Episkevology
The System That Carries Us
1. The Word That Stopped Me
I was working with a Gaelic line in one of my songs when a single word caught me — not because of its meaning at first, but because of its shape. My mind works in geometry as much as language; certain words light up like constellations, pointing toward other words they resemble.
The word was:
ghiùlain
to carry, to bear, to conduct oneself
Its shape echoed a name that has been culturally radioactive for years. Not in meaning — in geometry. And once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it.
So I followed the shape.
2. The Name That Mirrors the Word
The name it resembled was:
Ghislaine
from Old French gisel — pledge, hostage
A name that means:
- one who is held
- one who is bound
- one who is kept as security within a system
Not absolution.
Not sympathy.
Just etymology — the system speaking through its own naming conventions.
And suddenly the two words — ghiùlain and Ghislaine — began to resonate across time and language.
One means to carry.
The other means to be held hostage.
Together they form a single question:
What does the system carry, and who does it hold?
3. Systems Carry Their Violence Forward
Every system has a manner of conduct — a way it carries itself.
And that conduct is not neutral.
Systems:
- carry their histories
- carry their hierarchies
- carry their violence
- carry their expectations
- carry their beneficiaries
- carry their hostages
Some people are carried by the system.
Some people are carried for the system.
Some people are carried as the system.
And some people are held hostage by the very structures that empower them.
This is not about individuals.
It’s about the architecture they are embedded in.
4. Hostage Is a Structural Position
The old meaning of gisel — hostage — wasn’t originally about kidnapping.
It was about guarantee.
A hostage was:
- a pledge of loyalty
- a symbol of compliance
- a body held to ensure the system’s continuity
A hostage is not always powerless.
Sometimes a hostage is a node — a person whose position ensures the system keeps functioning.
This is where the insight sharpens.
Some people become hostages to:
- lineage
- wealth
- expectation
- secrecy
- inherited violence
- the roles they were born into
And some become instruments of the system’s conduct because they were never allowed to be anything else.
5. The System’s Conduct Creates Its Hostages
When a system carries itself through:
- exploitation
- silence
- hierarchy
- obedience
- protection of the powerful
…it produces hostages at every level.
Hostages who:
- uphold the system
- are upheld by the system
- are trapped inside the system
- are shaped by the system’s manner of conduct
This doesn’t erase responsibility.
It contextualizes it.
It asks us to look at the pattern, not just the person.
6. Language as the System’s Confession
What struck me most was this:
The system names itself.
It leaves clues in:
- etymology
- lineage
- inherited roles
- the geometry of words
- the meanings that echo across languages
ghiùlain — to carry
gisel — hostage
The system carries its hostages.
The hostages carry the system.
The conduct of one reveals the conduct of the other.
Language is not accidental.
It is the archive of everything a culture has ever done.
7. What This Insight Asks of Us
This moment wasn’t about absolution.
It was about recognition.
It asked me to interrogate:
- how systems carry their violence
- how individuals become vessels for that conduct
- how meaning hides in plain sight
- how language preserves the architecture of power
- how we are all, in different ways, held hostage by the structures we inherit
And it asked me to consider something harder:
What do we carry forward without realizing it?
And who becomes hostage to the systems we refuse to examine?
Survivor Literacy 
What do you think?