…one that didn’t begin in a galaxy far, far away.
Humans are narrative beings, we depend on stories to inform, guide and advance our lives. This has been true ever since the beginning – even the “big bang” is an illustration of an origin/creation story – so, maybe we did indeed start a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
Our need to tell stories, and yes I do refer to it as a “need”, did not arrive with the Gutenberg press in the 15th century, but many moons before we were carving on tablets, speaking to our fellow brothers and sisters and painting/drawing in caves – some of these examples which date back approximately 50,000 years.
“Visual and oral storytelling may have a longer tradition, but it was the written word which took storytelling to new heights and mass audiences.”
Just quickly allow me to interrupt myself by saying that I think the visual and oral traditions have fought back in recent times with the technological advancement of videos and other media such as audio books proving immensely popular and, dare I say it, becoming more preferable to reading.
Mythologies and Religions are the oldest and most cemented stories we have as a cultural species, with the ancient Mesopotamian examples the Enuma Elish and the Gilgamesh Epic being the earliest on record (estimated 4,000 years ago). After thousands of years it seems we’re still fascinated by origin/creation myths and the hero’s journey.
The campfire has been a go-to location for a good story. I think the closeness/intimacy of the setting facilitates storytelling. For numerous reasons, historically, people have found themselves surrounding a campfire, and largely at night there wasn’t really much else to do other than go to a tavern/pub – ironically, another great location for storytelling. Now, modern man camps for recreation/leisure as opposed to travelling, preparing for battle, or hunting for survival, but the elements are still there (and not just fire winks).
Does the storyteller matter as much as the story? Sometimes, I think even more so, but what makes a great storyteller? The knack of a good story is a talent in itself, to use a Boromir quote from Lord of the Rings, “it is a gift”, but I still feel you can learn to be great orator. Like a great commentator, you have to have the voice for it otherwise people are not going to listen to you. It’s not just the voice, but the pacing, the intonation/tonal changes, the volume awareness and emphasis at certain points. Charisma goes a long way as well, the ability to capture (and hold) the attention of a group of people or a room is imperative to being a great storyteller – and if you’ve played Red Dead Redemption II, it’s clear that Uncle, Hosea and Dutch are the three best storytellers. Being entertaining and humorous is a good quality to have, but I don’t deem it essential for a great storyteller.
Switching gears, or flipping pages might be more appropriate, let’s move onto the personal stories we tell ourselves, sometimes which manifest themselves into self-fulfilling prophecies. Now, this can work to our advantage especially in the face of adversity where we remind ourselves of our capabilities and the goal/s we plan to achieve, but we tend to see examples trending in the other direction in the forms of catastrophising and self-sabotage amongst others.
It can be incredibly difficult to rewrite a personal story you’ve told yourself a million times before. Separating out things from our identity that are not helpful or are no longer helpful [important distinction] may require the help of a psychologist due to how mentally and emotionally attached we can become to these stories. I explore this further in my articles “Great Expectations”, and, along with some of my own personal struggles, in “The Gift and Curse of Intelligence”, please feel free to read them.
“In a similar way how a picture is worth a thousand words, a story helps us paint a thousand pictures.”
At this point in the story we’ll take an intermission like in Lawrence of Arabia, please do step outside for some refreshments and I’ll see you with something new in September.
I often think about a section of a Terry Pratchett book I've read (part of his 'Science of Discworld' series which contrasts his fantasy discworld with our 'roundworld') where he says the anthropologists who named us Homo sapiens got it wrong - we're not really 'Wise men', and a better name would have been Pan narrans or 'Storytelling chimpanzee'.
There's no way I could do it justice, but the theory is that without stories like 'The Foragers That Didn't Keep Watch Through The Night And Got Eaten By a Tiger" civilization as we know it wouldn't have developed the way it did.