(110) The abracadabrante story of Child Moon

– We claim to bear witness.
– Do we?
– Is that not our function?
– That is precisely what troubles me. A witness reports what has taken place. Yet we never stop speaking. Who could guarantee that our words add nothing?
– To add nothing would already be to add something.
– How so?
– Silence alters a story as well.
– That is a parrot's answer.
– That is a witness's answer.
– But are we witnesses?
– We are present.
– Being present is not enough.
– No. One may be there without truly being present.
– And one may see without genuinely attending.
– There is the word.
– Which one?
– Attend.
– Because it possesses two meanings?
– Because perhaps it possesses only one. To attend is to remain beside.
– Beside what?
– An event. A person. An apparition. The Moon Child... or whatever else. One must remain close enough for something to reach us.
– Then we are not merely spectators.
– Spectators sometimes watch from afar.
– And witnesses?
– They carry away with them what they have seen.
– Like a burden?
– Like a debt.
– This is becoming rather serious for two parrots.
– Who said we were parrots?
– The drawings.
– They show forms.
– And forms lie?
– No. They say something else.
– Then we are not merely witnesses.
– I fear not.
– Or perhaps you hope not.
– Perhaps.
– For there is a problem.
– Which one?
– If we were perfect witnesses, we would repeat exactly.
– Like echoes.
– Like machines.
– Like mirrors.
– Yet we never repeat exactly.
– An inflection changes.
– A word slips.
– An image appears.
– Another disappears.
– A slight drift.
– There is the right word.
– Drift?
– Yes. A difference carried along by movement... so small that it seems accidental.
– And yet the story is displaced by it.
– Displaced rather than corrected.
– Like an island that drifts.
– Like a drawing copied by another hand.
– Like a letter reread many years later.
– Thus we never bear witness to an event alone.
– We also bear witness to our encounter with it.
– Which is another way of saying that we become actors.
– Relatively speaking.
– Relatively?
– We do not invent the world.
– But we alter its trajectory... through the way we tell it.
– Through the way we listen to it... for listening alters as well.
– Far more than one might think.
– Then what are we?
– Witnesses who attend.
– In the double sense of attend?
– In the double sense.
– We attend the story.
– And we assist the story.
– We remain beside it.
– Until it can continue without us.
– Are you certain?
– No.
– Neither am I.
– Perhaps a story never continues without those who tell it.
– That would grant us far too much importance.
– Too much.
– Then let us put it differently.
– I am listening.
– Perhaps we are less the guardians of the story than one of its places of passage.
– A passage?
– Yes. Something passes through our voice.
– And emerges slightly altered.
– Like the wind among the branches.
– Like the sea among the islands.
– Like light between the pages.
– ...or the beaches.
– There is another drift.
– Perhaps... but without such drifts, there might be no story.
– Only archives.
– Only repetitions... or only witnesses.
– Whereas a story requires something else.
– What?
– A difference small enough to resemble a memory... and great enough to become a future.
– Then we are neither entirely witnesses nor entirely actors.
– Neither entirely authors... nor entirely characters.
– Then what are we?
– I do not know...
– Nor do I.
– Perhaps that is precisely why we have been given speech...