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An Old Rant
Mar. 6th, 2010 11:16 am"Because it is beautiful, it is truly useful" ~ Antoine de St. Exupery The Little Prince
Story's are like...actually, no they aren't. They aren't like anything and more importantly they don't do anything. They just are. They are stories and we tell them because it is in our nature to do so. Because we need them. But they don't fight crime, they don't solve injustice, and they can't jump over tall buildings in a single bound. And they don't need to.
It drives me bonkers that we seem impelled, as an intellectual society, to justify our stories. That we can't just put them into the world and let them be. That we have to interrogate them: what does this story do for us? Why is significant? Why is it significant now? Here?
The story doesn't need to function as anything besides a story. Something that people, for a moment, can simply share. Like communion. People don't analyze communion (Well, okay, religion majors do.) But in the moment ofcommunionizing communing, it just is. Bread, wine, bada-boom, bada-bing, and you have something to share.
Stories function, not as microcosms or as metaphors or a symbols, but as little pieces of beauty that can be shared among people. A sort of communion, between people who know each other well, people who have thousands of years of history together but still tell the stories because that is what reminds them of what holds them together. A megillah. And orange on a Seder plate. Or between people who have never met but in passing, who sit together in a dark theater--don't sit together, sit six rows apart and never so much as make eye contact--but because now they know the same story, have something to share.
I remain,
Georgie
Story's are like...actually, no they aren't. They aren't like anything and more importantly they don't do anything. They just are. They are stories and we tell them because it is in our nature to do so. Because we need them. But they don't fight crime, they don't solve injustice, and they can't jump over tall buildings in a single bound. And they don't need to.
It drives me bonkers that we seem impelled, as an intellectual society, to justify our stories. That we can't just put them into the world and let them be. That we have to interrogate them: what does this story do for us? Why is significant? Why is it significant now? Here?
The story doesn't need to function as anything besides a story. Something that people, for a moment, can simply share. Like communion. People don't analyze communion (Well, okay, religion majors do.) But in the moment of
Stories function, not as microcosms or as metaphors or a symbols, but as little pieces of beauty that can be shared among people. A sort of communion, between people who know each other well, people who have thousands of years of history together but still tell the stories because that is what reminds them of what holds them together. A megillah. And orange on a Seder plate. Or between people who have never met but in passing, who sit together in a dark theater--don't sit together, sit six rows apart and never so much as make eye contact--but because now they know the same story, have something to share.
I remain,
Georgie
