I’m listening to Sonny Rollins’ Blue 7. Choosing a next word, like deciding music, is a significant event entailing parallel yet soon defunct phenomena unmeasured but hypothesized in a quantum construct.
Choosing ten words or choosing ten of anything — choosing merges quanta, happenstance survivors plucked out of a number of now-dead parallel event objects or topics. “When a word is selected as a ‘vivid detail,’” Wm. Empson insists, “a reader may suspect alternative reasons why it[’s] selected.” You’d think a given detail had been spinning either as two or many more meanings finally resolved (finished up) as confusion collapses, and one number or flavor of topic pops out, anecdotally at random. Now the rest are put to rest by now.