As Leach, Homer and many others have argued (see LPA186.480.26; the introduction to the Lye Artefacts), a defining transition which takes place during the Decline is the breakdown of a unified, infinite world into isolated and unstable components. This applies not only to environmental changes — the literal destabilisation of the Lye ecosystem — but also significant challenges to Lye artefact-making and individuals’ perception of their surroundings. We see how time in the artefacts is re-shaped into speculative and inconsistent narrative forms (see Future; LPA327.314.01); how the individual is forced to reassert the boundaries of their shelter, to pit themselves against a hostile world or re-adapt to the radically new circumstances (see LPA071.582.71). But perhaps the most notable change in artefact-making during this period is the development of nascent, individualised modes of expression, in contrast to older pieces which tend to depict experience as interchangeable.
Our article on Harmony discusses the concept of the ‘stem’: of all ‘beings’ growing from a singular source (the planetary organism), connected to one another through this organism, and destined to re-emerge on its surface in a different form after the demise of their present incarnation. This led to a style of writing with no fixed, single perspective — or, rather, a style written entirely from the one perspective, an imitation of the infinite through a style which constantly shifted between narrative strands, poetic details, eras and places. Certainly there are examples of recounted linear ‘sequences of events’, but usually couched in images of cyclic repetition, to emphasise both their ephemeral nature and the likelihood of their recurrence in the unknown infinite movements of the world.
These methods become untenable as the idea of an unbroken, common perspective is undermined by worsening planetary conditions. LPA209.227.02 (from the Lower Wetlands vat) is an intriguing, early example of an attempt to record these new experiences through an individualised perspective. Two translations of the text have been prepared by the LPRU, each taking wildly different approaches to rendering the novel, inconsistent narrative voice of the text into English. Here is one verse as translated by Alkmini Gousiari:
'I follow the path in my mouth,
my feet showed me the way.'
Here is how Leach translates the same passage:
'On what Tracks are Steps planted?
Where Words twine together.'