The Black Swan

[Douglas Mercer]

Douglas Mercer
October 18 2024

It’s something unpredictable but in the end it’s right

Black Swans (cygnus atratus) are native to Australia (outland) but have been imported around the world as ornamental birds; often they escape from their captivity and form stable populations. In the wild they are nomadic birds with erratic migration patterns and are often seen outside what presumably is their normal range; they are monogamous and fly in V formation; they utter far reaching musical bugling sounds alternated with softer crooning sounds and from time to time emit a sort of baying trumpeting sound.

The Black Swan Theory (or the Black Swan Theory Of Events as it is more formally known) is a paradigm which delineates an event that has three characteristics: 1) it comes as a complete surprise 2) it has a colossal impact 3) it is often rationalized in retrospect and thus is assimilated into the normal run of things as if nothing, after all, happened which was out of the ordinary. This last characteristic is a common human ploy which enables people not to have to face reality as it is, but as they think or more often hope it is. The phrase is said to come down to us based on a Latin expression of Roman poet Juvenal’s characterization in his Satire VI of something being "rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno" ("a bird as rare upon the earth as a black swan"). From this elocution we also get the phrase “rara avis” which means an extraordinary person; usually this is highly complementary though somewhat baffled and is used when a person is very eccentric with the type of rarefied mind that is hard to relate to.

The expression black swan was used until around 1697 when Dutch mariners saw them in Australia. After this, the term was reinterpreted to mean an unforeseen and consequential event. When the phrase was coined, the black swan was presumed by Romans not to exist. The importance of the metaphor lies in its analogy to the fragility of any system of thought. A set of conclusions is potentially undone once any of its fundamental postulates is disproved. In this case, the observation of a single black swan would be the undoing of the logic of any system of thought, as well as any reasoning that followed from that underlying logic. The London expression derives from the presumption that all swans must be white because all historical records of swans reported that they had white feathers. In that context a black swan was impossible or at least nonexistent. Thus the term black swan can refer to the impossible itself.

As it is used now a black swan is a rare and unforeseen event which comes out of left field, or out of nowhere, or out of the blue; it is an outlier, and we tend to act as if it does not exist; but what you don’t know is much more important than what you know, it is the thing that one won’t see coming from a million miles away, though one will know what hit him. Which of course is why the most ludicrous phrase in the English language is barring anything unforeseen, which is impossible; though Katy can, if she wishes, bar the door.

It’s coming down fast.

Birds are words, things which fly though the air.

When light thickens the crow makes wing to the rooky wood and things begin to droop and drag. The Indo-European Ker gives us corvus or crow or rook, shrike and thrush and raven; Poe has his bird say forevermore, and the nightingale sings through the night, and the lark heralds the dawn, and of course the owl flies at dusk when the bluebird of happiness appears. Ker or caw give us the loud noises of birds, crack, shriek, creak, screech, and squawk, yawp, squall, scream; and baying bugle noises that sounds like a trumpet; they say that Odin had two birds, one on each shoulder, and they were Thought And Memory, those fleeting things which fly through the air; but when a real bird sings as the crow flies it will be the Black Swan which sings it song, and a swan’s song always at its most sweetly beautiful when it is its last; for the Black Swan is not only a legendary phoenix but is the bird (word) of loudest lay.

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Notes

Cygnet def: a young swan late Middle English: from Anglo-Norman French cignet, diminutive of Old French cigne swan, based on Latin cycnus, from Greek kuknos.

Signet def: a small seal esp one used in a ring used instead of a signature to give authentication to an official document

Is the signet ring one of the last true hallmarks of authenticity? It was as reliable as a signature, a seal of authenticity that branded a document. In a world where the majority of men were illiterate, the signet ring became their writing instrument. An instrument responsible for signing some of the most historical documents long ago. This is where the story begins. On the hands of rulers and potentates and their officers. What began with a fundamental purpose, soon became a mark of nobility, of status that sealed a man’s place in the history books. In Ancient Rome, Greece and throughout history, the signet ring was one of the most valuable items a gentleman could have. The men who relied on them kept them under lock and key, only to bring them out as needed when signing a deed, will or other important documents.

Nothing on the top but a bucket and a mop and an illustrated book about birds.

[Douglas Mercer]

[Douglas Mercer]

[Douglas Mercer]

[Douglas Mercer]

[Douglas Mercer]

[Douglas Mercer]

[Douglas Mercer]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3jl6srja_8
Let the bird of loudest lay
Herald and trumpet be
To whose sound chaste wings obey
Be thou shrieking harbinger
Augur of the fever's end,
From this session interdict
Every fowl of tyrant wing,
Save the eagle, feathered king
Keep the obsequy so strict.
Let the priest in surplice white
That defunctive music can
Be the death-divining swan
Lest the requiem lack his right
And thou treble-dated crow
Here the anthem doth commence
For these dead birds sigh a prayer
They are the birds of loudest lay

English lays, of which there are a few surviving examples, are based around Celtic legends and utilize many of the literary devices in themes found in chivalric romances.

[Douglas Mercer]

[Douglas Mercer]