Meta-Conversations: Your Questions 2 (History)

(We are continuing the conversation with the Ai-Naidari Regal! For people new to me, this interview illuminates further the world of Kherishdar, which you can read in the Books of Kherishdar.)

***

I look at the next paper for long enough that the Regal says, “This question does not please you?”

I am at my most diplomatic when I say, “I’ve seen it multiple times before, and have always elected not to answer it.”

His gaze is sympathetic. “It irritates you to be ignored.”

“I think my being irritated would require me to know for certain that I’m being ignored,” I answer. “Here, people are not trained to seek subtext in behavior to augment their understanding of speech, so most of the time I don’t think they’re ignoring me. They’re misinterpreting me, or missing my signals entirely.” I try to think of an example. “If I’m curled in a blanket and comfortable, and I want the window open but don’t want to rise, if someone walks by I say, ‘you can open that window if you want.’ Most people will fail to understand this is a request. If I didn’t want the window open, I wouldn’t make the suggestion at all, so the fact that I said something is leading. When you combine that with the fact that I look comfortable, what they should understand me to be saying is ‘please open the window for me, if it’s not too much trouble for you.’”

“A statement that allows you to evaluate whether the person in question is willing to exert themselves on your behalf?” He nods. “It is useful to know whether people will do so, without prodding.”

“Hhadtan is a concept I have trouble explaining,” I said; I haven’t even defined that word in a way I like, but it’s something like ‘needs that can only be met if they are not asked for.’ “If I only wanted the window open, that would be one thing. But I also want information on how people will behave without pressure. And I want volition. Consent. Expression of affection through the willingness to do a task even if one doesn’t want to.”

“That concept,” the Regal says, and it isn’t precipitous the way he speaks but it feels like lightning striking me, “only obtains if there is the concept of duty: of doing things one would rather not do, because they must be done, and not sharing that one might rather not.”

It hits me so hard because it finally makes sense of the problem. When people say ‘well if you ask me to open the window and I open it, obviously that is a sign that I am willing to do things for you,’ they are maybe operating in a universe where compliance with requests is a matter of consent and willingness, rather than obedience and requirement. I will do many things for people I would rather not do, because it’s the right thing to do, and not because I wish to. The way I phrase requests would give someone like me the opportunity to give that action, explicitly, as a gift, rather than having my motivations be ambiguous.

“Well,” I say, tired, “that’s a thing that will never, ever be resolved in my life, then.”

He takes pity on me and doesn’t ask why. Maybe he understands if there’s a society with conflicting values and recommendations on right behavior, there will never be adur—the comfort you feel when you know how you should behave in any given situation, where you fit, what the right thing to do or say is. 

Adur is also the word for ‘violet’, the color. I wonder if there’s any association there, or if it’s just one of those etymological happenstances that afflict all languages with homonyms. 

“What was the question?” he wonders, instead.

“How you went from barbarism to civilization.”

“How did you proceed from barbarism to civilization?” he asks.

“If you presume that aunera are civilized…” I trail off, and he’s waiting patiently, so I sigh. “Then the answer is ‘it’s complicated and would take a book to explain. Possibly multiple books. And they might disagree with one another.’”

“Then perhaps you might say that would be why you have not explained it. Or perhaps you might say… that that is how you are explaining it.” At my sharp glance, he chuckles. “Datyani, you are an artist. You do not answer complex questions with straightforward replies. You sidle into them, obliquely, and explore them in unexpected ways. That is your ishas at work. Those who want you to speak to them as if you were an Observer, or a Historian, are not engaging you effectively. One knows that with artists, patience is rewarded, not pressure.”

“That almost sounds like an aphorism,” I mutter.

He looks inscrutable. I am fairly sure this is a joke, that he’s overdoing it on purpose to make me smile. It works, though.

“I will answer the question,” the Regal says. “By saying that those who wish to know the answer would do well to enter into whatever art you make, in its own time. Some questions are the work of a lifetime to answer.”

“And some are never answered,” I say.

“If they were, we would be poorly served,” the Regal says. “Since life shapes and polishes us with the questions it tries us with. If we had no trials, nor mysteries, then we would not be what we are.”

A very Thirukedi-like answer, but the servants become like the master, and who more likely to mimic Him than those He sees often?

“It is why you are irritated,” he adds, gently. “They pressure you to respond in a way that feels alien to you, when you feel you are already responding to the question. It makes you feel as if you are not producing your work fast enough for their pleasure, and you do not like to displease.”

“I,” I say, tired, “am not irritated.” And as suddenly as that, I’m not. I’m unhappy. Which is probably why he pursued this discussion. “But as you know, the artist only makes the art. It’s up to the audience to decide what they feel about it.” It makes me smile a little, rueful. “I bet Ai-Naidar don’t complain loudly about art they dislike.”

“They don’t, much,” he agrees. “They ignore it instead. I don’t know that this method would please you more, datyani.”

I think about that. The difference between those hobbyist artists in Kherishdar and the Public Servants, must be that someone decided the Public Servants were making work worthy of broader regard. That might feel like an even more horrible form of gatekeeping than we get here, except that hobbyists there, I suspect, never feel like they are lesser for only sharing with their friends and family, or by making solely for their own pleasure. The ‘fame’ of Public Servant artists is considered a responsibility, not a perq… and to be so talented that you are known throughout history is more often considered a burden to that living artist than an aspiration.

“Would I even be an artist in Kherishdar?” I ask, awed.

“You are an artist here."

Not an answer, but I’m all right with that. Next question.