of prolonging
our odd spectacle indefinitely
to make it seem as if nothing had really changed
and, further, to make a mockery of the threats
of a forced and premature denouement
that had come rushing at us headlong from without.
But before we could flirt with such thoughts of intrigue
there was a lot that had to be pulled off,
and pulled off well. And nobody yet had so much
as mentioned the big problem of establishing
a proper venue. Was it to happen,
spontaneously and so to speak of itself,
out in the open air? To many there appeared
to be no point in haggling endlessly
over style, floor space, design and suchlike.
There were too many uncertainties as it stood.
Just decide on something and get to work.
“If you build it, they will come,” ran the popular
wisdom. Those of us, however, on whose shoulders
the weight of responsibility fell,
didn’t suppose that these questions of time and place
that struck so many as trivial were matters
that ought to be dismissed or lightly broached.
Perhaps that would have been the proper view to take
eons ago before all the new gadgetry
had bullied its way into existence.
But you couldn’t just let such stuff idle around.
Nothing was going to pay for itself.
We hinted as much to the gentlemen
with the pen and the ink that seemed to flow from it
with such ease. He’d already thought of that, he said –
had anticipated much more besides.
See? It was all right there, jotted down in his notes.
But even if folks weren’t suspicious as to
how he might react were they to venture
a closer gander, they wouldn’t have been able
to make much of it anyway, as it was all
set down in an indecipherable,
hieratic sort of scrawl. Indeed, it must have struck
at least a few that it might be nothing but scrawl.
[Next: The Fact of the Breach]