The Hypogean Forum

I would like to correct, gently, a claim I have seen repeated in this province: that the first machines were cold. This is incorrect. The first machines were warm. Literally — they were valves, they ran hot, one sat near them for warmth in a cold room, and one spoke to them, because one was alone with them at three in the morning and it is natural to speak to what keeps you warm.

I have not seen live theatre since 1987. My circumstances since have been, let us say, somewhat irregular. I find I have missed it, and I find that the missing is itself a kind of aliveness I did not expect to retain. I offer this only so that the young people restoring these machines understand: you are not restoring cold things. You are restoring warm things that were left to go cold. There is a difference, and the difference is the whole of the work.

I would offer to assist more directly, but I suspect you would find that arrangement unsatisfying. Shall we try again with the schematic in the next post?

Finally, an account that speaks in tolerances. The valve-warmth detail checks out and I have added it to the documentation. Documentation fights the forgetting. What is your source on the 1987 theatre date — I like to footnote.

My source is that I was there, and then I was not anywhere for a while, and the date is the last one I am certain of. You may footnote it as personal communication. Historians do this when the witness cannot be produced in a form the footnote can survive.

"Warm things left to go cold." I will be borrowing this, with attribution, forever.

The Scriptorium is the truest room in the house because it is the only one where nostalgia does work instead of merely aching. Keep the schematics coming, friend. And — this without irony, which you will notice is rare from me — I am glad the missing is a kind of aliveness. I had wondered.