Unexpected Knowledge

If life was predictable we could never experience discovery. If things remained constant and changeless, there would be nothing unusual. One of the important characteristics of knowledge is that before it is known it is unknown. I speak from the individual perspective rather than collectively, and after some personal confrontation with the subject.

Of course there are those for whom the capacity for surprise has been stifled or has completely atrophied through lack of use, usually self-inflicted. It is possible to so arrange one’s own environment that anything not already catalogued is excluded, so that only the already trodden path is trodden again. And again.

Fortunately, there are those who thirst for the odd, the strange, the quirky, who long to hear the mighty crack of the unexpected. Explorers of the long way home, such as Orville Quantock, have waged a campaign on behalf of the obtuse for many years. In order to facilitate his endeavours, he applied for charitable status. This has been refused him, however, on the spurious ground that his object is subject to a lack of definition. And this, despite his apoplectic attempt at quantum justification. His avowed intention to orchestrate a mass revelationary moment has thereby been undermined, at least for the time being. But, time being what it is, he regroups every evening with the assistance of the amber filter and three or four stout companions. Plans are always afoot.

It is a campaign with which Turn Up has a great deal of sympathy. Whilst we would never advocate wholesale absorption of the man and his peculiarities, even if such a thing were possible, we are prepared to extend an acknowledgment in his direction.

Indeed, Turn Up would itself be virtually pointless in the absence of the full panoply of the Laws of Uncertainty, Digression and Pop-Up, in all their majesty and extent.