New Ecclesiastes

Who cares what happened? I do, for one. Perhaps (though no doubt I flatter myself) the only one. I spent yesterday trying to remember who said, 'Those who are ignorant of history are condemned to repeat it.' Who cares who said it? You see the awkwardness of my position.

History used to be a question of finding out, not remembering. You read books, you studied with a teacher, you watched enactments with performers in costumes. Occasionally, after slogging through lists of names and dates and places, you entered the realm of the historian's delight: you got the feel of a time and place long ago and far away, you came to know at least one man or woman who lived there and then. All over now. Every time is over now, every place infinitely remote. With no past, what's the present? In a shapeless present, what future can there be?

Nobody knew what hit us. In fact, I am one of the last ones who was here when we got hit. The world, such as it is, is made of children now. They weren't here to get hit. Their parents were, some of them. All the parents are dead. I only am escaped alone to tell thee. And who art thou? What is thy worth? Who cares? The kids don't.

I'm not a historian, or wasn't before. I am a musician, or used to be. But music went the way of history. Music was sound under control, given shape. History was the mess and redundance of life made understandable. Gone now. Noise and mess, all that's left. Who cares? That's what the kids say.

What the kids cannot know is before. The past will never be in front of them, for them to look at, to see. That's what's gone. They are walking, blind, into an empty picture frame. There's not even a frame. I am being drawn along with them, but backwards, looking at something, back there, where I was, before, where there's something to see.