I have learned that the daily kos may possibly have been visited by an extra-terrestrial writing as a dkos user. I have been oddly fascinated by some recent posts by a dkos user who claims to have very effective solutions for what ails the planet. I was interested to find through a google search that the concepts used by this diarist show up on a blog called Talk To An Extra Terrestrial.
This diary is in honor of the aliens among us, and their varied perspectives on what Madeleine L'Engle's characters in the Wrinkle in Time trilogy have referred to as this "shadowed planet."
I love science fiction. Perhaps the L'Engle reference is a tip-off. I read her novels when I was around 8 or 9 years old and re-read them from time to time still. Flawed in some ways, but still quite beautiful. Especially the second book in the "Time" trilogy: A Wind in the Door. Amazing.
Shikasta by Doris Lessing is also IMO pretty good -- until it devolves into culturally-bound uselessness toward the end. But there are concepts in there about sound and connection that are brilliant in their way.
My ultimate favorite science fiction novel ever ever is Mindscape by Andrea Hairston. All I can say is: read it and listen for the underpinnings. It's gorgeous at levels that I don't even have words for.
But that's just context. Another piece of context is that I am listening to music right now as I write this diary: Facing Future by the incredibly talented Israel "Iz" Kamamkawiwo'ol, who died in 1997. Listening to all of it but especially to Hawai'i 78 Introduction (track 1) and Hawai'i 78 (track 15).
He is best known in some contexts for his mixing of Somewhere Over the Rainbow and What a Wonderful World. If you know and like that song, I suggest you find and listen to these other two at the very least -- they go deep.
Edited 3/5/09 to add: also listen to E Ala E (track 1 on the album by that name, and another great version on the "IZ in Concret" CD. OOOOh).
Context matters. Sound is part of communication and that matters, too.
I write music. Not publicly. Just to say to myself what I can't otherwise say. I have a lot of respect for sound as a mode of communication.
I don't write science fiction, myself, not normally. This is an exception.
Because having an extra-terrestrial post such an aggressive solution on this site calls for some science fiction, because it is late at night, and I decided I may as well write it myself. I don't think anyone else is still paying attention anyway.
I call this "The Nevergrown"
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Author's note: All messages are translated from the original into English. Some meaning is undoubtedly lost in translation. I apologize for that loss.
Message
From [name entirely untranslatable] to us
About: The Nevergrown are Back
Loves. I have bad news. The Nevergrown may be finding a new voice. We grieved and turned away in confusion when their cousins seeded destruction here. That seeding is coming to a sort of crisis point with the life systems here, and apparently the Nevergrown are posting on the "internet" claiming in their usual aggressive fashion that they have a solution. So far very few are paying attention, but we asked for even small things, and so this message.
As always, they speak of themselves as World Saviors and inflect their claims with aggressive certainty.
Message
To [name entirely untranslatable] from us
About: The Nevergrown are Back
[another name entirely untranslatable] has been crying to hear this. It calls us to ask why we can't make this stop.
Message
From [name entirely untranslatable] to us
About: The Nevergrown are Back
Loves. Please, as we know us will, please comfort [name untranslatable] and know we here share this grief. We have no answer to this call, only information. We know this information hurts.
We know the Nevergrown are horribly incomplete and yet strangely resistant to their own reabsorption. We know that they are in pain in their own way. We know you can hear this pain but not as loud as we here can. We are surrounded by their forced sharing of this pain, made more confusing because no one asked them to spread it, and yet the unwillingness means nothing and they do so seemingly as a matter of their very existence.
Message
To [name entirely untranslatable] to us
About: The Nevergrown are Back
We had hoped we would have more information on how to make it stop. We are still grieving -- knowing this horribly incomplete child is in pain it shares unwilling with others who do not consent simply deepens this grief.
[name entirely untranslatable] asks: Why can't we just reabsorb it and heal what is wrong?
Message
From [name entirely untranslatable] to us
About: The Nevergrown are Back
Loves. Yes we had hoped that we could reabsorb it as that. But it refuses. It does this because it fears that. Yet it still lives and spreads its own pain to others.
Message
To [name entirely untranslatable] from us
About: The Nevergrown are Back
[another name entirely untranslatable] asks us now: Can we do this against its will?
We can't decide. We are repelled by that ugliness.
Do we who are here have suggestions? We remember this argument before we decided to investigate further.
Message
From [name entirely untranslatable] to us
About: The Nevergrown are Back
Loves. The Nevergrown on this planet asserts it is the same as all "humans" here. We have asked whether this is true and while we have no complete certainty, please hear carefully this music we are sending by well-loved musicans.
We have a tentative claim that the Nevergrown equation is a lie designed to prevent it from what it fears.
Re-absorption of the Nevergrown without consent may not be wrong for the Nevergrown. The Nevergrown lives incomplete and screaming in pain, and afraid.
But separating the Nevergrown from the rest is part of the confusion for we here.
Message
To [name entirely untranslatable] from us
About: The Nevergrown are Back
This appearance of new Nevergrown claiming the usual civilization superiority and World Savior self only brings us back to the same considerations. Nothing is truly new.
We will keep listening to those among us who grieve and use this information you hurt us with to make some new things. Listen for what we can make.
Message
From [name entirely untranslatable] to us
About: The Nevergrown are Back
Loves. We will listen. Our grief persists and we will listen.
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Author's note: I know, I know -- yes yes, I am a far more talented reader of scifi than I am a writer of it.
Fortunately, there are these beautiful novels out there for the reading.
And this gorgeous music I am listening to as I wrote and post.
Beautiful.