‘How does one reach such a state of being, in which tiny, repeated actions of ambiguous purpose — grinding, folding, stitching, arranging — become as important as the actions necessary for survival in such a barren and isolated place?’ -Dr. Grace Linden, Department of Lye Textiles
‘…glancing back over these tangled webs of text before bed I feel as if I finally glimpse a small corner of a vast expansive worldview… of world without beginning or end… willpower an insignificant joke. No gods or coincidences. All actions reciprocated by states and all states reciprocated by actions…’ -from the Early Diaries of Prof. Orem Homer, Vol. II (entry undated)
The conception of the Lye Planet as a unifying, all-encompassing, immortal organism is often referenced in the artefacts through descriptions of perpetual motion. In order to sustain this state of being, it is as if the planet depends on the endless movement of its constituent parts, like a machine re-vivifying itself through its changing physical forms (for more on this, and the transmigration of bodies in Lye culture, see Harmony). A great number of artefacts — texts, images, music — depict natural beauty by describing the simultaneous motion of connected things. LPA210.045.42 (the Husband folio) is overtly preoccupied by perpetual motion in both its text and musical structure: ‘Trees give out the air; sun rears the trees; trees shimmer in rushes of air'. And later: 'The light from an eye flows into mine from a sleeping glance; rivers and moons of the body reflect and coil and in the darkness'.
While the existence of perpetual cycles was widely recognised on the planet, interpretations of their significance — and the responsiblity of the planet’s inhabitants in maintaining them — varied from community to community. There is some evidence of ritual practises intended to mirror natural perpetuity, the most widespread example of this being the exchange of emblematic ‘coins’. These were passed between members of the same community or traded with outsiders; the emblems were often modified and copied before they were passed on. A memorable digression in LPA669.484.21 recounts the exchange of two coins and their intertwined, recurrent paths through time:
Emblem of a Visitor, and a Circular Part from the Home — Brilliant and wild of unseen redness and curved by rock-blows' dances past the paths of our visions — The small part of a still sadness emerged from Up Close — emblems given by Constant Neighbours during a storm — Returning song to the new Stem on boundless wherever — given on those eternity paths —
Circling airs modify with river-mud, blanket fur of a small Creature, emblems are given wrapped in sand — Emblems between Stems arch over long evenings, mires and embankments — Like lasting — Kept hidden in a stone-channel by a Fool with Long Thoughts — Gathered from a riverbed by Farmhands — Shattered by dancing, stolen by children — Emblems in Time take boundless forms — Recovered by Two Disparate Stems with the same precise Face — Mirror Pathways of No Source, striking Life and Life’s Parallels —
Emblematic Twine — the Circular visits and reddens, Rock-Blows pale and return — the Circular is given by a Visitor to Skeptics who ground it into Crop-Feed — sowing crops its song returns to the Stem of a Familiar Spirit, perpetual Neighbour — The world combs its Voice and Song unfurls — Roots proliferate — and Long whispering of the land — by Unknown Actors these Voices intersect and bound
Note that the text emphasises repetition and coincidence as well as multiplied fates and diverging narratives. The paradox at the heart of the Lye belief in ‘perpetual existence’ is precisely this: infinite changes, infinite consistency.
It is not clear whether the coin makers felt that the exchange of these emblems helped preserve the order of things, or whether it was simply an expression of gratitude for the world and a way of strengthening social bonds. Given certain conceptions of language on the planet, it may be unwise to draw any distinction between either motive. In any case, not all communities saw it fit to ritualise natural perpetuity, or even saw it as necessarily beautiful; for, as LPA104.290.02 suggests, an infinite, often chaotic and ceaseless cycle of moving parts can be more oppressive than wondrous.
Nevertheless, the position of individuals in relation to these cycles — willing participants at best, but incontestably subjected to machinations beyond their control — comes to be a defining point of contention in Decline-era artefacts. Prof S A Leach’s work on LPA186.480.26 has focused on the concept of ‘action’ as it is articulated by the author of the Moorland diary, a term which is defined by Leach as encompassing ‘decisions of great public significance’, as distinct from ‘the everyday practices necessary for personal [sic] survival; the care of others in the community, or the generation and maintenance of supplies’. But then, as Leach admits, the process of how community leaders decided on actions is not clear-cut; it is as if they divine, from consultations with the natural world (in this case, the wind), actions which have already been pre-determined, and perhaps always were. To act is still to participate within the constraints of perpetual movement. What’s more, when later entries in the diary describe attempts by authority to depart from this careful hierarchical balance by insisting on new demands, this signals the breakdown in social cohesion, language itself, and by proxy the wider planetary ecosystem.
As discussed in Future, this unmooring from the familiar way of things — specifically, the realisation that the world would no longer perpetuate in the same way — was an understandably traumatic process. In addition to radical breaks from the past and the attempt at a new, linear individualism (as seen in LPA209.227.02; LPA327.314.01; the documented increase in nomadism in texts such as the Moorland diary), we also see a new kind of ritualised perpetuity, but one focused on the preservation of the individual or an imagined past; out of step with the world, rather than a way to express its infinity. The Husband folio charts a tentative path towards this latter, burgeoning way of anchoring one’s self in the world.
In her work on LPA155.031.29 (the Wolf’s Head artefacts), which date from the latter half of the Decline, Dr. Grace Linden has drawn attention to evidence of ‘a shallow oval hollow’ in the rockface alongside where the artefacts were discovered, created through what she describes as ‘purposive action’. This could be another example of new perpetuity; the comfort of predictable, reliable repetition in our day-to-day tasks. Linden nevertheless has resisted what she describes as the ‘determined hopelessness’ in some of her colleagues’ assessments of the later Lye artefacts.