Drifting Past Certainty
Listen to On a Raft
On a Raft — Channeling a 21st-Century Mark Twain
This piece drifted into being as lightly as its title suggests — a spare melody, a quiet guitar, and the unmistakable feeling of floating downstream with nowhere in particular to hurry. The image naturally called up Huck Finn and Mark Twain, patron saint of American skepticism, who trusted rivers more than crowds and silence more than certainty. Family legend even claims a distant Moorman connection to Samuel Clemens — a thoroughly unverified fact we maintain with scientific confidence.
Twain might have enjoyed observing our present age, where opinions travel faster than steamboats ever did and certainty is issued wholesale, hourly, and without warranty. He might have written:
One recent flight seated me beside a man delivering a nonstop monologue on the state of the world — expertly arranged villains, causes, and remedies included. I agreed with nearly all of it, which only made the experience more exhausting. Agreement, it turns out, offers no shelter from noise.
What struck me was not the content but the momentum. The performance ran on a simple fuel: the assumption that constant commentary equals understanding. I recognized the mechanism immediately, because I carry the same machinery inside my own skull — a tireless narrator who believes his job description includes running the universe. He means well, but he seldom rests, and he confuses talking about life with living it.
Then the plane landed, the speeches stopped, and everyone shuffled forward in silence — no theories, no declarations, just bodies moving when space allowed. In that narrow aisle, something quieter than opinion finally had room to breathe. Awareness remained after commentary clocked out. It felt familiar, patient, and oddly sufficient.
Rather like being on a raft — carried along by a current that does not require our supervision, only our presence.
