My Story Story
PRAELUDIUM
(prɪˈluːdɪəm) n, pl -ia (-ɪə)(Classical Music) a prelude, now predominantly in a musical context
“The Praeludium is an exciting up-tempo frolic, followed by a lovely Sarabande, and then a lilting, jaunty Gavotte, very pleasant.”
Listen to that constant babble of human voices. On Facebook and Twitter, on You Tube, Reddit and all the other social media outlets. On podcasts on the radio. In Zoom meetings or Open Chats. On buses and cafes. On phones. In pubs and clubs and theatres. From the stages at festivals. In movies and plays. In board rooms and places of worship, yes, especially there, and at sales conferences and political rallies. What is that noise? Even when we are distanced from each other. Why are we expending so much breath on this ephemeral intercourse? If I listen in, it seems to me, we are, in fact, telling each other stories. Almost continuously. Every single one of us has a stream of stories and narratives that we can’t wait to share. And when we are alone we still tell them even if we’ve only got ourselves to listen. And sometimes, if there is no-one else at hand to hear what we have to say, we shrink down and become blighted and in pain. These stories describe every aspect of our human existence. What we did yesterday, what we are doing now and what we hope to be doing a week next Friday. Stories of hope and pain and delight. Sometimes it is our own story and sometimes other people’s. Friend or foe, we make no distinction. We are fearless in our story telling. And at night when we are asleep our subconscious brains carry on telling stories. Magnificent, wildly distorted narratives about the very workings of our being.
For fifty years I have been writing plays. Stories that amused other people enough for it to be some sort of career. Even as I child I wrote stories and now as a septuagenarian I carry on. Every day as if it somehow mattered. But in all that time I have never asked myself why. Why I have spent a goodly chunk of my life writing plays and books and telling tales? What drives me to get up most mornings and begin recording these strings of fiction tied into little knots for someone else to unloose? What’s the point? Is it mere vanity or some way of putting off doing something more pressing? What is a story any way and why does it seem to be so much part of all our lives? I genuinely believe story telling is important, fundamental in some way. And that’s not just me trying to excuse wasted time in some sort of end of life existential angst. I have felt the power that story telling exerts like the deep undertow of a rolling wave, I just don’t know how or why. And how what I do fits with the fleeting dreams of others.
If I do stop to think about it, story-telling is a basic human activity like breathing or eating or going to the lavatory. As podcaster John Green says, “art is not optional”. We cannot help it. It is what we do. But somehow story-telling bears even more importance than the artistic imperative to say “I was here”. Stories are woven into our social DNA. If not into our actual DNA. They are an intrinsic part of what it is to be human. They are the process by which we express ourselves and the workings of our world. Remove our stories. Or remove us from our stories - and we are as jellyfish unaware of the currents that carry us through the ocean until we wash up and desiccate on some distant shore.
And if I think some more, Stories have functions beyond mere descriptions of our lives. They enable us, as individuals, to order the events of the world around and make sense of what is often senseless. We may be in error in our perception and we may want to put a gloss on our most embarrassing memories, but piece by piece, each tiny story becomes an element in the big story that is us and becomes the way whereby we decide how to fit into the world around. Any time you have said “and then…” you too have unloosed the arrows of time and started to order the world and your understanding of it. Then this and then that… Which may mean that there is, in fact, no distinction between your life and your story of it. You are your story.
These days we understand that Truth is relativistic. Truth depends on where you are standing at any one time. Truth shimmers like a mirage in a distant landscape we may never reach. Truth and fiction are interchangeable. And thus, we continue constructing our own narrative using both bricks and straw.
What we remember are not the events themselves but the stories we tell ourselves about them. These stories are polished and refined each time we go over them until they may bear little resemblance to the event itself. We are all unreliable witnesses to our own lives.
And further - and here is the truly remarkable thing - we can make stories about events that have not happened yet. We can invent the future just as much as we invent the past. It is in this remarkable ability that we humans have to envision that which is not yet and so plan our lives and the world around us. Our story stretches from the deep past into the distant future. And by saying “What if…” in our stories we have the capacity to make the world anew.
All these years I’ve been telling stories , mine, other people’s, fantasies, lies - can I separate Me the story teller from my own story enough to make any sense of the question “what is the point of story-telling?” If you care to, I’d like to set out on a journey with you and see if, together, we can’t come up with some answers to the questions that bother me. If we can’t, it’s going to be a pretty short read but perhaps you’ll come with me on the journey anyway, just to keep me company.
So here are the four questions that bother me.
1) Why do we tell stories?
2) What is a story?
3) How does a story work?
4) Why do I tell stories?
Click on the link below to see the first part “Gossiping and Grooming”