A Choir of Lies


All right . . . I suppose things like this usually start with an apology of some sort.
ONE
My former master-Chant thought we shouldn’t write down the things we know. I don’t know if he was right. I don’t know if I agree. Rather, I don’t agree entirely, but I don’t disagree entirely either. I’m still exploring all my options. But one option must be to write a little down, because here I am, writing, even though I’m not really supposed to. The argument he gave was that mere ink and paper can be lost or destroyed or taken from you.

These won’t get taken from me. These are mine, and I’ll burn them up once I’m done with them. And anyway, if he cared so much about what I do, he shouldn’t have—

I won’t write it. I can’t. (“Can’t” here meaning both “I don’t want to. I refuse to. I won’t face it” and “If I were to face it, there would still be no language in the world with strong enough words to make myself understood. Whatever I wrote would be a work in translation, and it’s just not linguistically possible.”)

There’s a kind of magic in writing down the things you know. It makes mere ink and paper into weapons. It makes them a mind, in a way: A paper copy of a mind with some of the mental abilities that its writer possessed—persuasion, or charm, or insidious destruction.

But paper can’t think and ink can’t adapt—they are an arrow shot into a foggy night by a blind man. At least this way, I know that there’s no one in front of me, no one to be struck and killed by a stray bolt carelessly shot, and no witnesses. And even though there’s no one to hear my words, no one to see what I’m doing, no one to care at all . . . Sometimes, I’m going to lie, even here, when I’m all alone: I’m a Chant now myself, after all, and Chants are liars.1

But first, something true.

1. You little shit. I’d argue with you, but you’ve already proven your own point, haven’t you? And not just a liar, but an oathbreaker (and in regards to that: Fuck you very much, thanks). Why am I even bothering with this? Why even waste the ink to call you a shit and an oathbreaker? You’ve already run off—at least you know how to abscond in the night like a proper Chant. It’s not like you’ll ever read anything I write here. It’s not like you’d particularly care about it even if I did catch you. But . . . Dammit, I’ll have the last word, even if you aren’t around to witness me getting it. The last word and the satisfaction of yelling at you the way I want to, and what does it matter that you won’t ever hear me? You never heard me before, so it’s really no different.