We went towards this park where there are often skids drinking cans of Black Label. The light was orange and I could see that the clouds were getting wider and thinner. It seemed as though they were being stretched towards some other end. In a sense I was riding that bike to get to some other end. That bike and I went around for a long time. I was always using it to get from some diversion or another. I lived in this city where that park was on and off for a few years.

There were some women involved. They would cause me to get on that bike and ride towards them. Sometimes away from them. The sky was constantly orange when I was on that bike. I put cameras on it to record where I was going in case anyone wanted to see it at some point in the future. I showed it to some people in this other place where I was living. They thought that the hotel was a temple.

I wonder what could have become of that bicycle. But they come and go. The places I am going to seem to come and go. The people who inhabit the spaces where the bicycles compels me to ride come and go. Soon there will be a new place to go.

The password is go. All systems are “go”. I’m looking for a more efficient means to power this blood machine. It’s running on something else, something that I am finding harder and harder to mine, create, falsify. It comes from some reservoir that I know is non-renewable. I am always, it seems, seeking cleaner sources of energy. Perhaps this is what is compelling me to run, and if that is the case then all of this is some circular exercise of consumption and expense. It’s like filling up a container so I can see how fast it will empty. And to repeat this exercise until I find the perfect size of the exit hole that would allow a certain level of fluid to be maintained in the container while still filling what ultimately is an emptying vessel. I’m trying to find this level in this container so I can take a marker and make a line on the outside of the container to establish the event. This explains why I studied economics.

Equilibrium. If there is some point where balance is achieved, that’s where I need to be. I’ll go there. But to get there I have to ride all these fucking bicycles, two at a time, three at a time, one foot on the left pedal of one bike,. An ass cheek on the seat of another, and an unsteady hand trying to steer the third. The more bicycles I can ride at once the more interesting it is. In fact, if I can maintain a certain number of bikes running at the same time, that challenge can run parallel to the line drawing exercise I mentioned earlier. Scissors and markers.

When I was 7 I could read music. My teacher wanted me to compose something. She said I was good at it. I left that place when I was 10. I forget how to read music now. I tried to invent another means by which one could visually represent sound by a series of crooked and straight lines of different lengths and angles when I was 11. I was listening to Mr. Mister. I took those broken wings. I think Starship was next. They built that city on Rock. And roll. I took up the clarinet. Actually I wanted to play the drums. I left that place when I was 12. The next t place I went to didn’t have anyone to teach me how to play the clarinet. But there was an ocean in the backyard. You win some, you lose some.

Narrow lines, fissures, cracks in the wall, wrinkles. I can’t see anything without my glasses. If I look into a bright light I see bacteria. I think they are on my retina. I’ve never actually addressed this. It’s probably not the case. I like the thought of being close to my bacteria. The fact that I could actually see them just like that is highly appealing. Makes me think that I’m not just Human™ but human. Makes vision more interesting. Why trust one perspective and not the other?

Maybe I need to get another bicycle. Maybe if I had a new bicycle I could go somewhere suitably and equally as new. I have this friend who wants to settle down. Some girl dumped him recently. Such events tend to compel others to seek stability. He just might do it though. He’s full of surprises this guy. Maybe he just needs a new bicycle.

Bicycles are good that way because they are easy to steer. You can do so with the slightest movement. And your off in some other direction altogether. It doesn’t take that much effort to avoid a diversion. Just a slight twitch and you can go somewhere else entirely. Just a slight twitch and you can be someone else entirely.

If a Frisbee had two ends rather than an infinite number of ends, and if I threw it towards the sun hard enough, I’d like to think it would fall down to the earth and split it open, and there would be red magma underneath, thick, viscous, and engaging, murmuring in warm tones and inviting me to have a taste. If you throw anything towards the sky hard enough, it will fall down. In Australia they have boomerangs. But those are horizontally inclined in terms of their interest in seeing you again; I’m not terribly interested in the horizon because it doesn’t exist anyway. The world is round, the horizon is a scam. I always wanted to ride that ship off the end of the world with those Spanish zealots, but it’s just not going to happen. So to hell with that shit. People who are down with the horizon are just getting duped. Fuck that. I’m into the up and down.

Our perspectives bind us to the curvature of the earth, rendering “straight” or “to the left” really boring because nothing is really straight anyway horizontally speaking. But I can understand what a straight line means if I look up, because then the line never ends, it just goes and goes. It’s nice to think that it might hit something eventually. I’m waiting for affordable nanotechnology to allow me to build a tower straight up to that point, like an elevator. Straight down is the centre of the earth or hell depending on your rationality, both of which seem appealing. If I go straight down enough, down becomes up. So that way a straight line never really has to succumb to horizontal distortion. A straight line up and down doesn’t have to take any shit from anyone.

This person saw me when I walked by. He glanced at me. I glanced at him. I drew a caricature of him in my mind last night, I’m trying to render it here. He was wearing a towel bound around his head. If you were to take the fabric and hold it towards the back of your head, it would be longer on the left hand than the right; you’d take the longer end and wind it around your head until the two ends were of approximate equal length on the right side of your head, and then you’d tuck one end inside the other. He was wearing sandals made of a tire. His breath smelled like pesticide. Once, I saw him contorting on the dirt floor. He could switch from being supine on the floor to standing on his left two feet in an instant. After standing he would being to sing, but would fall off balance due to his bad breath. He got a new mobile phone. I added my number. Then he left on his motorcycle. This person is a composite image. He is comprised of many layers, transparent in the light parts and opaque in the dark parts. He stands straight up and down when he has to, falls off kilter when he is drunk. And he is drunk most of the time.

When he sleeps he succumbs to gravity and dreams with perspective intact, though if you really wanted to observe him lying you’d have to tilt your head ninety degrees to look into his closed eyes. He might dream of me. I’ve dreamt of him. He’s always around.

He has a state sanctioned identification card. He showed it to me. It said he is a land officer. I really like this person. Everyone does. But he’s always falling towards the horizon.

I’m watching you. I like what I see. I’m writing about what I see. I’ve taken on the role of an author. I am rendering a piece that would describe to you, dear reader, what it is I have been doing with a video camera lately, and why I am doing it. In reading it, you will probably agree with some elements, disagree with others, and hopefully question all of it. Within that exercise of coming to terms with what you read, you internalize that which is written, processing it in your own mind, and base your interpretation solely on the reference points that you have acquired over time, uniquely. They are distinct to you, and they serve to construct your perspective; pure, distilled, and yours alone. If I ever get to meet you, I would like to think that you and I could interact, and that this piece would serve as a catalyst for some dialogue. It’s precious. I can think of few things that award as much satisfaction as interacting with someone on the basis of some exercise where I have attempted to make my perspective explicit. It serves to challenge and recognize the reference points I have internalized, because through interaction with you I am forced to revaluate how I navigate my own experiences. I think this is called growing up.

I state this here, at the risk of stating the obvious, because this seemingly simplistic mapping of an interaction has given rise to a series of themes that, in their overlap and permutation, have become far from simple for me to negotiate, in my own mind in any case. I’m currently a doctoral research candidate. I spend my time asking questions. I reside in a community of 700 people, mostly farmers. My role in this community is varied, depending on whom you ask. My own take on what it is I am doing in this community is arguably equally as varied; it grows and develops into other representations regularly, catalyzed by what someone I had spoken to had told me in response to my query, the way their eyes moved to the left and then back to me after their response, and how I then interpreted and internalized their vocal and physical response to me. This awareness and analysis of my role in this community and the reactions I facilitate in these interactions rings within like some clarion call on a seemingly daily basis. I welcome this.

I ask these questions as I am trying to understand how a nation state deals with regulating technologies that are mired in uncertain consequences – consequences that may have been explicitly characterized statistically by probabilistic conjecture, but consequences that exist within a realm of risk and uncertainty regardless. If one doesn’t know what will happen when you introduce a technology into society, how does one proceed to manage it in an effort to maximize the welfare of a vast and often disparate number of parties who have vested interests in using the technology? I’m interested in a transgenic variety of cotton called Bt Cotton, and am basing my field research in the Vidharba region of Maharashtra, India. There has been a lot of discussion in political, academic, activist, and scientific circles about Bt Cotton, and the popular media has latched on to the rather sensationalist theme of farmers committing suicide in the region. But there is very little in terms of trying to gauge how farmers themselves navigate the technology and the terms they use to do so. I am particularly interested in how farmers understand the two terms that frame the debate on transgenics – risk and uncertainty – according to their internalized understanding, unique as they are from the parties listed previously. If one wishes to discuss how farmers identify with and use these new technologies, one must understand at the outset where farmers are coming from in terms of semantics and discursive reference points.

The problem I face is rooted in the person I have become. My awareness of maturing in a particular societal context has facilitated a reflexive paradox with regards to how I can ethically, efficiently, and successfully conduct this research endeavor. My perspective is borne of two cultural reference points; one of being the son of Bengali parents: macher jhol, listening to Anup Jalota’s voice in the afternoon, and going to Durga Puja in a hotel conference room somewhere every October. And on the other hand, being brought up in rural eastern Canada: Solomon Gundy, amplifier distortion, rugged 808 beats , lyrical nihilism, and game show hosts offering mercenary salvation. These are all admittedly superficial reference points, and I state them here not as a list of events that have been seminal factors in my development in full, but rather as an exercise in depicting variety. They are stated here to characterize in part my awareness of who I am as a work in progress.

2. An Exercise.

If this is who I have become, then how do I consider my faculty as someone to enter into a community that is geographically and spatially distinct from my own? As a doctoral student, I have been subject to the perspectives and directives of the academy. Trying to come to grips with the thought processes of those within a community via ethnographic inquiry and then rendering an interpretation of a series of events into something akin to a definitive description is not a novel exercise . Without a distinct awareness ones positionality, the outcome of the exercise may amount to something approaching a self-referential series of recollections and events, filtered through a lens tinted with personal, seminal experiences. The academy is aware of this, acutely. But this is a dynamic that simply is; you can’t become someone else in an attempt to be objective. You may attempt to abandon who you are temporarily for the sake of acting out a role scripted by yourself or as presented by another directive party, but you will return back to your original self, furthered enriched as you may be due to the temporary flight from normalcy, but “yourself” regardless. Ultimately, you can only refer to what you allegedly “know”, as formed by your own unique experiences, and what you author about the experience can only reflect this. I’m not entirely certain what objectivity truly means in such a context.

The basis of the problem is located at that initial entry point into a dialogue: the first question asked by you as a researcher. It is you who has formed the question. It is you that will then internalize the response and offer a further query to better isolate some semblance of a theme, notion, or narrative. And while it appears that you are engaging in a bilateral exchange, the end product is often a unilateral exercise in authoring the results of those interactions you have had. Those who formed the basis of your understanding are embedded in the paper; translated, transcribed, arguably transparent, or perhaps translucent. I accept that if not for asking questions, the exercise cannot occur. Yet I have to be accountable for the dynamics that arise from asking the questions in the first place. On the one hand, my role as a doctoral candidate is to learn how to do research, via a combination of my appreciating the experiences of others and through my own experiences. On the other hand, my role is to represent a certain reality to an audience who has never been to this community. It is this process of contextual accuracy in my representing my dynamic with this community and how I rationalized my perception of what I found that is an issue.

The only solution that appears feasible is to reallocate the responsibility of asking the question to those individuals who possess the experiences I wish to understand better. An exercise in asking farmers to define terms alone has presented a combination of what they expect I want to hear and their own honest interpretation of these terms. The challenge is to distil the latter down by removing the former as much as possible. In another representation of this dichotomy, it is to remove myself from this process as a directive element, and to allow those I am working with the opportunity to navigate these questions on their own terms. It is, in essence, to retain the integrity of the purity of perspective.

3. Ways And Means: A Theoretical Framework.

My attempt at addressing this challenge is through using the medium of the moving image as a tool to facilitate this role transferral. My interest in using the medium is not due to the explicit outcomes of a production (i.e. edited content for wide dissemination), but rather the process undertaken by others in depicting a fictional account of a series of events for eventual broadcast. It is the process of telling a story to another and how individuals working together come to some semblance of a consensual agreement on how to satisfactorily do so that is of interest to me, as that process serves as a catalyst among those negotiating the exercise to ask questions. Questions that I do not have the faculty to ask, as they are rooted in the distinct experiences of the participants. There are two bodies of work that I have drawn upon to facilitate this process as I have pursued it: first, what has been termed Participatory Video, and second, Participatory Rural Appraisal techniques. There has been some work in merging these two approaches by capitalizing on the common themes that both present, though mostly in a development context . In a research-oriented context, and in light of the issues I have attempted to make explicit here, I believe that there is a pressing need to recognize these symmetries in a practical, applied sense.

3.1 Of Participation and Pragmatism.

In a development context, the term participation has been used to such a wide extent that one cannot help but question what it means in a current, applied context. Shirley White describes participation in a developmental communication context as:

[…] a person’s active involvement in interaction, dialog, sharing, consensual decision-making and action-taking. Participatory communication is the foundation of this process. Empowering people around the globe to express themselves, develop their human potential, and begin to seize opportunities to lift themselves out of poverty and become a person valuable to the self and community, has been the ultimate outcome of the participation process (White 2003:33) .

The origins of the term in this context can be traced to the seminal work in the late 1960s of Paulo Freire on rural communities being actively involved in their own development via techniques that challenged the typical unilateral teacher to student dynamic and dichotomy , and more recently in the work of Robert Chambers on Rapid (and more recently, Participatory) Rural Appraisal, or PRA . Chambers’ work presented an alternative framework to fieldwork practitioners, bound by the pragmatic realities of distance, time, and language, but seeking to better understand the challenges faced by members of a particular community. It was a response to other efforts in providing “assistance” at the level of a community, where a third party would ascertain the problem, decide on a solution, and then return to the geographic area where the assistor is based. The boundaries outlined here often implied that the process of ascertaining the problem may have been based on a short visit to a community and concluding on what the problem is based on cursory observation or dialogue. Solutions were then based on the assistor deciding what the problem was using his or her framework of analysis to come to a conclusion, and that due to the geographic distance between the community and the assistor, that the implementation of the solution would be then left for the most part for the community to maintain and manage, with monitoring and evaluation exercises undertaken by the assistor within a specified timeframe only. PRA accepts these boundaries, and presents a pragmatic solution in light of these challenges via the incorporation of the community in all three elements, thereby facilitating participation.

Box 1: The Hallmarks of the PRA Approach

- Sustained participant observation over time in both formal and informal settings
- Group exercises or interviews that incorporate those living within the community to depict their reality through visual exercises and to determine points of entry as a consequence (i.e. diagrams depicting experiences, events, or relationships, developing calendars of particular events, generating maps based on transect walks)
- Generating procedural feedback by sharing the outcomes of these exercises with the community
- A focus on “well-being” (as defined by those in the community) as opposed to income to frame comparative exercises among members of the community
- “Role-reversal”, or reflexive processes that encourage both parties (especially the researcher) to question, learn and modify their approaches based on sustained interaction
- Non-exclusive and transparent inclusion among community members with the process

What is now termed Participatory Video (PV) is based primarily on the efforts of Don Snowden, who used video in the early 1980s with fishing communities in the Fogo Islands in Newfoundland, Canada. The aim was to identify common struggles and use the content as an advocacy tool by sharing the visual content with policy makers at the level of central governance . In essence, PV is an exercise whereby the process of production involves those that would commonly be termed “actors” in a documentary context and relegates them more as “producers”, thereby shifting the dynamic of who produces content, who determines what the story is for, and for what use the content will be applied towards.

Box 2: The Hallmarks of the PV Approach

- To remove the distinctions between producer, scriptwriter and actor by incorporating all as participants in the process over time, thereby ensuring that those producing and being represented in the content have more control over how they are represented
- Challenging the notion that engaging content can only be produced by parties with expensive equipment and significant broadcast oriented expertise
- Targeting particular audiences for eventual dissemination (i.e for advocacy, research, or monitoring purposes), with a muted focus on production quality and more emphasis on the process of content development
- The most relevant element of the exercise is the process of deciding how to tell a story, as doing so via discussion and deliberation within and among members of a community facilitates a pointed exercise in establishing what the issues truly are

The potential application of PV as a tool is very malleable, and can be tailored accordingly. But the common thread is the assumption that that the audiovisual medium presents a visceral, pragmatic, and immediate form of depicting a particular theme, and that control over that medium can be held by anyone, and used for a variety of purposes, with explicit reference to the terms championed by the producers .

3.2 Of Application and Symmetry.

While PV may find its roots in an exercise that took place forty years ago, it has begun to take on a new relevance in recent practice, due primarily to three reasons. First, devices to capture digital video (DV) are now widespread and relatively affordable . Cassette or card based DV cameras, mobile phones, and digital still cameras with video capture capability are common and becoming increasingly affordable. Second, editing and compressing content requires a simple desktop computer, an optical media writer, and either proprietary software (i.e. Windows Movie Maker within Windows XP and Vista) or free, open source distributions (i.e. dyne:bolic) . Third, sharing this content to a wide audience is possible to anyone with direct or indirect access to connectivity through portals such as YouTube or Google Video. Given this, the opportunity to use PV in conjunction with PRA presents itself as logical and pragmatic in a research context.

Box 3: Why Should PRA and PV Be Used Together as Complementary Research Tools?

- Facilitating a group scripting exercise on the broad themes of ones research facilitates a minimization of the intrusive nature and bias of the researcher from the exercise of both forming and asking questions, as community members themselves undertake the process of how best to present a narrative
- Broadcasting the resultant content (i.e. on a TV set, a laptop screen, or an LCD projector) facilitates immediate interaction and feedback with the participants and the broader community and gives rise to fora where further discussion can be had, often immediately after the screening
- The audiovisual medium is appealing and easily understood, and community members are drawn to the process, thereby facilitating wider inclusion
- Participants realize that creating content is not a highly technical affair, which furthers the possibility of future efforts of producing content to suit their own objectives, according to their own terms

The precise objective of my using digital video has been to address my positionality as a researcher, and to minimize my directive role as an “asker of questions” . In practice, this was achieved by facilitating a series of productions undertaken by farmers on a number of themes, not limited to my own research interests. The objective is to distil themes that are of concern to the community via a means that minimizes the possibility of my gauging the concerns based solely on responses of queries rooted in my own perspective alone, and to then address and analyse these themes in my research.

Box 4. How Have I Applied PRA and PV In Practice?

1. Establishing links. Prior to my visiting the community, I required contacts. I was looking for an organization that was both working in the area, as well as one interested in using video in the context I was proposing. The rationale here was that I did not want this exercise to be isolated to the time I was in the community, but to ensure that after I left, there would be someone willing to support the initiative and to widen the number of other parties who could be involved in the process, either as contributors or viewers. I decided to work with YUVA, an NGO based in Nagpur, about three hours away from the community . This was how I met the family I have been staying with, as well as others in the surrounding areas also involved in YUVA’s work.
2. Who are you? My first introduction to using the tool entailed house-to-house visits to ask the elementary questions that would allow me to focus logistically and thematically (i.e. your name, how much land you have, what you are growing). This would be achieved by my first asking these questions to one household, and after their response, to show them how to engage the camera to record and then ask the same questions to the next household, with that person showing the next how to engage the camera to record, and so on. This was done over 170 households over three days, which was then screened back to the community each evening for their comments and reactions.
3. What’s Your Story? A piece of paper would be divided into six sections (i.e. six scenes), and after giving an example of a story, I would then ask groups of people gathered in a coming public space to tell me a story in these six (or more) boxes by drawing it out, referring to themes of their own choice. In the first instance of doing this, one of the participants wrote down a dialogue to complement the storyboard with input from others, which was beyond what I had expected, but has since stuck procedurally.
4. The Shoot. The participants would then find actors and a “set” to shoot the story, based on the proceeding exercise. After deciding on who the cameraperson, sound tech, actors, and extras would be, they would then would shoot it. All editing was done in camera, which was relatively easy to do given the planned and sequential nature of each storyboarded scene.
5. The Screening. After the shoot was done and credits were added (i.e. a still shot of a piece of paper with the information written on it), my camera was hooked into my laptop, which was then fed into an LCD projector and enlarged onto a white bedsheet approximately ten feet high. It was broadcast in a common space where people could easily gather, and began around 8pm (i.e. after dinner). An amplifier and speaker were borrowed from the panchayat hall and a microphone was placed near the speaker of my laptop .
6. Late Night with KR. After the piece was screened, one person (KR, name changed here) from a neighbouring village (about a 15-20 minute walk away) who has done some voluntary work with YUVA and myself, acted as talk show host, and people came up to the mic and in front of the camera, which projected their interaction to the rest of the audience, about 200 people. KR would ask questions (in this case, about farming and cotton in particular) and conversations (often quite entertaining) would occur.
7. Processing and Analysis. Elements 2-6 would usually occur over an eight hour period over the course of a day. After it was all over (around midnight), I would begin to (and at the time of this writing, am) get the footage translated of the piece and the talk show, and attempt to make the necessary links to my research in terms of themes (i.e. risk and uncertainty) and their representation.

While 1-6 above are fairly procedural in nature, it is the last element, processing and analysis, that presents the most pressing challenge of all.

4. Processing and Analysis: A Case Study.

By way of an example, consider the piece on farmer suicide referenced above. There are distinct themes that arise here: what constitutes a “good” farmer (i.e. following instructions as presented by scientific institutions, avoiding debt, capitalizing on new technologies such as seed and pesticides, accumulating material wealth) and a “bad” farmer (i.e. what could be termed laziness, alcoholism, the acceptance of debt, and the resultant resort to suicide as a final solution the problems incurred from his decisions). Of interest to me here was this notion of formal regulation in terms of farming practice, as well as the role of credit in farmers’ decision-making processes (as voiced by the main scriptwriter at the end of the piece). The narrative seems to allege that in order to be successful as a farmer, one must capitalize on formal knowledge, and avoid informal debt.

In terms my own work, the link here is the relationship between traditional farming practice and new, “scientific” techniques, such as using Bt Cotton and other inputs. “Progress” is determined by successful application of these new technologies, and that information on how to do so should be gleaned from third parties; in this case, an agricultural university. This will lead to success: having two gas cylinders, a “Hero Honda Super Splendor”, cotton plants “up to my waist with 100 bolls and 200 flowers”. Via the more traditional elements of addressing my research objectives (i.e. formal/informal group interviews), I have found that an understanding of regulation at the level of farmers is not based on government directives or legal frameworks, but rather by practices undertaken by farmers for generations; what could be termed “traditional knowledge”. This exercise of production has provided additional insight on how farmers consider the introduction of new technologies, and the resultant onset of new ways of “regulating” their farming practice. If you want to succeed and be prosperous, you must adapt to new technologies in an informed manner, as the consequences of not doing so are dire indeed. This is what lies at the basis of a decision making process.

Prior to this exercise, I had not asked about what constitutes a “good” or “bad” farmer; I did not really consider it on those terms, as I was more focused on an understanding of regulation, risk, and uncertainty. In allowing those I was working with an opportunity to form their own narrative, I was able to gain access to a process of asking a question that I would not have asked otherwise, with the corresponding production and themes arising (i.e. a judgement of progress as fuelled by behavioural change via technological adoption as a means to avoid severe consequences) furthering my own capacity to understand what I was seeing.

5. Is This Valid?

Ultimately, as a research candidate, I am expected to produce a document that will serve to summarize, expose, and detail the findings I have derived via a process of inquiry and analysis. To do so, I will author a document (i.e. a thesis) that may very well fall prey to the same elements of authorial bias that I have been seeking to address via the methodology, and in my particular my interpretation of what I have witnessed, experienced, and internalized according to my own discursive reference points. It is an acute awareness of this dynamic that has led me to pursue this methodology; I have to accept the existence of this, as I am not clear on how one can go about the exercise without reference to what one “knows”.

I would never argue that using video in such a context could replace traditional systems of applied fieldwork inquiry in a research context. There has to be an initial familiarity with the people one is working with, which can be secured from both historical experience and everyday interaction (i.e. living in the community for some time, asking strategic questions, and using the extant literature as reference points to guide your inquiry). That said, the use of a video as a tool has opened up new doors of inquiry and analysis that I do not think I would have been able to pursue if not for offering those I was (am) working with the opportunity to ask the questions themselves.

I’ve been wary to use the term participation in this piece to describe my work; it has been used here to describe existing bodies of work. Participation is a term that I am not comfortable with, due to it being used in so many contexts in the development studies literature. In my view, research must be participatory by construction. Lending the term towards an exercise implies that there is “non-participatory” research. But I don’t know what that means. How can you conduct research without an awareness of how your distinct perceptions of the world around you – as compared to those you are working with – form your analysis, and pursue strategies to address that awareness and potential of authorial bias?

This is an ongoing exercise. At the time of this writing, I will be returning to this community, and we will begin another production on historical understandings of the information required to prosper as a farmer, a theme again determined by a new team of farmers. The results remain to be seen. If we meet again, I’ll tell you all about it.

I face these questions on a regular basis, echoing through my mind like some clarion call, arguably also referred to as a reality check. While this may simply be a state of nature when you are trying to relate what you’ve seen to someone else, I’m doing it now as a member of the academy. The academy. The academy presents guidelines, and a methodology to do research. It is rooted in principles; principles of how to interact with people, of ethics, of constructs rooted in classical treatises of how someone who is not part of a community is to interact with that community. It is well documented. And I am certainly not the first to wonder what my role in such an exercise is. But the problem I face now is acute, because it is my life. It is how I am spending my waking hours. I spend my time in a village. I am trying to document their perceptions to an outside audience. I don’t even know who the audience is. They’re out there somewhere. I meet them sometimes. Sometimes I like them. Other times I wish I could just run away. Sometimes I am the audience. I’m an attentive audience when I want to be. If I can interact without feeling the intruder in any case.

I am not sure where these lines are drawn. I am not sure when and where one can state that my role is delineated as such. But I feel as though the academy has drawn these lines for me. And I know that I had little to do with that exercise. So I don’t really feel bound to it. If anything, I want to redefine these lines. I don’t think that they apply in reality. I don’t think that they actually mean anything to anyone in the syntax utilized because it’s often impenetrable. Perhaps that is the construct, and perhaps it is strategic. If you can’t understand what I am saying, then you can’t engage with me, because you don’t speak the language or appreciate the terms of reference. Or perhaps that is more a function of my being trained as an economist and my colleagues appearing to take pleasure in being incomprehensible. Econometrica is good bathroom reading.

I wonder what would happen if someone outside the academy started to ask the questions that would form the basis of a research objective. I wonder what would happen if the academy suddenly became irrelevant, much as record labels and becoming irrelevant, or publishing houses…if you can’t centralize processes, then you can’t award the exercise of validation to a select few. And if you can’t limit that process to a select few, then the rules that determine what is and is not acceptable no longer apply. And then, it appears, most anything can get out there and appreciated by anyone. Or so it seems in any case.

I don’t want to ask the questions. I don’t want to have to decide who should read this stuff. I don’t want to have to isolate my approach of how I go about understanding a series of events according to a predetermined methodology based on someone elses experiences.

I want to be able to approach situations based on what those I am interacting with perceive. I want to be able to facilitate a process rather than direct it. I don’t really want to have to tell anyone what to do, or how to do it, or how to say it, or where to say it. I just don’t. I’m not comfortable in that role. I’m not comfortable in telling others how to approach the unknown. I want to be able to allow others the opportunity to do so according to their own terms.

But perhaps I am deluded. Perhaps I am too caught up in ideologues myself. Perhaps I am indeed part of the academy that I am trying to address disparagingly. Perhaps.

Anything worth having in life is not going to come easy. When you are trying to do things that may go in directions that you simply cannot imagine, it’s a problem. Or at least it can be at times.

Maybe I’m just not comfortable in this position.

The problem is this:

I am not comfortable asking people questions about things they know better than I do. I am especially not comfortable asking these questions when I can’t even speak their language. And so I try to remedy this by getting them to ask the questions for me. But they are probably only asking the questions that they think I want to hear being asked.

Below my balcony was a market.  There were two paanwallahs directly in front of me, one down a staircase, the other framed by bags of Kurkure and Lux shampoo satchets.  I preferred the latter.  He could have been Bengali, he could have been Assamese.  Assamese sounds like Bengali with a stuffed up nose and half a bottle of vodka.  I didn’t know why I was there.  Days earlier I was riding a bicycle nine and a half time zones away.  It was October; the leaves were turning.  Leaves turning is often a sign for me that it is indeed time to leave.  And so I left; I scripted a part for myself to play and was acting out the role.  I am a teacher.  I teach people how to throw their eyes at others.  I never speak any language; I move my hands and twitch to offset conversation.  Someone else speaks for me.  When they do my mind wanders, and it is only brought back to me when silence arrives and eyes are looking at me to begin again.  I smile, I stare at my fingers, at the windows that provide fleeting glimpses of romance on the park bench 4 stories below, of birds that don’t know anything about me, at bricks off kilter and cracked.  I smoke cigarettes between the third and fourth floor and try to count the streaks of paan infused saliva that stain the corner of the walls red, one, two, eighty-five, and tending towards infinity where the corner meets the ground.  And then I return to my role as a teacher, full of alleged wisdom that I am expected to impart on others.  I do my best.

But regardless of my not really understanding what I was doing there and what I am doing here, I knew I was there and am here as I see myself in the mirrors of motorcycles, or because others acknowledge my presence; a stare, a look of disapproval, or a man avoiding my sphere of movement.  I know it, though most of those devices I have that tell me the time are not working properly, I know it as when I wash myself at night the water turns to brown.  It could not be so if were not there, if were not here, if I were not real, if I were truly clean.

Before I left where I was earlier I had been with someone.  She stroked my hair and my face like some dispossessed Barbie doll.  She told me how much, how many, when, and if she could.  She told me that she didn’t care about anything else, at least for that night.  When I was in Shillong she told me that she couldn’t bear to see me anymore. I walked out of the where I read her words and into the rain, grey, silt ridden, with that fucking mist all over my body, my cavities.  It made me think of her; opaque, yet moist and healthy, well healthy for some purposes anyway.  If I had chlorophyll instead of shit in my veins I think I would have appreciated it.  But then, it didn’t help me exchange any gas, anything that would sustain someone or something else. It made me keep my head towards the ground, with a slight strain in my face, craning my neck slightly to make sure I didn’t bump into anyone or fall in the gaps in the pavement created by Bangladeshi laborers, or, conversely, an effort to try to avoid my eyes from being pelted by 90 degree raindrops and any more unwelcome stimuli.  She is someone I used to know.  I seem to know a lot of people who I used to know.  I should keep a list of people who I used to know.  I can put their pictures up on street posts here in Ahmedabad with a caption that says ‘Missing’.  And leave a false telephone number.  Dial 1-800-FUGETIT.  Or 1-900-LEAVEME.  Or something equally as clever.  Or maybe I’ll just leave them in the back of mind where they can get a nice suntan.

I have been away from where I was before for almost 3 weeks now.  But really, it seems like much longer than that.  I’m still the same person, I just seem to have shrunk.  Or perhaps that person inside of me has gained weight while I have lost weight.  As I write this I am thinking of a café near Morningside Park in Manhattan.  I had a grilled panini with smoked salmon and melted goat cheese.  I was surrounded by people I had just met, with the exception of one.  I was desperately uninterested.  It was cloudy, misty. I sat on someone’s front step with a pack of Camels in one hand and someone else’s lighter in the other, and looked at the M60 coming and going from LaGuardia. I had gotten nailed the night before on cheap shooters at some bar near Columbia.  I bought a packet of Camel Lights from a Bangladeshi man.  I asked him in Bengali if we has from Bangladesh. Stupid question considering we was reading a Bangladsehi newspaper. He looked at me like I was a complete idiot.  I was pissed, so that was fairly accurate.  Bengali sounds like Assamese with tonsillitis and 7 shots of tequila.  Anyway, it was a good sandwich, but I was somewhere else at the time.  I called a girl I used to know on the telephone. I was thinking of her and how she used to make me feel as opposed to how she made me feel at that time.  She was in SoHo at the time, now she is somewhere in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles is a hole.  I have been there once in 1998, and I can only really recall three things.  First, I tried to score from some Mexican near a bank downtown.  I say downtown, but in reality that is a misnomer; Los Angeles doesn’t have one.  Or at least the one it has is empty except for textile shops owned by Mexicans and Punjabis.  I didn’t score, he couldn’t hook it up, he apologized.  The second thing was Hollywood in the morning.  It was much smaller than I thought.  I had breakfast in some diner plastered with allegedly famous people.  I had an omlette as per my habit.  I called my parents, but I can’t recall what I said.  I hadn’t slept in four days and nothing really made much sense; I was living in a classroom in Taiwan at the time and had decided to go to California for a few days.  I ended up in the Nevada desert surrounded by naked people bathing under a tree.  I didn’t really speak to anyone.  The third thing I remember was going to Compton to watch the sunset.  I had been a big fan of NWA when I was younger, and I had to check it out.  It seemed harmless.  I had a conversation with some random woman at a bus stop, a gas station attendant, and some children at a public library.  I went to a Soul Food restaurant for dinner and had ham hocks.  There were Mexican children in school uniforms on my bus.  Everyone’s face was orange with the light of the setting sun. The streets were lined with pawn shops and bail bond brokers.  The sunset burned my eyes clean.  I left for San Francisco that evening.

Los Angeles is lame.

Or does it matter?  I suppose if it didn’t really matter I wouldn’t be recalling any of this.  I can’t tell.  It’s too close to now, at least as far as the calendar says.

I think I first became aware of reality TV when I was in Denmark.  Big Brother was huge there.  It struck me as a rather silly means to passively engage in what appeared to be non-fiction; indeed, I think the appeal of the television show was the assertion that nothing was scripted, and that it allegedly allowed insights into the lives of people that you otherwise would not have access to interact with.  I qualify the preceding statement with the word “allegedly”, and for a reason.  It strikes me that these insights are based on what really amounts to a contrived depiction of reality.  It´s the same as when a child enters the room where his or her parents are having a party; the child may either act rambunctious, may behave in such a way that is somewhat unusual…in the sense that the child will talk loudly, say silly things, run around…for the sake of attention.  On the other hand, the child may become shy, and quiet, and awkward.  Both are reactions to a group of unknown (perhaps intoxicated) people, adults in particular.  This sense of their representation to the  “other” facilitates a form of behaviour that is somewhat unusual of the child.  But the catalyst here is based on a level of consciousness; the fact that the child knows he or she is being observed, watched.  When you place a group of people in front of a camera lens with the sole objective of being observed, their behaviour becomes somewhat stunted, as they are acutely aware that they are being watched.  And this is marketed as non-fiction.  People enjoy this, as it presents a rare opportunity to observe, to passively engage with a stranger who is behaving in a contrived manner due to their perceived and explicit awareness of being watched.  Of being watched to “act normal”.

But this is marketed as non-fiction, as “reality”.  I think that non-fiction and fiction have become interchangeable.  I am not sure of those who are ardent fans of “reality” TV believe that what the y are watching is not “scripted”.  While I would accept that the behaviour of these characters may not be explicitly scripted (though I do not easily accept this and have reservations about doing so) I wonder if “scripted” is perhaps too narrow a definition.  To script something in the context of the moving image means to explicitly represent or characterize certain actions, personality cues, movements, sentiments, so on, ostensibly to generate a perception of a certain character.  This is entertainment, is at allows the viewer an opportunity to gauge how convincing the representation is, and to perhaps draw on his or her set of relations to create a proxy for understanding and becoming more intimate with the character.  This is considered engagement, and if the characterization is done convincingly, the process is deemed successful and worthy of formal recognition via awards, accolades, monetary compensation and as an extension, fame, fortune, and public recognition.  The ability to relate to a “scripted” character is perhaps one of the primary desired outcomes of what is ultimately a false representation of an individual.  But this is acting; this is fiction. This is what we want to see, and someone who is particularly convincing is a “good” actor.

But we are all actors.  We are all liars, cheats, and politicians.  We all act strategically – though some more thatn others – to assert and achieve certain goals.  We navigate “reality” to suit our ambitions and ourselves.  This may seem pessimistic, perhaps even misanthropic.  This is not my intent.  While I do think humans are remarkably stupid in many ways. I am amazed by the capacity that exists among to cleverly take on various personalities to suit particular goals.  More specifically however, I am amazed by how “fictional” representations of characters represent in some peoples minds an accurate representation of reality.  This acceptance in some cases is enough for some to observe these events and consider them to be an accurate proxy of reality, scripted as it may be, and to utilise these “fictional” representations as a means to “learn” from.  In the context of uncertainty and doubt, some of us equate these “scripted” behavioural cues drawn from these “fictional” representations as being acceptable enough to base decisions upon.  And as such, fiction manifests non fiction, which becomes the fodder for reality, which is thus marketed as non fction, which then translates into real behaviour.  But is this behaviour fiction or non-fiction?  At which point do you draw the line and decide one is not the other?  And why do we find these representations so fascinating?  Are we so lazy that we are afraid of engaging in certain events due to the “fictional” outcomes we observe in the media?  Or does the fact that it was scripted (or not) amount to a representation of a catalyst for understanding and relation rooted in reality, in non-fiction, and as such, is true, real, and close to our hearts and minds?

Actors are liars.  Reality TV is fiction.  When I watch TV I can feel my fingernails growing and I feel like I should cut them.  I feel time passing and I feel like I am wasting it.  This is not good.  As far as I know, that´s non-fiction.  But if someone recorded me saying that and broadcasted it to others, it would become fictional.  You don´t know me.  I´m just some dude with fingernails.  And maybe I´m full of shit when I say “I want to cut my fingernails”.  But then again, maybe I´m not.  But you can´t ask me to verify this, as you are watching me at home on your TV, feet raised, curtains drawn, relaxed and at ease.  Chances are you don´t really care if I verify this or not.  It´s entertaining to you to hear me say “my fingernails are growing”.  Because you can relate to that.  You also have fingernails.  It´s mundane.  It´s boring.  It´s pedestrian.  It´s fascinating.

Fiction becomes non-fiction.  Non-fiction is fiction.  It doesn´t matter which term you use to qualify one or the other, because both terms are meaningless.  But we seem to want to relate desperately to other people.  We seem to want to relate our lives to strangers; not those strangers on the street as they pose the potential of danger, of uncertainty and the possibility of harm as this is what is depicted so often.  This culture of fear and apprehension is well documented.  But on TV passive engagement with strangers amounts to entertainment.  If we all had video cameras, think of what we could do with each other…we could all be actors, we could all play roles…and we could tell others this is reality.  And no one would really know.  I want to be an actor.  I am an actor.  I´m lying, I´m not really like this.  No actually, I am.  Can you relate?

In my current research, I am trying to understand, broadly speaking, what regulation means in the context of uncertainty.  More specifically, I am trying to look at how the state can manifest its authority via the regulation, legally binding or otherwise, to assert control over the people it claims to represent, protect, and serve.  Even more specifically, the context is the innovation, massive research and development, and resultant market availability of consumer products that contain genetically modified organisms.  But the previous statement contains a qualification, namely “legally binding or otherwise”.  From this, I will state a further qualification, perhaps a dichotomy: that of informal vs formal regulation.

I recently presented a paper on my work to date to a variety of academics and legal practitioners.  As I stood to speak, I stopped.  I asked everyone in the room to stand up, raise their right arm at a ninety degree angle to their body, and wave at me.  As they performed this rather asinine request, I wrote on an overhead projector, “why are you doing this”.  I noted to them that though none of them had any idea why they were standing up and waving at me, they all performed the act, in tandem, without question.  I argued they did this due to the informal regulatory framework that exists in formal settings that encourages people to not break the status quo, as to do so would draw possibly unwanted attention to the “outlier”.  I then drew a parallel to their behaviour and the behaviour of scientists who, while incapable of truly stating the long term effects of GMOs on human health due to the relatively short time frame they have been on the market and the artificial environment that laboratory tests are carried out within, would never admit to this ignorance.  To do so would violate the informally regulated system that has created an almost devotional following among policy makers in the word and opinion of formal science.  For a scientist to say to his peers, “actually, I know fuck all about what GMOs will do to us in the long run” will simply not fly, expletives included or otherwise.  They sat down and I proceeded.

This dichotomy of the informal vs. the formal is key in the context of uncertainty.  It appears to me that if the state cannot really say how a new technology released to the market will fare in practice, what will happen is that citizens, acting as agents who have the capacity to make a difference due to a subscription to democratic (in the universal sense) principles or simply economic realities (being in debt to a money lender who has a gun) will take matters into their own hands. Where the state fails in its role as representatives of the state, citizens will take the burden of representation on their own shoulders.  And there is no formal system that regulates that.  The premise is based on urgency, on common struggle and interests, and in some cases, life or death.

By way of a pragmatic example, consider the adoption of genetically modified cotton in India.  In one particular state, farmers have gone as far to kidnap representatives of Monsanto and the State Department of Agriculture due to the failure of Bt Cotton, a GM variety authorized by the government on the basis of scientific evidence.  While the reports did not provide evidence as to whether or not these farmers acted this way out of sheer desperation, or whether they had organized themselves under the aegis of a broader, more common struggle of other farmers, their actions could not be ignored.  It is worth noting that these actions exist and manifest in an environment where farmers have killed both themselves and their families due to unmanageable debt, debt incurred from private money lenders in order to afford and purchase these new technologies.

This is but one isolated example, but I present this here as a representation of the extent people whose livelihoods depends on what science would (not) call a technology burdened with uncertain effects would go.  The consequences of these effects are then politically advantageous, and desperation often translates into political opportunism and a fertile vote bank.  “Vote for me and I´ll kick Monsanto out.”  But the point is that what began as an informally (in the sense of the dichotomy presented earlier) regulated act manifests in a formally regulated act.  In this case, the state in question (for reference, Andhra Pradesh in southern India) has now banned Monsanto from their borders, and is actively seeking various forms of legal culpability to hold the firm responsible.  But who´s fault was this?  The firm or the state?  If the latter, is it really their fault?  They were, as we all do, acting on the basis of economic incentives.  Though they didn´t know the long term consequences of releasing the technology, they did, as there was demand from farmers for the technology.  Indeed, farmers have gone as far to travel 2000 km by train to get these seeds if they were not available in their own state.  They wanted it, the government released it, and no one really knew what would happen.  Meanwhile, the firm sells record amounts of GM Cotton seed in India, and conclude the release and the technology was a success.  Informally regulated acts can manifest in formal acts, and the market will always provide incentives for these acts to occur.  This is the nature or our desires as they are represented in the market, and these are the potential outcomes.  You can´t regulate that.  Ironically, the regulatory arena we currently exist in is rooted in neoclassical economic principles, that of trying to contain the “excesses and contradictions” (that´s Keynes, not Marx) of capitalism via regulation.  And while the current manifestation of these economic principles adheres to this (i.e. the WTO), people will simply assert their agency in ways the WTO simply cannot control.  In a further example or irony, this is due to the same school of economic thought, agency, and representation: demands are characterized by a valuation of a resource, and if the valuation is high enough, the “price” that people are willing to pay may seem high to an outside, disinterested observer, but quite affordable to the person who it primarily effects.  Formal regulation to a farmer who will soon be killed by a loan shark means nothing.

That all said, the catalyst for my writing this is winding down outside my window.  It is this: at around 11pm here in England, society flips 180 degrees.  While typically, in the days, people are reserved, polite and cordial.  A substantial amount of the population starts drinking around 7pm, and by 11pm they are pissed.  By 12, the pubs are mostly closed, and everyone is on the street.  I have rarely seen such a level of bipolar behaviour as this.  People begin to scream FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK at the top of their lungs, they will kick objects that they know very well cannot be dislodged, women will fall down to the ground and continue to sing Doncha by the Pussycat Dolls, they will go the beach, have sex with strangers in full view of everyone and then part ways, and they will spit, piss, flay their arms wildly and wobble down the road until they go home.  This is in front of my window most nights.  I love England.

Sometimes the catalyst for informal regulation can be found in a pint of Stella.  Other times it can be found in a cotton seed that yields only unfulfilled promises.  Either way, people do stupid things.  But it´s easy to say “I didn´t know that would happen”, or “I was pissed”.  Is that an acceptable excuse?   Yeah, it is.  It seems we allow and accept it to be so.

The camera is whirring as I write this.  If I look at it, I see a man with a coffee can trying to aim it towards a wireless Internet router on an island 2 km away.  We are all on a boat.  It is 27 degrees outside, about 4pm.  A woman wearing a hijab has now taken the coffee can.  It is a homemade antenna.  This seems ordinary to me, and perhaps that is a sign that I should really take a break.  So much can happen so fast.  One day it is February and you can hear your mother practicing scales on a harmonium just down the stairs.  It is bitterly cold outside, there are few people around, it’s often dark.  All you do is work, everyday, trying to make some dreams approach reality, trying to make everything happen.  But everything is uncertain, and at times you feel hollow, alone, and aimless, rudderless, though in reality there are so many things that lie ahead of you it is as if the girth of those prospects tips the balance and throws up a brick wall that blocks out the sun.  Then you are suddenly in a war zone, there are children dying, you are listening to young boys tell you how they were forced to murder, and you are eating beef three times a day. It’s just an airplane ride.  It’s just rocket fuel.

Somehow, placing yourself behind a camera allows you this insight into peoples lives.  Your day to day becomes a process of having the ability to ask someone you have just met very personal questions.  This is, indeed, your job.  You are supposed to convey their feelings, their thoughts, to other people.  And so you become, in essence, a medium.  You become a device that allows the perspectives of one person on the other side of the planet to be heard by someone else very far away.  You put their faces on the internet, and by typing a few letters here and there anyone can see it.  Communication is like some other language entirely, or rather the visual medium seems to amount to the ultimate lingua franca.  We can all sense emotions, we can all realize what it means when someone’s eyes are downcast, or when they smile at you because they have just said something clever, something honest, something that they felt was appropriate to say.  These things don’t need subtitles, or voices to illustrate further what it is they are trying to convey.  Or rather, what you as a medium are trying to convey to an unknown audience.

There is something both very appealing about this process, and at the same time there is something very frightening bout it.  The latter as you, as a sculptor, have this power to convey a person’s personality without them knowing.  I can make you look like an idiot, or I can make you look like a pontiff.  It’s a process where you feel as though you are getting to know someone, but based only on 10 minutes of their speaking, or their gestures, of the movements of their hands and how their eyes shift from left to right when they are trying to emphasize a point.  But in reality, you don’t know them at all.  It’s as though you have this opportunity to go back in time and readdress and process a first impression.  You hear your own voice asking questions to be answered, and you wonder, why did I ask that question?  Your own voice surprises you.  It’s a process by which you can sense why it is you react with that next question when you did, because you can reflect it in your own understanding of how you look at people, the things you want to know and ultimately the things you value about new knowledge, people you meet, the value you place on getting to know something new about someone.  And yet, intrusive as this may arguably seem, it is as though you have free license to do so.

You’re in a bus, you’re on a motorcycle, you are in the passenger seat of a car and it is going to somewhere else away from the previous somewhere else.  And whn you arrive, you say ‘Apoyo’ and then hands exchange.  There are bricks all around you, there are wireless routers all around you, there are tin shacks, palatial mansions, blue eyes, brown eyes, eyes that look at you and then your pants, eyes that have seen you before, haven’t we met before?  Perhaps.

All of this is like some predetermined process of getting more hair on your chest, as it were.  That is to say, you are indeed getting older. Which, however, is not to say that the number of hairs on my chest are like some biometric by which I can count how many days I have left and what it is I need to do, but rather that all these things seem to make me look back at my life and think; that I am one person who has lived this life in a way that was initially predetermined by someone else, well, by two people in particular.  My physical surroundings seem so alien in retrospect, living on a dirt road where no one spoke my language and there was no one my age to really talk to anyway if I wasn’t in a classroom.  But at the time it was all I knew.  It seemed normal to me, to have my mother around and no one else, to dig holes in the snow and think of what I could put in it, to cross country ski across the lawn as the sun was setting and the sky was red and all I had to do was get home and eat something.  It’s as though…it was just…it was just all I knew.  My community was my mother.  I saw my mother do so many things.  As though she also knew nothing else, and that her life was just what was given to her.  Though I am not so sure if it was indeed like that, as she was an adult, and as such was blessed (cursed) with the faculty of memory, of other faces, of a community that was so different from that place in which she found herself then.  To make do with a situation, rather than to simply exist within it with no recollection of how others live, as what you feel and see is a first draft, there is no eraser there.  I have been thinking about that salmon colored house a lot lately.  I have been thinking about the basement, and finding my mother there one afternoon, and there was something terribly wrong.  But I couldn’t understand what it was, and I couldn’t do anything about it but try to be close to her.  The lingua franca is such; certain things are beyond adjectives, adverbs, I’m ’sad’, I’m running away from here, ‘quickly’. But my eyes aren’t glass, and I knew that person I saw with my own lens.

If I were to grow up somewhere else, if I were to have been born in India, if I were to have known only a farming community in West Bengal, if I had to work when I was 8 because my father had passed away, if I were someone else entirely then I would be elsewhere, I would be away from here, I would have different clothes and I would smell different, and maybe I’d be wearing a wristwatch.

I was not allowed to play with guns.  When my parents found out they were very upset.  I didn’t understand why.  It was the first time I had people to play with in my neighborhood, it all seemed so new to me at the time.  I had never played with guns before as I didn’t knowhow.  Some things should ever be learned.  Some things only make sense when you are older.

I can see myself in that boy’s face.  It’s as though I knew him, but I don’t.  I just see myself in him because of the way he is blowing his cheeks out and pursing his lips together.  But he isn’t me, and I am not him.  I don’t know him, but I can see the community that surrounds him and cherishes him.  I can see that he has two sisters, do they play with him or do they only play with other girls?  What did he eat for breakfast?  Did he like it, or did his mother make him eat it?

‘Anyway if you don’t eat it I’ll call the police and then they will
come and get you.’

‘No!’

(dial dial dial) ‘Hello, Police?  Yes, Rana isn’t eating his food…he
is being very naughty –’

‘OKOKOKOK’

But maybe it wasn’t like that.  I don’t know.  Everything gets rendered into a moving picture when you stare at a 640 x 480 frame all day.  Everything gets rendered to how fast his arm is moving, and when you need to cut that frame out.  Everything becomes scripted, and everything seems, in some bizarre way, predetermined.  Though of course, that would render it fiction.  And this is not fiction.  It’s not fiction, I know, as the moon was not like that yesterday, and 2 days ago the clouds looked like Europe without western Europe.  Well Western Europe is boring anyway.  No, its real, it’s happening.  These things are real.  I was like that once.  But that was a whole lot of clouds ago.

Time becomes this ever pliable sustance that can be altered with a remote control.  Music is like some transportation device.  With both in my control together I can see what I was like when I was his age. But I should know that in any case.

I think about what it has been like, now, not in the distant past when I had corduroy overalls, but just in the past.  Just in the recent past, just where I was…just now.  If I think about where I am, I picture a map.  And then I see my parents.  And then I see my sister.  And then I see me.  And I can draw long lines to connect the dots, and I can make the triangle as big or as small as I want, as my brain is not to scale in any case.  But the angles of this triangle are always changing, sometimes acute, sometimes obtuse, but never…round?  No that’s a poor analogy.  I don’t even know if that amounts to an analogy at all.