I’ve always been fascinated by π. My interest only increased when I found out that it appears not only in the mathematics of circles, but in fundamental physics as well. Then I considered how, given its infinite decimal places and lack of repetition, it contains every number sequence possible. Since letters can be represented by numbers, that means that not only does π contain every integer we can imagine and more, it contains every sentence ever written or could be written. All the stories we have told, will tell and can tell are already latent within this irrational number. I was all the more cheerfully confounded by learning of the other, less popularized, irrational numbers, such as Euler’s number e, the golden ratio φ, and the square root of two.
I’m also fascinated by human language, though my ability to master my own tongue is limited and my attempts at becoming bilingual have been impressive failures. Yet, I love the diversity and complexity of the ways in which we can communicate through linguistic noise; I love the variety of intentional sounds we make, rendering sound waves as phonemes as symbols as ideas as culture. This brings us together as an aspect of our humanness, but also symbolizes our barriers in understanding each other.
These fascinations have been with me a for long time. Then some years ago I stumbled across Numbers Stations, mysterious shortwave broadcast sources, likely utilized for communication of encoded messages for spycraft. The earlier stations relied on anonymous human speakers reading out lists of integers into a microphone. Because these messages were high stakes, they had to be intelligible, so the readers spoke into their microphones at a fairly brisk but very even pace. Listening to some of the clearer recordings through headphones had almost a meditative effect on me.
For reasons I can’t explain, in 2016, these three elements came together in my brain while I was pondering the confrontations in our society between a growing acceptance of human diversity and the reactions against it. I wanted to say something. I wanted a bunch of people to say it with me. I wanted what was said to carry with it all the mystery and joy of numbers and language, carry it in such a way that it would be immune to the political, the parochial, and the fearful. It occurred to me that a recitation of π, in which each digit was spoken in a language different than the digit before, would convey what I was feeling, and hopefully provoke feelings and thoughts about endless diversity and endless possibility in each willing listener.
The concept slept fitfully in the back of my mind for a while, until it recently woke up, insistent that it would sleep no longer. I finally shared this story with a few friends, and that I wanted to make this real. They were at least bemused. Hence, the I’m Counting On You project.
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