Middle, Dark or Light
Investor: The cellar is the low. The tower is the high. What is in the middle?
Director: The middle ground of our picture? From what perspective shall we look?
Investor: Do you mean inside or outside? Let's start from the outside.
Director: Okay. But let's begin with the foreground. What is it from the outside perspective?
Investor: The wall.
Director: Then what is the middle ground?
Investor: Our activities in the second and third rings?
Director: And what is the background?
Investor: I do not think outsiders see the background, or if they do it is only very little of it.
Director: What is the background from the inner perspective?
Investor: The whole outside world.
Developer: But it can also be limited to one's own narrow history outside.
Director: Either way, do we want this to be a dark or light background?
Investor: Are you suggesting one paint his own background?
Director: To what extent is that possible? Certainly one can darken a light one. But is it not much harder to lighten a dark one?
Developer: Everyone gets a new start in a newly founded city.
Investor: And that includes a new start for history, in general, too?
Developer: That seems to be the way of these things, my friend.
Investor: But there are, no doubt, youths who want to know the true history, the original history, that is, or anything as close to it as they can get.
Developer: That can be the lore of the cellars, an oral history.
Investor: Assuming the drinkers are not just telling stories.
Developer: Is it even possible to avoid having the original history degenerate into stories as it passes on across the generations? At the outset, where does this history come from? Us? The school? Citizen parents to their children? Do any of these give a complete and accurate history? Do parents ever tell their children everything?
Investor: It is extremely unlikely there are any parents who tell their children everything. But some tell them much. And some want them to know but do not want to be the one telling.
Developer: This is where our symposiums are of use.
Investor: Perhaps. But you know what I think? Our city is not a painting.
Director: What is it?
Investor: A song.
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Nick Pappas, pappasnick.typepad.com
