“… And as agreed,” the chair continued, “everyone will read no more than two paragraphs of the short story they have written. Since whoever reads first will be making history, we have determined the speaking order by randomly drawing names from an urn.
And so, without further ado, it gives me great pleasure to introduce our first author-speaker, reading the first piece of actual writing to be presented at this inaugural ActW Festival, and perhaps the first piece of actual writing written and read aloud this century: Luce Armoot.”
Loud, enthusiastic applause followed. Luce approached the lectern. Her piece of writing had suddenly acquired a historical dimension that added to the pressure. She placed her papers in front of her and nervously began to read:
“As she proceeded to climb the stairs, Luce paused after taking a few steps and looked at the beam beneath her feet. She scolded herself: ‘How could you forget?!’ They were speaking to her. Of course they were. As they always did.
‘How could you have forgotten?!’ she repeated to herself.
Many years earlier, she had returned home after a term in college studying structural linguistics. Light-heartedly, she began referring to the sounds made by the stairs as ‘scalèmes’: ‘the smallest sound difference in the language of stairs (scalae in Latin),’ she thought, pleased with herself. She playfully started noting the sounds: creaks, squeaks, ticks, clicks, snaps, pops, rattles, groans, and many more. Then she imagined the sounds made from the start to the end of her short climb as a sentence that had to be analysed along the two axes of selection and combination: squeak, tick-squeak, snap-rattle-groan, creak, and so on.
And here they were, speaking to her again. Lucky she even remembered the basics of structural linguistics now. The sound was a mixture of sameness and difference. ‘Of course they sound different. They are much older,’ she said to herself. Or perhaps it was her hearing that had grown older, she thought. Perhaps that was what they themselves were trying to say: ‘tick-squeak-rattle-snap, your step is no longer what it used to be, Luce. It’s frail and wobbly. You seem to have lost weight and strength. Thank God for that. We might have crumbled had you hopped on us the way you used to.’
Perhaps they were saying more. Something like: ‘We are surprised you heard us at all, Luce. And this place has become so much noisier over the years. But you’ve always had good listening skills. If only people listened to the ground they are treading on, we wouldn’t be where we are today…’”
Luce picked up her papers and signalled that she had finished reading. People applauded her. Perhaps she had written something worthwhile after all. She had done it. She had presented the first short story written with pen and paper, without the help of computers, without access to Wi-Fi, and certainly without any AI input.
Since the rise and normalisation of AI-enhanced writing in festivals such as the ArtI-Writing Festival, the idea of returning to pen-and-paper storytelling had begun to take root and an ‘actual writing’ movement began to take shape. And now this: the first actual writing ActW festival.
The experiment involved six writers on a week-long, Wi-Fi-free retreat, equipped only with pen and paper and each other’s company, engaging in ‘actual writing.’ Luce felt great affinity with the movement and considered herself privileged to be selected for the experimental part of the festival. And here was, Xinzhi Xiang, the chair, and one of the most respected figures of the actual writing movement saying how much she enjoyed hearing her.
Someone had a question about Derrida and the colonial nature of writing in opposition to the oral tradition, but Luce was finding it hard to concentrate…
