Hi Red Center: Canned Mystery (c. 1964)

"Once I've adequately flattened my forehead …"

I accepted the assignment about a month ago without understanding how I might fulfill it. The person requesting my help asked for something I couldn't deliver and, frankly, didn't believe was needed. This, of course, is the typical and perfectly normal role for any effort's sponsor to fulfill: The Clueless Leader. For the subsequent month, I've been the clueless responder, so this Mystery has been perfectly cast with cluelessness all the way down. Mysteries must be like this at first. They're only made more profound by immediately presuming solutions upon them. Some process seems necessary to resolve such Mysteries, which might resolve the differences between what the sponsor certainly doesn't know and what the inevitably lame responder doesn't know yet.

I fret. Give me a genuine Mystery, and I will first attempt to gum it into submission. I will not seek any sort of solution but instead, try to deny my culpability in resolving it. I will usually make like the presenting problem couldn't possibly be a problem, that it's merely a misconception rather than anything needing any first-order resolving. This strategy sometimes works; when it works, it seems like magic because the difficulty disappears. No further effort required. But not every Mystery can be so blithely resolved. Some, indeed most, involve real difficulties that actually require some effort to resolve. Then, the question becomes where to start.

As a practical matter, it rarely matters where anyone starts anything. One begins wherever one begins and often won't seem to have much choice in this matter. What matters then involves moving into. The first move should seem inadequate because it rarely resolves anything and most often highlights the obvious shortcomings the starting point revealed. One must move on from there, however wounded the resolver’s ego after discovering their brilliance didn't resolve the mystery yet. Humbled without necessarily being discouraged, the solver continues his journey. He'll propose a series of lame responses without necessarily acting upon any of them yet. He's reasoning without evidence, but he's feeling more brilliant than he felt when he failed to resolve the Mystery on his first move.

Our Sherlock should eventually stumble upon the notion that he couldn't possibly resolve the Mystery with the information he has at hand. However brilliant he might feel, he cannot just imagine evidence into being. He'll need witnesses and testimony and some conflicting stories before the situation might come into sharper focus. He will remain clueless until he musters up some clues. Admitting his inadequacy, he'll contact somebody and start following the emerging chains of evidence. Even interviewing supposed witnesses who didn't witness anything might spark some insight critical to resolving the Mystery. The process by which resolution emerges must also remain a Mystery. Mysteries are inevitably resolved by mysterious means, which won't feel very much like processes until after the Mystery gets resolved and the story recounting the effort is written.

I left on my two-week Toodle with this unresolved Mystery still on my shoulders. I'd intended to get into resolving it the week before, but I was taken ill and unable to engage. Returning three weeks and change downwind then from accepting the assignment, I started feeling guilty for procrastinating, though I had not been procrastinating. Let's say that I had been mulling. Yeah, that's it! I had been cogitating, processing the situation in the background while apparently only on vacation. Back, I felt rested and almost ready to dive in. Dive in and do what, precisely? According to the methodology, I should finally be ready to jump in and apply the first in a series of ineffective attempts to resolve the Mystery. Once I've adequately flattened my forehead, I might accept responsibility to start asking the usual suspects the usual questions. Perhaps their answers will provide actual clues. Who knows?

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #iAlogue