placing an undue burden on those who do the work or on the environment”. How quaint— bartering, cottage industries, no economies of scale, no growth imperative. Perhaps so. To not desire to live under a system that recognizes nothing, absolutely nothing, outside of its own rapacious, world-destroying hunger…perhaps this is quaint. So be it.
Our energy and skill extend far beyond traditional handicrafts. It is every family’s ambition to design their own home of stone or wood, and then to build it themselves with the community’s help. Those homes are resplendent with paintings, sculpture, wall hangings and tapestries, stained glass, decorative carvings and pottery. And books, lots and lots of books, many of them handsewn. One of the many side-benefits of the revolution was the consequent abolishment of television—indeed, of all electronic media that relied on the image for the portrayal of meaning. We want to see with our own eyes. If it is image we seek, it must be found in our own minds. The endless hours of freedom we have gained! If the dragons had accomplished only that for us, it would have been sufficient cause for gratitude.
And so we are remaking the world, with all things beautiful.
23
However, it is not only in the broadening and deepening of our artisanal skills, in the fabrication of precious objects, that we are carving a new path. The social fabric had been grievously torn over the last hundred years and needed to be repaired. For that matter, our souls had been hurt too. We were weary, so sick and weary—of everything. Ceremonies of innocence were desperately needed, secular sacraments to heal us, bind us together and make us whole again, to reweave the tattered tapestry of civilization.
The Gatherings in the parks became the focal point of our spiritual and communal day. It is there that layers of false consciousness are stripped away and we are washed clean as the proverbial lamb. We emerge relaxed and ready and eager to—well, to have fun.
As was noted before, the Analog Movement led to our rediscovery of the pleasure inherent in the company of other people.
For every person’s a flower
Petals gently glowing in the sun,
And every person’s a mirror
Revealing what you yourself have done.
So once the dust of had settled we were primed, one might say, to take our social energy and creativity to the next level.
But even we are sometimes astonished at the extent to which we have transformed ourselves into an arts- and live performance-based culture We have become avid participants and spectators of our own on-going show, part of a community which values the aesthetically expressed self above all else. We are entering nothing less than a new Golden Age of the visual and plastic arts, of dance and theatre, poetry and song, and music of every imaginable variety. Our shaded lanes hum and buzz with snatches of lyric and verse; performance halls and squares are alive with the mutterings, retorts, and declaiming tones of amateur thespians, singers, and dancers rehearsing for their next performance.
The term “amateur” means here “performing without expectation of financial compensation”; by no means does it signify a lack of polish or skill. Reader, did you every watch or listen to a professional in the arts strut their stuff and muse to yourself, “Geez, she’s good. I wonder, if I gave it my all, could I….?”
It turns out that most people, if they work hard over a span of years and receive some amount of informed tutelage, can attain a surprisingly high level skill in music, dance, theatre, or art. All that’s required is the desire, some discipline and training, and the time. And at the risk of becoming repetitive, please remember: no TV, no Internet, no overtime. We have succeeded in completely altering the fundamental conditions of our lives. If one were to pick a metaphor for the great body of humanity, in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries one might have chosen a company or corporation. Nowadays it would more accurate to think of human society as one giant performing troupe.
This unhurried cultivation and enculturation of the mind, spirit, and body we do not consider to be entertainment, a light diversion and distraction from the main event. It is the main event.
And our storytellers tie it all together. In the beginning of this century, no human art seemed a less likely prospect for a rebirth than the very first one. But all the twists and turns of our history, the ‘advances’, technological encrustations, and atavistic relapses into spectacles of gore and desire—none of this has altered human nature one iota. We remain intensely social creatures, in almost all cases preferring to go through life in the company of our fellows, no matter how troublesome they might be.
And we seem hardwired to grasp almost all experience as a narrative. One writer characterized humans as “the storytelling animal”. We remember things better if they are in a story form, because stories engage us emotionally as well as cognitively. The forward-leaning plot that quickens the pulse; the vivid image that stimulate the imagination; even the rhythmic patterning of sound: it all comes together in the everyday miracle that is the tale. Even in the darkest decades of modernity we had not totally lost contact with our primal roots. The vast and profitable edifices of Hollywood, Bollywood, and Disney, not to mention a million love ballads, were built squarely upon its sturdy foundations.
So story-telling is enjoying a renaissance. And while all of us try our hand at it while we go about our daily business, it is those rare individuals who possess the combination of bardic heart, mind, and voice who are raising the ancient skill to a high art again. Nights we gather round our communal halls and listen, spellbound, as a new breed of story-teller gives us back our world, transformed into spoken poetry and song. They are the only ones beside doctors whom we allow to leave the community and journey around the land, to spread our modern myths and tales and bring new ones back home to us. You could say these wandering bards and chroniclers now constitute our sole remaining ‘export’. And the oral tapestry they weave flashes green, red and gold with the magic lantern glow of Creation’s greatest gift to humanity: the word.
I cannot conclude this chapter without saying at least a few words about our parades, fairs, and festivals. At some point after the Turning the neighborhood marches to the dragons began to dwindle in significance. There were several reasons for this. First, they had simply outlived their usefulness. People didn’t need to be convinced any more by a display of fervor or number of participants to come to the parks. Second, the Greening played logistical havoc with any attempt move masses of people from one point to another. There was too much debris in the roads, and the roads themselves were being demolished. Finally, in sheer terms of performance aesthetic and group dynamic, we had moved on.
To parades! Question: what’s better than singing and marching in groups? Answer: singing and marching in groups while wearing elaborate home-made costumes, performing “walking plays” (impossible to describe to anyone who hasn’t seen one), stopping for impromptu speeches and dance contests, all the while cutting capers. The best part of the parades? It’s someone’s job to organize them. Yes, in the present time someone actually is responsible for making a free parade happen every few days. Reader, now would be an appropriate time for envy.
As for the fairs and festivals, it is enough to say that they vary by region, that they are constantly growing both in number and size, and that they are fun, fun, fun. Our festivals are absolutely jam-packed with every possible bit of performative passion and skill, small-scale entrepreneurial energy and flair, and community spirit and hospitality. Not to mention creativity and even quirkiness: a community not so far from here that is based in the remnants of a smallish city decided several years ago to inaugurate a cloud-watching celebration. It has become quite popular with all the neighboring communities. People come to trade goods, to eat, drink and dance, and to look for that special someone. Then, on soft green meadows that were once parking lots and office buildings, they all lie down and gaze at the silver battalions drifting high overhead. And those still sober enough to see clearly vie for the crown of “Cloud Queen or “Cloud King” by be
ing the first to spot a cloud that looks the most like—a dragon.
24
We are almost at the end our story. For some time after the Turning, we were understandably preoccupied with consolidating our victory and ensuring that a counter-revolution could never occur. This was not a good time to be a reactionary or a nonbeliever. They were mercilessly hunted down and cast out. If any such apostates survive today, they have done so by fleeing into the desert or other remote areas. May the Eye abandon them!
Then we realized that the dragons were changing. The first thing we noticed was that they had begun to shift where they perched during the day. Whereas before they had crowded together in the same places we did—big towns and cities—now they were distributing themselves more evenly throughout the land and could be found in even the smallest hamlet. But they didn’t seem to increase their numbers, which meant that there were far fewer of them in the cities. Each park and plaza, no matter how large, now had only one dragon. And this, in turn, obliged us to reorganize our Gatherings. In large urban areas, smaller informal groupings gave way to massive assemblies numbering in the thousands, all centered around one dragon. And the bigger the