Fifty-thousand years

‎26/‎02/‎2023

Actor is sitting on a stool on a plain, empty stage. Modern aluminum crochet hook in one hand, ball of wool of an arbitrary colour in the other.

Our tools. This is what we had. Pre-history.

A hook,

Actor holds the hook up.

Carved from wood in the gap between two roots, sheltered from the wind not rain. Carved from bone, chipped and snapped from a leg not far enough through its fifty-thousand rotations. Cast from steel only re-heated in the heart of a furnace

Just as it has been moved and twisted by my hands, mux my fifty-thousand year brothers and sisters, my hands mould to it in twin grooves.

Our tools.

Twine,

Actor holds out the wool.

Woven from the fibers of plants found and borrowed. Woven from the furs grown and stolen. Woven from plastics brute-force re-made in the heart of a chemical reactor.

Just as it clothed my fifty-thousand year brothers and sisters, as they found and borrowed, as they hid from each other in the gap between two roots, as they killed and carved and chipped and stole,

I bought this ball from [shop the ball was bought from and the price it was bought for].

Actor smiles at the audience and holds up both tools.

Our tools.

We hold them high above our heads,

and our feet don't touch the floor.

Actor begins to crochet.

Its not the tools though.

A piece of wood or bone or steel will sit as twine or wool or rope slack. It's the hours of feverish though, of invention, pure and hot, the hours of toil. There a fifty-thousand days and fifty-thousand nights of work behind all that we are, and all we have.

But our tools are not our own, as they are not of the fifty-thousand year brothers and sisters, no.

The tools belong to it.

Actor points off stage right, before continuing to crochet.

It waits in the wings, It tells us when to work and when to starve. It is the go no-go between a double stitch and no stitch at all. It is holds my hand fast to the rhythm of buy low, sell high.

Even I, from my vantage point, am unprotected from crisis as the high-waterline rises.

As we craft each article through repetition, the expenditure of pure formatted time. We guide every stitch, delicately form it. We move the wool around in three-dimensional space in a way that is not possible for the machines of scale, we nudge it back into shape when it strays, we are two arms, we are a twenty-eight-axis mill, we are a container full of pure unformatted time, we are a learning-machine with fifty thousand connections.

But still, as I guide each stitch, every inch of the wool passes through my hands, we touch each part of what we create. What we make should just as much be ours as it should be the "us" that took the first stitch. But it is not.

I am cold, and I am scared, and I am hiding in the gap between two roots. A scrap of fabric, a scrap to keep me warm. But the scrap is not mine. The scrap belongs to It.

It waits in the wings, It collects and hoards. It is the go no-go between grow weak to starve and starve. It owns my work and it owns me.

It stays in the wings though, which leaves us an option. Because as much as this:

Actor holds up the scrap of crochet.

Doesn't belong to me.

I sure am holding it.

I'm holding it right now.

Actor looks off stage right and stops crocheting.

It wont leave the wings, because there is one of It and in my hands is the work of my fifty-thousand year brothers and sisters.

Or,

a betrayal, a mismanagement and It begins to emerge.

Actor continues to crochet.

We should be happy with our side of the deal and hide. Because we get our prize eventually, and its so much sweeter this way.

Actor takes the last stitch, drops the hook and stands on the stool.

Just as did my fifty-thousand year brothers and sisters,

our tools.

We pass them to the fifty-thousand-and-one,

Actor hangs the crochet noose from an out-of-sight point above the stool.

and our feet don't touch the floor.

Actor hangs themself.