Sometimes he grunted or scatted along with his playing but more often he grunted out something that was kind of the opposite of what he was playing, just like sometimes the melody and rhythms he played on the piano were sometimes the opposite of the song he was playing, something that was exactly and perfectly opposite, so you couldn’t hear it without hearing the thing it was the opposite of” (Makers, 172).

Today we understand a little more about the world, so our stories are about people figuring out what’s causing their troubles and changing stuff so that those causes go away. Causal stories for a causal universe. Thinking about the world in terms of causes and effects makes you seek out causes and effects–even where there are none…It’s not superstition, it’s kind of the opposite–it’s causality run amok” (Makers, 177).

My experience in the CST lab this week was sparse to none. I was distracted from my ethnographic responsibilities by my sick child. But, as I reviewed my reading of Makers this week I was struck by Perry’s memories of how his father would play music for him when he was sick. Despite the coincidence, it wasn’t because I was also home with my sick child; it was for Doctorow’s italicization of the word opposite in both this scene, as well as the scene when Lester and Perry are attempting to articulate the evolution of the ride. Causality run amok. How many of our projects will fulfill anything remotely close to the original intention? Will it even matter? Perhaps, what matters is what we discover about ourselves during the process. No causality happening here, just a story.