John Cage's "4'33" is commonly misinterpreted as four and half minutes of silence, but this is not what the composer intended. Rather, it was supposed to be a live performance in which the musicians simply did not play their instruments: the music came from the ambient sounds of the environment itself, thus constituting the ultimate manifestation of Cage's belief that anything can be music.
I believe Otzi'mandias' "Heresy" is a bold homage to Cage's zen-inspired modernism. At the immediate level, the reader is invited to assess the enigmatic nature of Lustria Online's virtual junglescape as well as his or her own position within it. Can we really say that Lizardmen "fanfic" is fiction, when it occupies a very real part of our consciousness, not to mention the internet? Does true L-O literature lie simply in our communal participation in this imaginative labour itself? Do we really need to codify it in concrete stories, or does an empty message on a desolate thread suffice to say everything that needs to be said?
These are the questions raised by "Heresy", and they are questions that cut right to the core of the fluff and stories scene. The name itself provides the ultimate ambiguity. The most straightforward interpretation is that the nod to Cage's Buddhist philosophy cuts against the very grain of the Mesoamerican-inspired rituals of Lustrian fandom. The heresy lies in daring to present the ultimate form of pacifist non-engagement, right here in the heart of Aztec ultra-violence.
But perhaps there is a deeper heresy, one that cries against the nature of literature itself. Just as Socrates claimed that man's natural genius and imagination is watered down and lost in the process of transcription into a permanent record, so "Heresy" dares to follow in the footsteps of that ultimate heretic, and drink the hemlock of abnegation of the very medium to which it is expected to conform. By spurning written words, "Heresy" provides a rallying cry for a truly radical revolution of Lustrian consciousness. It is, without doubt, the most important work of our generation, and history may well remember it as the beginning of a bright new dawn for Lizardmen writing.
