We are all Storytellers

Human beings have always told their histories and truths through parable and fable. We are inveterate storytellers.” (Beeban Kidron)

There are few things I get depressed over, other than the loss of a close acquaintance or the bottom of a scotch bottle. Whenever I spend too much time away from the keyboard or putting the pen to the sepia tone pad my ex girlfriend gave me back in high school, I am saddened. Whether we are truthful or prevaricated we tell a story, and it is important to someone, if not then to ourselves, to write.

Through every piece of fiction we find factions of truth - A character that shares mass similarities with a childhood friend, a struggle that parallels a the authors family member, a reality in the story that was a lifelong dream. I tend to read fiction because it is in the falsities that I find the true inner being of the writer. I see their desires between the black print and folded back pages. I highlight points where their true self is most transparent.

For lack of a better term, I hope that I am an open book. I find with literature, and the stories that I most relate to, are written by authors who are the most vulnerable. They are willing to bleed a bit on the pages and not worry about the cuts and bruises being exposed to sunlight. This doesn't mean the artist has to get all Edgar Allen in order for me to to have some sort of semblance of respect for them. The Picture of Dorian Gray is not beautiful because it is gloomy, but rather it is nebulous and invokes thought stemming from a character who is doomed from the life he chose to lead and his Faustian bargain. Oscar Wilde, a man who rose into societal acceptance debuting as an actor only to be exiled leading to his imminent death, wrote with passion and unprecedented prose.

So as I stroll through life pontificating with strangers, friends, family and foes, I write. I tell the stories that are true to me, or at least part of my subconscious. Our history is told through parable and fable, without storytellers, the world rotates on its axis and the days are numbered, but everything is left in the dust. Now some may argue that is it best to let the past die, and only to carry forward the favorable parts. This form of thought/story natural selection seems the furthest thing from natural. We should remember the growth of the trees and the wildfires that brought them down. Whats the point of knowing your best sexual encounter without remembering the erectile dysfunction scenario? Maybe some want to push that shit away and move forward amicably but not I. Any writer who ignores the facts, positive or negative, is doing the reader and themselves a disservice, present and more importantly, future.

Live, write, die, and do it again.