There’s a reason I named this blog Theatre of Mortals & Machines. Both singing and theatrical play were once one and the same: noogenic machines, able to construct meaning from the profane matter of ordinary, everyday existence — and, more importantly, to reproduce it across generations with a fidelity one might call scientific.

At the dawn of Pebes’ civilisation, art and technology were inseparable, expressed by the single word techne. In time, technology gained momentum and gradually overshadowed art, which fragmented into what became known as the Arts.

After the fall of the Pebes, these curious phenomena vanished within a single generation — so swiftly that even the last digital traces proved irretrievable. All that survived were so-called books: an ancient way of preserving texts by printing them on a material as rare, expensive, and fragile as paper. A handful of these were digitised by diligent researchers. Yet apathy and indifference — shared by the dwindling Pebes and semi-mechanical Cyborgs — soon consigned them to neglect and oblivion. The same fate befell the so-called humanities: philosophy, metaphysics, religion, theology, and their kin.

As for the original author’s elusive You — that mystery remains unsolved. In these times, some advanced cyborgs are known to keep fragments of their earliest incarnations, cherishing and even conversing with them. Perhaps the ancient Pebes felt the same reverence for their old garments. Historical records confirm that they fashioned costly racks for these clothes—objects they called statues.

Thus, the most plausible hypothesis is that “You” was, in fact, an umbrella — a particularly revered object of worship the Pebes carried with them everywhere. After all, if “You” were a hat or jacket, the author would have said “I’ll be there in you,” not “with you.”

The song below is my humble attempt to weave together the few surviving fragments of German authors —Meister Eckhart, Angelus Silesius, and their kind. I’ve titled it “All I Know,” a name that candidly acknowledges the boundaries of my own meager knowledge.

Anyway. What endures is neither the machines nor the mortals alone, but the fragile dialogue between them—a theatre where meaning is kindled, if only for a moment while memory flickers, to carry the light of the past into unknown futures. If nothing else survives, let it be this: the act of questioning and weaving meaning, even in the theatre’s ruins. This is all I know.