Remixing our view of storytelling
Why the stories we need for these troubling times might already be here waiting for us.
In the first of a series of posts to support our new offering - The Remix I wanted to share an older perspective of storytelling, based on the ancient oral tradition. Through it I offer the suggestion that the stories that have shaped our culture have always been remixed by and with the living world. They are living, ever-changing cultural narratives, remixed as much by weather patterns and by claw and feather as they are by the human voice.
Perhaps by reclaiming this ancient view of stories we might begin to remix our modern stories into:
Stories that help us remember where we come from.
Stories that help us imagine what could be.
Stories of endings and letting go.
Stories of becoming.
Stories that remix ancient and modern knowing.
Stories of our entanglement with the great mystery of life.
Stories for life.
We live in a world shaped by stories
The stories we live by are the foundation of our culture, they shape the way we interact with the world and how we organise ourselves as individuals and as a collective. It has, of course, always been this way, and for as long as there have been humans on the earth there have been stories. To be a storyteller is perhaps one of the most ancient and intrinsic ways of being human, and it is worth remembering that for most of our time on earth we only worked with stories in the oral tradition.
Homo sapiens have been around on this earth for around about 250,000 years, it is considered likely that some form of language developed as a communication method around 150,000 years ago. However, the first recorded writing seems to have appeared just over 5,000 years ago. For the vast majority of human history we have communicated, built our cultures and interacted with the world through oral storytelling, a culture that moved and evolved through the jaw bones of humans in relationship with place.
The primary storytelling narrative of these times was the idea that humans were part of nature and there was a deeply inter-twined relationship between us and the wild world. Our lives were bound up with the idea we were part of an animate, ever-changing dream tangle with the soil, air, water, and spirit. To my mind. storytelling was not something we ‘did’, it was rather simply the expression of that inter-relationship.
Around the fire in the evening we’d tell the stories of our days, the encounters and the interactions we’d had. Through this we’d weave together a deep relationship to place. Each bend in the river would its own character, each pile of stones a uniqueness of voice, each tree with its own story to tell. We’d navigate and make meaning through these stories, and they would allow the village to thrive. Through these stories, we started to learn the migratory patterns of the Reindeer, where the greenest and tastiest herbs would be at precisely the right time, we’d learn how to hunt and how to make use of their skins for clothing and shelter.
The stories of our place would follow us into our dreams. Stories were the stuff of life, literally. They shaped us as humans, our communities - they were everything.
Stories as living beings, remixed by place
What intrigues me most about this idea is that these stories, by definition were alive, they were constantly remixed by place - shaped by weather patterns, the colour of the soil, the seasonal movement of animals and encounters with the more than human world. They prowled, soared and burrowed their way into our collective consciousness. Our whole culture was constantly remixed in collaboration with the living world.
As stories develop over years their tangle with the rhythm and pulse of their particular place deepens, they become alive, you can almost feel their heartbeat, the lines blurring between the storyteller and the blue-green forest beyond, just over their shoulder. As Sean Kane puts it in his book Wisdom of the Mythtellers:
“Myth in its most ecologically discreet form, amongst people who live by hunting and fishing and gathering, seems to be the song of the place to itself, which humans overhear” Sean Kane
As stories became written into books they became portable, carried elsewhere, away from the contours of the land that shaped them, the tale becomes ungrounded, its pulse barely detectable on the flatness of the page. The stories become disembodied, the page rather than the living land transmitting the tale. When this happens something quite profound happens - we forget that we need the scent of that first flush of Ramsons in the Spring, or the sight of the sunrise over the river in order to function, to think and to feel as a human. Or perhaps, it is just that we no longer think we need those things.
The impact of this shift is at once subtle and significant - the land becomes passive and expressionless. A backdrop for the unfolding drama of human life.
And there we have it, the conditions are set for the primary story of our colonised, industrialised world to thrive. Stories of our separation from nature - the more than human world, of separation from ourselves and from each other prevail. These stories perpetuate the destruction and breakdown of our living earth, deteriorating human and more than human health and dividing us from our diversity.
The stories we need for these times
So I want to make the claim that it might not be new stories that we need for these unravelling times. What if we need to reclaim the vibrancy and aliveness of these ancient stories instead?
I contend that the stories we need are the old ones, the place-based ones, the animate ones. It is us that has deserted them. What they offer might not be easy or painless and they are certainly not a quick fix, sticking plaster solution. But what they might do is to make the trouble bigger and more magnificent, and through that they might invite our imaginations back to the table. As Martin Shaw, mythologist and storyteller puts it in his book Scatterlings:
“No matter how unique we may think our own ear, I believe that these old tales - faerie tales, folk tales, and myths - contain much of the paradox we face in these storm-jagged times. And what’s more, they have no distinct author, are not wiggled from the penned agenda of one brain-rattled individual but have passed through the breath of a countless number of oral storytellers” Martin Shaw
Expanding our role as storytellers
Martin Shaw puts it beautifully and succinctly “The stories are here, but are we? So what does it mean to expand our role as storytellers? To me, it means to truly show up. To show up in the places we live to enter into a deep relationship to the space around you. To listen more than speak. To be step away from the comfort of the village into the wild world around us.
As these ancient stories of place became myths, the role of storyteller developed in the village. It is important to remember that storytellers were not always bright-eyed, cosy, fireside mystics, keen on balance and order. Instead they were edge characters, more in common with magicians - you can hear the screech of the owl in their voice, a twinkle in their eyes from their time spent under the sweeping boughs of the Beech wood. You can taste the salt water spray in their words and feel the mycelial networks tangling around their cloven feet.
I contend that they were the first, ancient remixers.
The stories they brought were not told but carried. Storycarriers.
There is an old idea in the oral tradition that you are never truly a storyteller, but instead always an apprentice to story. What this means is being being prepared to get caught up in the wider interaction with the living world. It means digging deeper into place, it means forming a life long apprenticeship to a patch of land, however small and imperfect.
It means entering into a relationship, not to learn its stories, not to audition them to fit the narrative that we are interested in, but rather to spend enough time waiting for the stories to come to us. Think of it as a courtship.
In time these stories begin to shape us and sometimes, in my experience with enough time, they might break us - crack us right open.
It is a price worth paying for the right story.
The Remix. 3rd of May - 27th July 2023
On the 3rd May we set sail on a 3 month Becoming Crew adventure - The Remix. The role of myth will be one of the ideas we explore in that journey.
It is for anyone who feels the call to delve deeper into story and how you might become storycarriers in your work.
It is for anyone working with story in any form or discipline.
You might be a writer, designer, film-maker, photographer, journalist, artist, activist, technologist, producer, researcher, commercial creative, educator or none of these.
We will focus on exploring the power of stories in these times, and not in a shiny, universal, humancentered way and as we journey through together as a crew we will re-hydrate some of these old stories and what they might offer us for these times.
We’ll work on practices that inter-connect us with the living world in ways that support us to dig deeper into place to hear the song lines of the land again, re-entangling us with the living world
If you are curious you can read more here or apply to join here