Elucidating Questions

If you could meet a historical figure, who would it be and why?

None of them.

I’m sure they’re all just human

Flawed humans who are a product of their time

I’d meet some long dead musician I’d always loved

It would turn out he’s a racist or a sexist or some of ist that grates me into unmeeting them

I wonder how many great musicians had their music secretly written by women?

That’s who I want to meet

The brains behind all the faces

I want to meet the poor man who died on the street and hear his story of how it happened, how he was treated

A woman who was the right hand of someone, perhaps more, but was erased by time by sexism and mansentric historical reporting

I want to meet someone faceless in time

Someone time forgot

Someone like me who struggled every day

I don’t want to meet some propped up pop star of the past

I want to meet a regular person who history left in the past because only the winners, thus the rich, make the story

People who could afford it

I don’t want to meet someone who could afford it

I want to know the tales of working the land

Or perhaps the stories of the lives of the ladies of a brothel from one of them

Stories of things that didn’t get carried through time

How they loved

Who their favourite animals were

Things that are entirely human and almost entirely lost in history

They’re all just humans though

Just flawed, desperate, humans

I doubt I’d meet many from the past who think like me

Maybe I’d have to go farther back