I rarely read stories because I am so infrequently captured by them. It takes a lot to genuinely draw me in and envelop me in other worlds. Why? Because if it doesn't feel real I can't relate. And by real, I don't mean literally real I mean emotionally authentic. I need to care and I need to know you care. Life is too short not to care. Ambivalence is a waste land I don't wish to linger upon for anymore time than is totally necessary. In short, story-teller, tell me something that is true!
This last week I have been exposed to depths of story that made my head spin. In a good way! I sense chapters are ending and beginning. And at the endpoint there is a feeling of lose and at the beginning there is a feeling of anticipation. What next?
Earlier today I was reading a recap of the last episode of Skins, a Channel 4 TV programme for the kids, which has dark undertones and rich characterisations of adolescence with a plot line that occasionally sails close to the ridiculous and a soundtrack of enormously danceable proportions. Anyhoo, Heather Hogan, is recollecting events when she goes off on one about the place of story in our lives and in that moment captures in words what I've been feeling for weeks if not months, so here it is ...
"The greatest gift a storyteller can give you — and you'll never convince me there is a greater gift than story — is to tell you something real. My favorite book starts like this: The world is dark, and light is precious. Come closer, dear reader. You must trust me. I am telling you a story. Which is the honest-to-God most seductive thing anyone could ever whisper into my ear.
Life is messy, yeah? All these unrelated events — inane, monotonous, trivial — threaded together by time. When you die, someone ties the thread together, maybe even in a bow, but there's still no shape to it. And without shape, there is no meaning. Most lives are shapeless, and that's OK, because you know what else is shapeless? The night sky — or it would be if someone hadn't drawn Orion and Pegasus and Cassiopeia onto heaven's canvas.
Constellations are just another story: form to the madness, order to the chaos. Fiction resonates because it does the same thing — only instead of drawing pictures of kings out of unrelated points of light, it draws pictures of us out of unrelated points of life. Authentic stories, real stories get inside us in a way nothing else can."
This leaves me wondering ,where am I in my story? What dragons do I have to slay?
Can I tell you my truth? Hum, watch this space ... to find out!
No comments:
Post a Comment