IGJM

A detailed description of a musical composition that I have written in my head but wouldn't dare commit to song for reasons I need not express.

Though rarely known and presumably suppressed by governments at both the provincial and federal levels, there was a brief moment in Canadian history (no one can seem to agree on exact dates) when Saskatchewan was officially known as 'British Alberta'. In August 2016, an eBay listing appeared for a map containing the controversial and so-called mythical alternate name for the province featuring one slightly blurry photograph of the curious artifact claiming to be authentic. Several bids were placed, including one half-hearted bid from myself, but the listing was abruptly and unceremoniously taken down before a sale was finalized. The item and the seller are yet to resurface.

Reimagining myself as nothing.

The landlord died today. Paramedics frantically worked on him in the yard. His son prayed over his unmoving body as it shut down. The neighbours watched from open windows, with some stepping out onto their porch for a better view. Last week I spoke with him about erratic lawn maintenance scheduling. This morning he took his final breath, lying there on the damp grass beneath a gentle rainfall, oblivious to the spectators trying to catch sight of what comes next.

As a child, I was often awakened from deep sleep — nearly always devoid of dreams — by a sensation that had become quite familiar to my young self, dating back to the time of my earliest memories.

The sensation was unmistakably that of my entire body, all at once, slamming against my mattress after a fall from some unknown height above my bed. The sound of the loose springs rattled against the walls of my tiny bedroom from the impact, my eyelids testing their extremes as I attempted to get my wits about me.

I had been hovering above the surface of the bed prior to the unwelcome crash. That much was clear. Several questions remained, however: how high off the bed had my body been at the apex, how long had I remained suspended above the mattress, and what had caused my fall?

Night after night, as I drifted off to sleep, I attempted to take notice of whether I had any awareness of floating upward from my mattress, but to no avail. All too often, I would instead start awake to that thud.

I had carefully considered seeking the advice of an adult on the matter, though I ultimately decided against such a measure in order to spare myself some inevitable embarrassment. I believed there were only two possible outcomes, and neither was in my favour.

Either levitation during sleep was as natural and common as sleep itself, and my questions would make me seem a fool who was many years late in discovering this routine aspect of human life, or my midnight jolts were such an uncommon occurrence that even raising the question — if only framed hypothetically — would call my sanity into question.

I resolved to keep the situation and the questions surrounding it to myself and instead designed an experiment in hopes of shedding some light on my uncertainties.

Using what seemed at the time to be a most complex system — quite ingenious to my naive young mind, in fact — I aimed to solve two of the three mysteries: the height and duration of my levitation. The mystery of the cause of my fall seemed a different matter entirely.

The makeshift device was a primitive pseudo-mechanical contraption made up of lengths of string found in a kitchen cupboard, wire hangers stolen one afternoon from the coat closet, an antique watch that had belonged to my late grandfather, two rolls of Scotch tape, three different-coloured sticks of blackboard chalk, a silver marble in a small bag of yellowish cloth, and several metal washers of assorted sizes and weights.

Working in secret with my bedroom door closed, I designed it so that it could easily be slid underneath the bed for concealment during waking hours, then quickly lifted into place once I was certain the adults were convinced I was asleep and my work would be undisturbed.

The plan was that as my sleeping body began to levitate, it would nudge the suspended marble above me. This would trigger a wire, which would in turn cause the watch to begin timing. Upon jolting awake, I would be able to check the elapsed time and determine how long I had spent in the air.

Three additional strings would be suspended at increasing heights directly above me, each with a piece of coloured chalk tied to the end. Traces of chalk left on my white pajamas would indicate how high I had risen.

Because I did not experience the falling sensation every single night, I anticipated that it would take some time before I could reach any formal conclusions.

During the first week, I would anxiously wait alone in the darkness of my room until the house became sufficiently quiet, then spring into action, setting up my system, which stretched from bedpost to bedpost like some clumsy spiderweb weighted down with far too much ambition.

Mechanical failures plagued me in the beginning. A string would snap, a wire hanger would bend, something would come loose. By the second week, most of the obvious problems had been resolved, and my tests on the various parts of the system showed everything to be in sufficient working order.

During two — possibly three — nights that week, I awoke to the familiar jolt as I crashed down onto my small single bed. With speed, I would rush to switch on the light, but I was always disappointed to find neither chalk marks upon my pajamas nor a running timer on the watch. It had failed.

One morning, I discovered a dusting of chalk across my chest. My little heart began to beat quickly with excitement until my joy was dashed by the realization that a stick of chalk had simply fallen from its sling onto the bed during the night.

The third week was spent making height adjustments to the entire device. Perhaps I was not levitating nearly as high as I had estimated based upon the impact of the falls. Yet no matter how much I lowered the apparatus, the system failed to produce any results.

As time wore on, I began having fewer and fewer experiences of awakening from a fall. What had once been a common occurrence became something of a rarity during those weeks.

Was it natural for the frequency of levitation experiences to decline as one aged, or had the presence of the haphazard machine subconsciously prevented my body from entering the airborne state of its sleep cycle?

Was that state perhaps so secretive, so mysterious, and so aware that it would not permit itself to be studied — to be known?

After six or seven weeks of mishaps, disappointments, and inadequate data, the machine was retired and unceremoniously dumped into some dark corner of my bedroom closet. Time covered it with discarded clothing, stacks of paper, and never-again-seen toys.

Whether or not my body had stopped levitating entirely, or simply stopped falling and thrusting itself into a waking state during those levitations, remains unknown to me even now.

I had either moved on from it or perfected it. The effect on my life was the same in either case.

I have not been awakened by the sensation since, though I think of it often.

I hope that my own children will be comfortable and secure enough to approach me with questions of their own levitations.

An aged birdcatcher who has never successfully caught a bird begins to worry that catching one may ruin their life.

I saw a billboard the other day. It was an advertisement for real estate services, the kind which usually goes unnoticed, but a misreading of the text caused this particular billboard to stand out. What had at first glance appeared to be a subtle call to action — one of unimaginable existential depth — was merely a marketing tagline whose value extended no further than its surface: Explore realty. Even after catching my error, I couldn't shake the misreading from my brain.

Explore reality.

Coincidentally, predictions about virtual reality transforming the real estate market have been a topic of much discussion in the media over the last long while. Agents are increasingly moving toward a model of taking clients on virtual tours of properties as opposed to physical visitation, removing restraints that time and space insert into the real estate hunt. Prospective buyers can walk through — virtually speaking — properties in other parts of their country, or on the other side of the world. This also opens the door for agents to give remote tours of proposed and unfinished properties to their clients; tour a living space that doesn't actually exist — yet.

Virtual reality is something we understand through its relationship to reality. If you look up a definition of reality you will find phrases such as: the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them; having existence or substance; or something that is actually experienced or seen. The problem with these types of definitions, and the problem with talking about reality in general, is that it is entirely subjective. How can the existence of something be given objective status when all diagnostic methods require that an individual mind takes in data through sensory inputs, then stores and catalogues this data into memory? No matter how scientific or sterile a test environment you create, you are always reliant on faith in faulty systems. Your senses can be tricked and your memory is biased. Even in trying to relay or report on so-called objective findings, language itself creates barriers, limitations, and all manners of interpretation. And yet, much of what we accept as reality are things that we ourselves have never actually experienced first-hand; we take the words of others as proof of historical events unlived and destinations untraveled.

It's not outrageous to imagine that technology will one day reach the point in which a virtual visit to a remote space is able to satisfy all aspects of the sensory experience. After the immediate event ends, that moment exists within the memory of the visitor, much like the non-virtual moment does. When recalling the memory or relaying its various aspects to someone else, is there a difference? The recollection of the complete sensory virtual event may be indistinguishable from its non-virtual counterpart. Does it even matter?

If someone visits a virtual space which feels to them wholly convincing and authentic, does it not fulfill its reality? Will that memory be any less vivid than the memory you will have of the room you are in right now? If the resultant memory is just as emotionally communicative in all respects, has one stepped outside of reality? Should that particular memory exist separate from all others — disconnected from all physical spaces encountered — or is it equally valid?

We take it as fact that history exists, and though we cannot recall future events in our memory as we do with past, there is general consensus that future events will also exist as a reality in our linear understanding of time. Although one could virtually visit a space that does not exist during their own lifetime, it's impossible to conclude definitively that it has never or will never exist, as an authentic object or an exacting replica of it. Considering our observable universe — one which science suggests and most agree, is very much a part of our reality, or alternately we are a part of its reality — probabilistically, if you were to search all possible spaces on all possible planets orbiting all possible stars in all possible galaxies, that space is quite likely to exist at one point in time or another. It is, was, or will be a non-virtual reality.

Technology stretches and distorts the parameters of reality beyond what would have been considered "real" in previous eras. Dialogues, relationships, and experiences can unfold entirely online, in cyberspace. Connections may be human to human, human to bot, bot to bot; deciphering the true nature of individuals in any connection can often prove difficult, and perhaps unnecessary. The reality of the connection may differ on each end, but the feelings and memories experienced from the situation cannot be classified as unreal just because they are conducted electronically instead of physically. Rather, technology has given us increased awareness of the elasticity of reality and difficulties associated with pinpointing its properties.

Attempts to classify reality as a universally objective truth are misguided. Reality is fluid. Reality is subjective. Reality is impossible to grasp. Far from being universal, reality is deeply and incomprehensibly personal.

Slowly coming to terms with the realization that the bulk of my dreams completely plagiarize plots from Philip K. Dick stories.

I'm not certain whether it has consistently been online since its initial launch, or it was put back up for archival purposes at some point, but the radical 1997 incarnation of Radiohead's website left a strong imprint on me back in the days of the dial-up modem. Setting aside the band's music and politics which hold no interest for me, surfing this site has become an even more extraordinary online experience over the years as the Web and its aesthetic have evolved in tandem with its mass commercialization. These days, when I visit the site I can't help but think of Theseus and the Cretan labyrinth.

In Greek mythology, King Minos of Crete sought revenge on the people of Athens for the assassination of his son. He commissioned Daedalus, an artist and craftsman, to design and construct a great labyrinth. At its center lived the Minotaur — half man, half bull. King Minos ordered that every nine-years, seven boys and seven girls were to be taken from Athens to Crete and sent into the labyrinth where they would eventually be devoured by the brutal Minotaur.

One year, with aspirations of ending the entire affair, the Athenian boy Theseus, volunteered to be among the seven male tributes sent to Crete to face the Minotaur. Upon his arrival, Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos, fell in love with Theseus and gave him a ball of thread so that he may use it to find his way out of the labyrinth after confronting the Minotaur. Attaching one end of the thread at the opening of the labyrinth and carrying the ball with him, Theseus moved through its winding corridors, found his way to its center, and ultimately defeated the menacing beast. Using the trail of thread that had been quietly documenting his journey, he re-traced his path back to the entrance of the maze and heroically escaped to freedom.

I think Theseus would have enjoyed the World Wide Web in 1997; the adventure and excitement that it fostered. Its labyrinthine shape full of passages, turns, tunnels, and the unknown. Websites often eschewed the formal navigation systems we have come to rely on and expect in favour of more open-ended or casual solutions. Moving around a site — much like moving around the Web in general — was a journey that embraced the forking, wandering naturing of hypertext and allowed the user — with varying degrees of agency — to choose their own path through cyberspace, the hero of their own self-authored epic.

Today's active web design is enraptured with menus as a primary means to navigate a website. All user actions are predefined, and the journey through the material is as prescripted as possible in an effort to achieve maximum linearity. The user starts at point A, and although they may see point X and then Y or vice versa along the way, they are on a path toward point B from the outset — a known and fixed position — in the mind of the modern web designer. Objective parameters such as these might simplify the process of formulating a design solution, but should online experiences really be reduced to uninspired straight lines? Does that not belittle the canon of hypertext and underestimate the intellect of its users?

The trajectory of the Web when treated ever-increasingly as a marketing tool above all else, has resulted in the proliferation of websites that serve as little more than costumes adorning capitalistic calls-to-action for users who function as potential customers, or simply as mere data with an assumed re-market value. The protestation of designers who have created these disguises and shaped this new Web has been terribly insufficient. If the deterioration of online culture beneath the shadow of commerce is not cause enough to push back, surely the lazy pattern- or template-based approach to interface design — an approach that devalues the very practice of graphic design itself — should move designers to adamantly defend their ground. Alas, we continue to see designers quietly focus on beautifying and streamlining this artificial linearity. In an attempt to absolve themselves of blame for their not insignificant contributions to the political landscape and power imbalance of the Internet, designers have adopted a misreading of the term User Experience (UX) to justify their complicity.

Labyrinths provide an interesting model for us to think about experiences on the Web outside of the baggage associated with UX/UI. There is a beginning and an end, but they are a part of a journey instead of being transactional. The line between points is far from straight, taking the user through countless twists and turns, forking paths and new things awaiting them around each corner. A given journey might involve a vast array of text and images, disparate content demanding new, unexpected, and inspired connections between them. From page to page and site to site there exists the ability to be immersed within the moment, present and aware, attuned to each new interface as opposed to being sedated by aesthetic monotony. Surfing the Web in this way is a rare experience; the abandonment of the Home link and the corporate branding and the offscreen navigation that is always just a click-of-a-hamburger-icon away. To travel freely through cyberspace — letting yourself get lost, stumbling upon some undiscovered gem, finding something with no connection to your initial subject which may cause you to think about it in a new way — is a beautiful and memorable online experience, but it is seldom you find yourself in this situation, even if you expressly seek it out.

Web design could benefit from stepping back and reflecting upon its role in shaping individual experiences and, by extension, society in general. Perhaps the practice should look to Daedalus and his labyrinth for inspiration. Daedalus built an object that contained a bloodthirsty beast, but the design provided a chance for its users to choose their path and discover hidden places, even the possibility of eluding or defeating the beast entirely. Not everything we put online should be commerce-based, but even for the projects that are, can't we uncover ways to give the user some personal agency over their path, and maybe a chance to escape the clutches of the beast to a greater extent than we are right now? We should be designing the Web that we want rather than continuing to force the user into the role of the product, an advertising target and source of revenue.

User experiences and interactions are more than just the cliché animations we insert between two states. Let us not continue to put a new coat of paint on the same old prefabricated straight-line hallway and dress the transom of its familiar doorways in trendy and novel ways. Instead, let us investigate the labyrinthine possibilities in our websites, facilitating journey and adventure; pathways that let the user get lost, discover new connections, escape the mediocre, and take control over their experience. Rather than expelling energy taking steps to ensure our site visitors always know how to get back to point A, let's remember that the browser itself equips them with the ball of thread needed to escape the maze in the form of the Back button — and the browser History.

Let's stop fighting against the format. Let's let UX involve actual experience and let hypertext function as hypertext. Let's let the Web be a web.

It takes a computer to raise a child.

I might have a story to tell, but I don't know how it should begin.

How do I start? — and is it strange that I'm asking you that? Maybe it is. Still, I'd rather we be on equal footing. Just because I'm the one telling the story doesn't mean I know any more about it than you do. Meaning isn't something I get to assign and seal shut. If there is meaning at all, it moves. It wanders between us. Mutates. You might think you recognize its shape for a moment, and then it's already become something else.

So what exactly are we doing here?

What's the point of telling a story if the meaning is unknowable? If it can't be pinned down, does it even matter? Maybe a story doesn't need to communicate anything at all. Maybe it only needs to hold your attention for a little while. You enjoy being entertained, don't you?

Let's aim for something modest: a story that is at least a little entertaining, and possibly meaningful, though neither of us can say how.

Still — that first problem remains.

How do I begin?

Writers usually introduce a character. Or a place. A bit of dialogue. Something solid to stand on. The light in a kitchen. Two people talking. A door opening.

I'm sitting at my desk with a cold cup of coffee, staring at a blank page, trying to think of anything that feels worthy of being first.

Nothing does.

It's hard not to admire writers who can open cleanly like that, confidently, as if the beginning had always been waiting for them. I don't trust myself to do it. If I try to force something beautiful or cinematic, it will collapse immediately. I'll watch it fall apart and feel embarrassed for having tried.

So maybe I should skip the beginning entirely.

Not skip it as in you turning pages, but simply refuse to provide one. We just start here, mid-thought, already moving. No ceremony. No carefully arranged first impression. We pretend this is acceptable and carry on.

It would spare me the awkward, overworked paragraphs. It might spare you too.

Besides, nothing truly begins where we say it does. Everything is already in progress.

Don't worry — there won't be much action. No chases, no narrow escapes. Entertainment doesn't always require action. Sometimes it's quieter than that. Sometimes it's just the feeling that something is about to reveal itself, even if it never quite does.

So maybe this is the beginning after all.

Or maybe we're already somewhere in the middle.

Either way, we might as well continue.

You're at a bazaar. You find a curious box on a bookseller's table and accidentally steal it. Later, you open it to discover that it contains three small wooden puzzles, a piezoelectric speaker, a bit of circuitry, and instructions explaining that the puzzles emit an audio signal upon completion and proper insertion back into the box.

When assembled together and interlocked, the puzzles act as a kind of audio book, telling the same story three different times from three different viewpoints. It turns out that the text was originally written by Dostoevsky and was thought to have been lost to time.