(6) The Circle of Fire

A million years ago, or perhaps two.  Anyway it was longer ago than last Thursday, one of our distant ancestors stood smiling, triumphant in the centre of a clearing in the forest.  In her hand was a small tree branch with flame licking all round it.  Her family understood fire, they had run before the flame front terrified of its power, hugging the children and dragging the old folk as they ran. But they had also followed it over the dry grassland where it herded animals into a panic so that they were able to bring down meat that would normally be impossible to catch.  Fire, they had learnt was not only something to be feared but something that could be used, and, indeed, sometimes the carcases of animals that had been caught in the flames tasted better than the raw flesh they usually scavenged.  Since the family had been on the move, they had felt less secure and had huddled closer at night in small frightened groups staring into the night and calling to each other in the darkness.  But the older woman had worked her magic trick with the flaming branch they had been able to spend the night less fearful of prowlers and gained warmth from it so that they had become used to sharing its light, sitting round it facing each other across the glow Now, the fire was their accustomed social point.  They could see each other and could chatter and gossip.  They could see who was grooming whom, who was trying to raise their status and who was becoming jealous. By the light of this new technology they became stronger as a group as they began to exchange tokens of what they had seen that day and envision in the flickering flames what the future might hold for them.

Of course, this is all absolutely true, I saw it in a film with Racquel Welsh and for me, it illustrates one of the crucial elements of story telling - the performance circle.  For me, this represents the real shift for homo sapiens into modern human beings. That little group of listeners facing inwards towards the story-teller as if round a campfire.  This manifests itself even as the group of listeners becomes an audience in a theatre.  The story teller is the focus as though the audience were sat round a fire at night.  The story teller who works in a purely literary form does not have this natural, human circle but it is well to recall this as the natural environment.  Drawing the reader in as though into a circle of firelight.  We see this as we tell our children their bedtime stories, trying to create a warm circle of familiarity where they delicious terror of monsters and fearful creatures exist just out of sight beyond the firelight but where they safe within the story-telling circle.

The circle or the half circle is the natural environment for performance.  Watch any incident in the street, a circle forms, some hanging back on the outskirts, some jostling forward to see better or to offer advice.  Performers are familiar with this instinctive audience grouping. He or she will attempt to reach all members of the group, sometimes lowering their voice to draw the more distant watchers in or moving about and projecting so that all become included.  Above all, though, the story telling circle enables direct eye-contact between the teller and the audient.  From this position of power, one to one,  the smallest and least can hold an entire audience as he or she grooms them.

The crucial technology in the development of the human species was fire. Principally because it enabled the transformation of grooming into gossiping and thus into story-telling. - Marjorie Whiston.

Story tellers of all types, whether novelists or playwrights or comedians seek to draw the audience to them.  “Come in, come in.  Listen to what I have to tell” they say, In just such a way as the ancient sagas begin with a “Hwaet.” Followed by a silence. The silence grows and becomes the magic bubble that contains them all.  And here in this magic place they can transform themselves into the narrator of the tale and any of the characters they wish to create.

The young hunter drags himself out of the bush into the midst in the huddle of skin tents.  the rest of his people stands expectant, silent.  Although he is clearly at the end of his endurance he feels a pulse of triumph surge through him.  He manages to pull himself upright and nods.  There is a whoop from the villagers but before they can eat he must tell them how he caught the gazelle.  Slowly, so slowly he paces through the hunt retracing his steps in sounds and gestures.  Walking the gazelle through the afternoon heat.  Time after time the animal springs ahead of him but it is not made for long distance and stops after a few minutes in the shade of a piece of scrub.  She wants to drink but the young man presses on relentlessly.  Again and again she springs forward.  All the time the young man walks steadily forward.  And as he does so he begins to understand the mind of the gazelle.  And when she swerves right or left he is ready for her and is soon behind her again.  As the afternoon wears on he becomes closer and closer to the animal.  In the mind deadening heat She and he become as one.  In the clearing in front of the village he has ceased to be telling the story, he has become gazelle twisting and turning, dropping to his knees as the gazelle has done.  He has become the story he is telling. And when the gazelle finally collapses and cannot pull herself up any more the young man put his arms round her neck and weeps for her pain before he plunges his spear in her neck.

Later still we may see an image of a family, more settled now, with permanent dwellings made of mud and brush.  Our people have settled to a more sedentary way of life.  They are at the point when they might think of themselves as farmers.  Certainly they don’t follow the herd any more because they manage to keep enough of the beasts nearby, encouraging them to stay by thorn hedges and ditches.  They do not have to forage quite so much because they have some patches with plants growing from seeds and roots they have put there.  In fact, as evening falls they are able to settle back in some sort of comfort and tell each other tales of what they have been working on during the day.  And the old men tell them what the world was like before life became so dull and routine.

  And still later, a group of young men are arming themselves with stones and heavy sticks.  They jump up and down on the spot eager to be on with the battle.  Their voices are high and loud, their bodies taut with excitement.  The flames from the fire flicker and dance and make their taut skins shine and glow. Testosterone and adrenalin pump freely through their veins.  They are telling each other how brave they will be and how many each one will take down.  And how they should fight as well as the one who went down in the last battle but not before he had taken four, maybe five of the others with him.  And later they will recount their exploits over and over through the night the numbers they defeated growing larger with each telling till the others become bored with their stories and tell them to shut up.

And then there is a small man in a brown shirt. He stands on a concrete podium at the top of a long flight of broad steps. The arena is lit by the flicker of a thousand torches.  Harsh spot lights lance down towards him. He raises his arm and the roar of the crowd before him rises to thunder.