The traveller had begun to suspect that every answer concealed a question.
He had learned that before was not necessarily a place.
He had learned that nothing could not simply wait for something to appear.
He had learned that a cause belonged to a relation between things.
Now he came to a theatre.
It stood at the edge of a great plain.
Its doors were enormous.
Above them was carved:
THE THEATRE OF BEGINNINGS
The traveller entered.
Inside, the theatre was filled with people.
Some were sitting in the audience.
Some were speaking on the stage.
Some were moving scenery.
Others were carrying lamps.
A play was being performed.
The traveller watched for a while.
A man entered.
A woman spoke to him.
A door opened.
Someone laughed.
The scene changed.
The traveller turned to the person sitting beside him.
“What is the play about?”
“A beginning.”
“What begins?”
“The story.”
“And what was there before it?”
The person pointed towards the stage.
“The stage.”
The traveller nodded.
Of course.
A story needed somewhere to happen.
A stage needed somewhere to stand.
A performance needed a theatre.
He watched until the scene ended.
Then another began.
This time a tree stood on the stage.
The traveller saw its roots descend into a painted landscape.
“Where did the tree begin?” he asked.
“In the ground.”
“And the ground?”
“On the stage.”
He smiled.
Everything had a background.
A tree grew from the ground.
A building rose from its foundations.
A person entered a room.
A conversation began among people who were already there.
Even the actors who appeared to be alone were surrounded by a stage.
The background was always there.
So naturally the traveller began to wonder about the background of the world itself.
He waited until the performance ended.
Then he walked backstage.
There he found scenery everywhere.
Hills.
Forests.
Houses.
Roads.
Seas.
He approached the stage manager.
“What is behind the scenery?”
“More scenery.”
“And behind that?”
“More.”
The traveller continued asking.
Behind the house was a painted street.
Behind the street was a painted city.
Behind the city was a painted mountain.
Behind the mountain was another painted landscape.
The traveller laughed.
“You have made the world very large.”
“We have made it very deep,” said the stage manager.
“But surely there must be a final background.”
The stage manager looked at him.
“Why?”
“Because every scene needs one.”
“Does it?”
The traveller pointed towards the stage.
“There.”
The stage manager shook his head.
“What?”
“The stage.”
“And what does the stage stand on?”
The traveller looked beneath it.
“The floor.”
“And the floor?”
“The theatre.”
“And the theatre?”
The traveller hesitated.
“You see the problem.”
“Yes.”
The stage manager smiled.
“You are looking for the stage on which the theatre itself stands.”
The traveller walked outside.
He looked at the building.
It stood on the earth.
He looked at the earth.
It was surrounded by air.
He looked towards the sky.
There was space.
He began to imagine what might lie beyond it.
But the thought stopped him.
If there were another region of space, it would still be space.
If there were another place beyond the universe, that place would belong to whatever larger universe contained it.
He remembered the Gate.
He had done this before.
He had taken a boundary and turned it into a landscape.
He returned to the theatre.
The stage manager was waiting.
“Suppose,” said the traveller, “there was no background.”
The stage manager nodded.
“Can you imagine it?”
The traveller tried.
He imagined darkness.
But darkness filled a space.
He imagined silence.
But silence existed where sound could have been.
He imagined emptiness.
But emptiness required something that might have been there.
He imagined a blank stage.
But a blank stage was still a stage.
He sat down.
“Every time I remove the background, I seem to leave another background behind.”
“Yes.”
“And if I remove space, there is nowhere for the background to be.”
“Yes.”
“If I remove time, there is no duration in which it can remain.”
“Yes.”
“If I remove everything that distinguishes one thing from another—”
The stage manager interrupted him.
“Then what would make it a background?”
The traveller looked at the empty stage.
He suddenly understood.
A background was not simply something behind a thing.
It was something against which the thing could be distinguished.
The stage did not merely sit beneath the actor.
It made the actor visible as an actor.
The silence did not merely surround the sound.
It allowed the sound to stand out.
The darkness did not merely lack light.
It made the light distinguishable.
The ground did not merely lie beneath the tree.
It gave the tree a place from which to emerge.
The traveller walked onto the stage.
“So a background is not nothing.”
“No.”
“It is a condition of distinction.”
“Yes.”
“And a foreground cannot exist without some background against which it becomes a foreground.”
The stage manager nodded.
The traveller looked around.
“What, then, was the background of the universe?”
The stage manager did not answer.
The traveller waited.
At last he said:
“If the universe is everything relevant to the question, there cannot simply be another region behind it.”
“No.”
“There cannot be another time behind it.”
“No.”
“There cannot be another state behind it.”
“No.”
“And there cannot be a cosmic stage waiting for the universe to enter.”
The stage manager smiled.
“The stage is part of the play.”
The traveller looked at him.
That sentence seemed to echo through the theatre.
The stage is part of the play.
He looked at the audience.
They were part of the theatre.
He looked at the lamps.
They were part of the performance.
He looked at the walls.
They were part of the building.
There was nowhere to stand outside the whole arrangement and watch it appear.
Then something occurred to him.
Perhaps he had been imagining the beginning incorrectly.
He had imagined something arriving.
Something appearing.
Something emerging against something already there.
But perhaps the first beginning was not like that.
Perhaps the first beginning was the emergence of the distinction itself.
He looked at the stage.
Suppose there were no actor.
No stage.
No darkness.
No light.
No audience.
No theatre.
Nothing that could be called background.
Nothing that could be called foreground.
Then what would it mean for something to appear?
Nothing could appear against anything.
But perhaps—
The traveller stopped.
The stage manager watched him.
“Perhaps what?”
“Perhaps the first difference did not appear against a background.”
The stage manager said nothing.
“Perhaps the first difference created the background and the foreground together.”
The traveller looked towards the empty stage.
“This is different.”
“Yes.”
“It means there was no stage before the first performance.”
“No.”
“There was no theatre waiting for the actors.”
“No.”
“The theatre and the performance belong to the same beginning.”
The stage manager nodded.
The traveller felt the strange vertigo that had accompanied him at the Gate.
He had been trying to imagine the first thing.
But perhaps there could be no first thing without a background against which it could be distinguished.
And perhaps there could be no background without something to stand against it.
Foreground and background were not two things, one of which existed first.
They were born together.
A distinction created both sides.
The traveller walked to the centre of the stage.
“Then what was the first difference a difference from?”
The stage manager smiled.
“That is the question.”
The traveller waited.
But this time no answer came.
Instead, the lamps went out.
The theatre disappeared.
For a moment there was no stage.
No audience.
No scenery.
No darkness even, because there was nothing against which darkness could be distinguished.
Then, somewhere in the silence, a single light appeared.
Not upon a stage.
Not against a wall.
Not in a room.
It simply appeared.
And with its appearance, something else appeared too.
A darkness around it.
The traveller could not tell which had come first.
The light?
The darkness?
Or the distinction between them?
He realised that he had been trying to find the first thing when perhaps the beginning was not a thing at all.
Perhaps it was a difference.
And perhaps a difference did not need a background waiting behind it.
Perhaps it created one.
The light grew brighter.
The darkness became deeper.
Neither existed as what it was until the other could be distinguished from it.
The traveller stood very still.
And for the first time, even the word first began to wobble.
For what does first mean when there is not yet an order?
What does background mean when there is not yet a foreground?
What does difference mean when there is nothing against which difference can be measured?
The traveller whispered the question:
If there was no background, what could the first difference be a difference from?
The theatre remained silent.
But somewhere in that silence, the traveller sensed that the next question was waiting.
It was not about the beginning.
It was not about what came first.
It was about something more primitive.
Something that might have been there before even first could mean anything.
What makes a difference a difference?
No comments:
Post a Comment