The Art of Clockwork. (excerpted from Clarity of purpose, a short book of essays written by Claremont Free. Gum Gooloo's clockwork artists have protested that the essay is 'biased and demeaning.') "The majority of the arts dear to Goolooian hearts are the legacy of our lunatic forebears and clockwork is no exception. Why else would a person spend years of their life perfecting a clockwork cat with a blooming rose in place of its head? It is the mindset of people who see a reality that is not the same as the material world around them and seek to impose their own version of 'order' on reality. The origins of clockwork are unclear, but we can guess that it started with simple devices such as bellows to make a clockwork person 'breathe' and levers that moved a toy's head from side to side. We can imagine these crude objects becoming gradually more elaborate. In The Year of Silent Insects, (727) Annalise Spun wrote about 'a bird that sat and sang and lo! there was no difference betwixt this bird and the live animal beside it until the live beast took to the air thereby exposed the cunning illusionist's trickery, for false birds cannot fly.' Flight was not conquered by the clockwork makers until recently and even now the secret is jealously guarded by its inventor. Clockwork has become more elaborate and intricate. The profession is handed from parent to offspring and any outsider who attempts to make sense of this closely tended art will find themselves studying for years before they can attempt to emulate the machanics of their teachers. During the Renaissance it was possible for a clockwork artist to be the master of many arts, but today anyone who refuses to specialise in clockwork and clockwork alone will be outstripped by their peers. People point to Shinji Oblong and call him the first and last great artist, but I say that he was simply the last great mechanic who let his genius eat in more than one field. Today's clockwork makers need to know too much to allow themselves the luxury of becoming expert natrualists and botanists as well as expert manipulators of wheels and cogs. ... Kenneth Elaboration is the most interesting clockwork maker alive today and I find his theories repulsive. His latest idea is that dead bodies should be handed over to him so that he can 'resurrect' them using straw and clockwork. 'Hands will move! Dead legs will walk!' he writes in his essay, A brand new notion. Nowhere does he ask himself about the impact his 'resurrected' people will have on their friends. Instead, he restricts himself to detailing mechanical problems and their solutions. This will give you a good idea of the distance that has grown between clockwork artists and the rest of us. I call on all artists who are serious about their profession to break down the barriers that separate them from thinking, feeling human beings. Descend from your clouds of pure mechanical speculation, my friends, and confront the world!" (the following rebuttal was written by a group of clockwork artists) "We're sorry Claremont Free didn't talk to us before he wrote his article. We could have saved him the embarrassment of his mistakes. Clockwork artists are not the monsters he thinks we are. Kenneth Elaboration does NOT speak for all of us when he talks about resurrecting bodies. A lot of us are as disgusted as Claremont Free, and for the same reasons. But we are equally disgusted with a man who chooses to ONLY point out the parts of our art which suit his argument. What about our rotating candle-holders and our flicker-gardens? Why not mention our stately tune-machines which pluck music from the air? We do confront the world, Claremont Free. We give it music and light. You give it baseless sensationalism. Which of us should be learning lessons here?"