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There is a hole.

Everything lost is found in a hole.

In our dreams, we all travel there.

On some nights, when the wind blows, a hole whistles.

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Children always want to hear more about a hole. They long to play around its edges.

Some come to believe that their misplaced toys all gather in a hole, along with all the dead. Droves of those most aggrieved are drawn to its promise of black reunion. Some fall in. But there is no reunion to be found in a hole because everything is nothing in a hole.

Hoping to ward off such misadventures, parents tell tales of the Lost Ones. A child alone is at risk of falling into any number of holes, they say. Stay close to mummy and daddy.

But children always want to hear more about a hole.

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A narrative is summoned to satisfy their curiosity. But when a narrative is told, something strange takes place: an absence is given a presence. A desire to hear about a hole becomes wholly recursive. There is a hole in the imagination, and it wants to be filled. But if you want to write a story about a hole, you must first enter a hole. There is a hole within every hole.

Preying on the imaginations of the young, the most enduring story told about a hole is ‘The Great Piper who Plays the World’. It is he who whistles at the edges of holes, they say; he is The One Who Plays. But even this One is many; there are countless versions of the piper’s tale, and no one can say with any certainty which tall tale came first.

As the children grow older, they wise up, and the ruse is soon uncovered. The mythical maestro is also a hole. The piper is nothing, really; the piper is invoked only to give the children something to fear. Uncovering this hole within a hole, they connect it to other holes: the absent author is one apocrypha; the music played, never truly heard, is another. But no one lets such details stand in the way of a good story; they too are in a hole.

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A hole persists. A hole moves across cultures and epochs, casting each new generation in the relief of its enduring absences. Eventually, the children who become parents make holes for their own progeny, all to keep them away from a hole. Centuries pass. An absence persists in its presence, and vice versa.

The Piper becomes the Whistler becomes the Flautist becomes the Songsmith. A music unheard leads to so many songs about holes. Holes are found in buckets and in heads. Four thousand holes are found in Blackburn, Lancashire. A hole is sometimes open, sometimes closed; a hole becomes a mouth becomes an anus becomes a valve becomes a portal becomes a tunnel. A hole is connected here and disconnected there.

A hole is soon found in the academy. A diligent young researcher finds the earliest known iteration of a story about a hole, and the welcome news titillates the general public. A hole conference is organised, and plugs a hole in the annual budget of the department of hole studies. So many books are written about a hole. There are concept albums about a hole. A hole is talked about on television and on the radio. There are twenty-nine podcasts about holes alone.

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But a hole is still found here and there.

Not all holes are accounted for. Sometimes, even holes go missing. The history of holes is incomplete, but no matter; a hole is a hole is a hole.

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