Pick a Tree

A ten-year-old on a borrowed spotted mare sees the pole coming and freezes. The riding teacher calls from across the ring. The girl lifts her eyes and picks out a tree on the far side. She still has a fence to ride. Now she can see where she wants to go.

Eyes on the Far Side puts that lesson to a swing beat. The girl has her heart in her throat. Her hands have to stay soft anyway. Later, the tree turns to glass, and the song hangs things people might make possible from its branches. One of them is a grandmother’s story.

In Who Counts the Gain?, the traveler asks to see the original plan before the assistant starts singing about the money it saved. Someone could ask for that plan earlier, while the two of them still have the holiday to arrange. The traveler might want a day with nothing booked. The assistant would have to leave space on the page for that.

Suppose you know your grandmother told the story of a flood in one of the interviews in a local archive. You remember the name she used for the river crossing. The catalog gives you a date and the interviewer’s name. If the story is somewhere in an hour of tape, the catalog can take you as far as the beginning of the hour.

UtopAI’s worked example uses an interview archive to sketch a small experiment. With permission from the people responsible for the recordings, you could make a few transcripts searchable and see whether a person can get from a remembered phrase to the voice on the tape. Give them the catalog first. They may find the passage faster with a volunteer who knows the collection. A transcript may give them a way to find it when that volunteer is away. The passport sets its boundaries before the experiment runs: participants decide what can be retained and shared, and sensitive material stays private.

The name of the crossing could be the word the transcript gets wrong. You might recognize the mistake as soon as you hear the clip. The next person will still miss the story unless there’s a way for someone to fix the name where the search can find it. That work belongs in the account of what the archive gains.

The mare comes up to the pole. The girl has picked a tree she can see from the saddle. Across the ring, the teacher can see where the mare puts her feet.

Bibliography

khayali, ‘Eyes on the Far Side’, music video, accessed November 2026.

khayali, ‘UtopAI’, possibility record and worked example, accessed November 2026.

khayali, ‘Utopia, But With a Test Button’, ILLUMINATION, Medium, accessed November 2026.