“We tell stories to delay the end
Storytelling and empathy – this is where we will start from. Or what can our stories do in times like today? Why the personal story is more important than the big history? Do we cherish our childhood experiences and how they help our writing? Remember how in our early years we had no problem talking with the things around without making excuses.
Why is uncertainty important in writing? And what about our fears? Why all stories are important? As a kid, I watched my grandfather swallow a living slug to cure his ulcer. I felt a simultaneous sadness for my grandfather, who suffered, but also for the slug that had to sink into the acid labyrinth of his stomach. And I felt, without being able to articulate it, that the whole story is always the story of the one who swallows the slug plus the story of the swallowed slug. And the knowledge that we are connected to everything around us. Not ‘I am’, but ‘I are’.
We’ll talk about storytelling as a time capsule and a labyrinth. Storytelling, of course, also gives a way to preserve and carry on that which is perishable. How do we save things with words?
I’ll share some of my own experience, what has preoccupied me in my recent books – the themes of memory and the past, of the unhappened and how important it is (all things that have happened are alike, each unhappened is unhappened in its own way, to paraphrase Tolstoy). And more: the feeling of anxiety that periodically returns. I will point out which stories inspire me, will ask you about your stories and first fears, and there will be a short exercise.
And all the while we will exchange stories to delay the end.”
