about did you know?

There's no end to questions about the arts, but the vast majority of the things we'd most like to know about the arts have no answers for a variety of reasons. Among these unanswerable questions are some the most important ones we can ask.

Why can't we answer questions about the arts? The answers to some questions may once have been known but now are lost forever or for the foreseeable future. Some questions have no answers because no one was present to make a record of what happened; other answers have been lost to posterity because records which did once exist were lost or mislaid. Some questions and answers are unfathomable or inherently unanswerable.

Even questions for which answers exist pose problems. Although many questions have clear cut answers, others have ambiguous or fuzzy ones. Some questions have more than one answer, but which one is correct? In some cases, more than one answer may be correct or multiple answers may contradict one another. New questions and answers continually arise and old ones may be discredited.

Asking questions is a senseless undertaking without people to ask or answer them and without people to hear the answers. People muddy the waters but they are an inescapable factor in the question-answer equation.

People are a major factor in establishing which questions should be asked, which answers are relevant, and which answers are valid. But people tend to misinterpret questions and answers; they may be misinformed about them or have a fuzzy or half-baked understanding of the subject matter. People who have not thought about a question until it's asked may have little or no concept of what the question or its answer might mean.

Furthermore, people who firmly believe they have the correct answer may be biased in favor of a particular answer, may not be thinking clearly, or may be misinformed. Information that sheds new light on old questions may be unearthed as time goes by, raising the prospect that a current answer may someday be proved wrong, thus undermining confidence in the current answer. Answers to questions may change with time, place, or point of view. Some questions that are worth asking simply may be too hard or subtle to phrase or may be to complex or broad for ordinary mortals to comprehend.

For all these reasons and more, posing and answering Did You Know? questions is fraught with challenges and difficulties. But don't despair. An amazing amount is known about the arts and, with new research and with modern information resources like the Internet, computers, and new libraries coming on line, more is being learned and recorded every day.

Of Course, Electricka can do nothing to create questions and answers that don't exist, but she can ask many useful, interesting, and entertaining questions, some with surprising, enlightening, and thought-provoking answers.

Return to this feature often and you may learn a few things you'd like to know.