The Five-fold Vision
After five decades of not knowing why I was born, now I know. I will need more than a few words to tell you. The words are not ready yet. Someday, they will come to me. What I have now is a vision.
The Draw my picture game
Do you know the game where one player is given a picture. She gives instructions to her partner what to draw. Like “start with a circle in the middle, it is a cave with two nuns sitting inside, and it is a skull at the same time.” Your partner draws something to his best understanding. When he is finished, you both look at the original picture and laugh. It is so different. How do I share a complex vision with you?
The Five components
A computer can be instructed in a simple language consisting of only two signs: one and zero. A printer needs four colors to print almost any color: cyan, yellow, magenta, and black. My vision consists of five components.
- Write, tell your story or idea.
- Find and build your community.
- Create with AI.
- Collect entries for an encyclopedia.
- Integrate unrelated parts into something bigger.
If I find a project that involves writing in any form, it is nice. If the project is centered around a community, that is even nicer. If it is a community focused on writing with AI, I am happy. Add encyclopedia and integration, and you get what I am looking for.
The first three components may be clear. But what do I mean by encyclopedia and integration you may ask.
Encyclopedia (or a pattern language)
I wanted to write a novel with 22 chapters in the spirit of Tarot. Each chapter would represent one of the Major Arcana Tarot cards. One chapter would be written in spirit of the Hanged Man. That card in the Tarot means waiting, uncertainty, lack of directions. That is reflected in the text of the chapter. You may have to turn the book upside down to read it. Or download its content from a slow server.
The Chariot in Tarot means control, willpower, action, success. The card itself depicts a warrior in a vehicle driven by a black and a white sphinx. Reading this chapter would demand the reader to take action. Maybe tear a page. Or use her willpower (and a pair of scissors) to rearrange its scrambled paragraphs.
I did not write this book. I found out Italo Calvino had written The Castle of Crossed Destinies which uses Tarot cards as its main motif. There are a few other similar books, but none of them is exactly what I had in mind. I wanted to give a full view of the world through 22 lenses. Like an encyclopedia wants to collect everything worth knowing. I know the world is infinite, you cannot capture it in a finite number of pages, especially not on so few pages. Some authors write whole volumes about one afternoon. I believe we can find the basic building blocks, we can create the vocabulary of a language that has only a 100 words. The periodic table of life, the universe, and everything. I guess it has 42 elements.
John McCarthy created Lisp, the programming language using 9 primitives. Vladimir Propp identified 31 functions of the fairy tale. Christopher Alexander and his colleagues identified the 250 patterns we use for building. I want to identify the 33 or 99 knobs you have to turn to change a half-baked thought or a piece of mediocre writing into something wonderful. That would be my encyclopedia.
Fragments and integration
My psychotherapist told me I had a fragmented personality. The left leg is not connected to the torso, metaphorically speaking, and the brain is miles away. I am a master of sudden changes of topic. What kept me awake at night a month ago, bores me now. Some have a nicer, more loving name for it, and call it multipotentialite.
I have learned over the years to warn my audience: I am about to jump to another topic, do not look for any connection. Be warned, I am jumping now.
Did you see Memento, the movie? The main character has a special condition. Whatever happened fifteen minutes ago, his memory of it gets erased. He lives in a constant fifteen-minute window of time. He devises different techniques to overcome his handicap.
When I first saw the movie, I immediately recognized the kindred spirit. That guy is as fragmented in time as I am in my thoughts. I just need a tool that tells me How to make sense of any mess.
Embrace yourself, I am jumping again.
Most books on writing seem to assume you already have your thoughts neatly laid out in your mind — or a plot if we are talking about fiction. All you have to do is write an outline and stick to it, and stick your ass to the seat. The authors of these books have no idea how my brain works.
What a relief when I found out about Taking smart notes and Grounded Theory. They claim writing emerges. You write a bunch of notes following some rules and that process makes you figure out what you have to say.
This is what I mean by integration. The article you are reading right now is made up of fragments. I hope they will integrate in your mind into the five components of my vision.
