Memory Spins False Worlds

Our fame is as storytelling creatures. Arguably, this is the dividing line between animal and humankind. Our ability to displace ourselves from the present moment even though we inexorably occupy it, and to dwell instead in the folds of the past or fret upon the unfolding of the future – this is what makes us human. It is our birthmark; an almost-irremovable spot that can be the cause of distress or celebration, depending on how we choose to wear it.

You’ve likely noticed it by now. When you pass by people in the street. How some walk with their heads bowed, eyes to the ground, brows tortured by thought, aware of your being only at the minimum level of attention necessary. They are not really where their bodies are situated at all. Their physical surroundings periphery to their actual point of concentration. Auto-pilot episodes, elsewhere minds, bodies locked in cruise control.

Wanderers on some material plane, apparently loose parts in an external, objective world that, for all our understanding, goes on changing largely independent of our inner states. And yet we consistently superimpose our inner states upon this objective, external world.

If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then perhaps we are souls under house-arrest, peering through the looking glass. All too often, our vision is fogged or otherwise restricted. There are only so many angles of perception we can hold at any one time. No matter how we might crane and stretch to attain a better view, we will always have our blind spots.

And there are parasites in our houses too.

Consorts of endlessly transmuting energies and disembodied voices. You cannot outrun them, for you are locked inside this house with them. And to rage against them is also no use. With either strategy, you only succeed in inflating your enemies, helping their shadows loom larger on the wall.

Where we attempt to exterminate one family of thought, we succeed only in ensuring the multiplication of its offspring. It is the myth of Heracles fighting the Hydra. In decapitating one head, several more are sure to sprout in its place. The only proper solution is to face the head of each snake directly and to properly cauterise the wound. But this, it’s a conversation for another time.

If you’re an ordinary human being, the chances are that you’ve been living under this sort-of house arrest like the rest of us. Worse still, you’ve been living there so long, you might have no understanding of your identity beyond the walls which contain you. At its most extreme, this means you cannot separate yourself from where you reside, you might mistake who you are for the very house itself and everything contained within it. This means the disembodied voices - the ghosts haunting its many rooms - are also haunting you.

These unresolved voices of the past become the chorus that fabricate our stories and repeat them back to us. And we become little more than hosts possessed by this echo-chamber, navigating our limited space and time according to the framework set upon us by our store of past experiences. We become aware of our blind reactions only in the playing-out of their consequences, and realise all too late the wisdom in the saying: what you own ends up owning you.

Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.

This, of course, a slice from Orwell’s 1984: a warning about the dangerous mutability of information. It’s an admission from the novel’s totalitarian Big Brother government, otherwise known as the Party, which recognises that in order to exert control over its population they must continually weave a story to which all past evidence corroborates. All evidence of which exists only in records and human memory. The Party must therefore be in full control of all records – doctoring or outright eradicating them when necessary – and also be in full control of the minds of its people – also doctoring or outright eradicating them when necessary.

Implicit in this process is an appreciation that past events have no objective existence. The past is dead and lives on only in the mind. All that truly exists is the present. The Party understands this. Whoever recalls the past has the ability to alter its shape, which – as the majority of people behave according to their past – grants whomever manipulates past events the power to manipulate behaviour in the present. And behaviour in the present creates a predictable pattern for behaviour in the future. Put otherwise, you act in your present according to your past: your present actions build your future. Be cautious therefore, which version of the past you choose to live with.

However, there is an escape hatch here, if you will, a get-out-of-jail-free card. I could tell you, that you, like the Party, are also the governing body with the power to manipulate past events, thereby determining your behaviour in the immediate now. But this seems to be an unnecessary exhaust of energy. Wouldn’t it be better instead to live entirely unburdened by the past?

Read again the statement closely.

‘Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’

Now, reverse-engineer the equation.

For the past to determine the future, the present must be the direct consequence of the past. Without such a present, the past can have no bearing on the future. It seems to me then, that the present moment is everything, the fulcrum on which a life experience is continuously determined. There is an acknowledgement in this equation: absolute power belongs to whomever dominates the present moment.

And guess what? This anonymous ‘whomever’, that person, is you.

The erudite truth is that you are always occupying the present moment. Though your elsewhere mind might convince you otherwise, you cannot remove yourself from the unceasing now, no matter how hard you try. Whether you realise it or not, your relationship with the present moment is the most significant determinant of your life experience. You can be the victim of circumstance or the manufacturer of circumstance. That choice, ultimately, is yours.

A slight modification of the Party’s statement seems unavoidable for my purposes here. Forgive me, Orwell: I’m aware I’m taking you out of context. But let us say that whilst ‘Who controls the present controls the past’ is indeed true, we can also elaborate, and choose to say: ‘who surrenders to the present is uncontrolled by the past.’

Memories spin false worlds. Unburden yourself. Remove the shackles of the past – loosen them at the least – and your future will become increasingly unconditioned; an infinite sea of potentiality.

Thanks for reading, Josh.

Read More

Anecdotal evidence

I come from a family that love anecdotes. They're our social lubricant, and usually very amusing. I've lost track of the times I've been embarrassed by my auntie telling people how I once was found as a toddler swearing at an injured pigeon which was hiding under the bed from me for being naughty, and how I tried to turn its legs round because they were "the wrong way round". Poor pigeon. Having grown up around it I find myself loving other people's stories, and it often made me wonder why we enjoy this so much, both the telling of them and the listening. I'm fascinated by folk stories and fables.

Whilst studying on my MA we were visited by a remarkable storyteller Taffy Thomas MBE (http://www.taffythomas.co.uk/). He's the UK's first storytelling Laureate. He suffered from a severe stroke and taught himself to speak again using the art of storytelling. He came in and put on his storytelling coat which was a handmade coat made up of various images, each representing a folk story. He asked us to pick a picture and he would tell from memory the story. He was captivating, in presence and skill. We hung on his every word, amazed that he could remember each of these stories so perfectly and tell them so beautifully. He spoke about how important stories are, particularly to children and how they could develop emotional literacy, empathy and communication skills. The morality in some of the stories also acts as a guide for children to develop within the community. Taffy was keen for us to remember the stories, and taught us a few handy ways to recall them using anchor points within the story. He said as long as we could remember these it didn't much matter how we told it, so long as it was told with conviction and respect for the story.

The art of verbal storytelling has been around far longer than the written word, but is just as important. We've evolved to tell stories to pass on information, alert to dangers experienced in the past, teach empathy and morality and of course help us to communicate with each other better. Both in speaking and listening. In his book Telling Tales Taffy quotes a 12 year old he met at one of his workshops;

A story's like a game of tig that's passed on
And around. A story is like a gift that's
Given by sound. A story is like a Mexican wave
Whirling above the ground. Around and
Around it goes, by word of mouth it flows
Hold the gist as it goes by. Pass it on or it will
Die. A story's a game of tig.

I like this quote, a story is a game of tig. A verbal tale or anecdote is passed on much like any other type of story, and whether it gets twisted a little on the way it doesn't matter. We're wired to tell stories, whether in verbal or written form, so pass em on.

Read More

Trust me, Wilbur

Mums.  They're never more annoying than when they're right.

For years the woman who pulled me out of a top hat told me to put 'nice things' into my head.  I was chastised for reading thrillers, for watching horror, for listening to Radio 2 at lunchtime.  Perhaps it's a special kind of knowledge that comes with age but I'm beginning to agree.

This review of Phillipa Perry's book How to Stay Sane highlights the importance of narratives to our psychological well-being.  Perry's book alludes to research which reveals a measurable negative impact on people's expectations of violence when they watch more television.  In particular, a quote by E B White, quoted in Maria Popova's article, struck a chord:

[Writers] should tend to lift people up, not lower them down. Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.

Putting the tear-inducing ending of Charlotte's Web to one side, the words and images which we're exposed to have a powerful effect on our private narratives.  Much of the damage will take effect on a sub-conscious level.  As writers and readers we have a choice about how much damage we allow.  As individuals we can choose to feed our minds with bright ideas and kind thoughts.  When we write, whether for personal or professional means, we always have the opportunity to frame our words in a positive light.

I'm not talking about censorship or ignoring anything that scares or saddens us.  Rather, we can choose to re-shape our dark encounters, the late night terrors, by re-imagining them in a more hopeful aspect.  Take performance as an example.  My fear of standing up in front of other people is something I've struggled with for years.  At times I have worked hard, with the help of hypnotherapy at one point, to associate positive images with performing and therefore manage the fear.  But shadows have a way of creeping back in when you stop paying attention.   If we want to keep bouncing we need to tell ourselves the right stories again and again.

This is the short verse which I penned to summarise Unconventional Attitudes at the end of a performance:

Stirring and slinking, subtle and serpentine – stories

Saturate, penetrate, permeate - stories

Drawn into our fibres until when the flesh falls away

And the bones become dust, only stories remain

Opal and turquoise, ruby and sapphire – our tainted filtrations

Irregular, strange and exquisite.

If stories are what will remain of us when we are gone, shouldn't we think about which stories we'll inhabit while we live?  Do we want to fill our heads with horror, with expectations of violence, or would we rather absorb happy fantasies, dwelling on imagined adventures, epic journeys and great loves?  With this in mind, on an intentionally HAPPY Valentine's Day, I intend to share my time with as many loved ones as possible.  In the evening I'll be watching an inspiring woman perform some stories at Blackpool Central Library.  At bedtime I'll write the story of the day in my head and, whatever actually happened, I'll ensure I come out of it thinking 'nice things'.  Thanks Mum x

Read More

Grandad Tom and The Dragon

by Rachel McGladdery



My childhood was difficult. I spent large tracts of it with my grandparents at times of trauma (which were frequent), not that I’m complaining. When I stayed with my grandparents, I was bathed, warm, fed and always had clean clothes to wear, this was due to the wonderful mothering I received from my grandma - granddad did the other stuff every child needs, he filled my head with rubbish... other dimensions, fairies, elves (told with such astonishing flair that I actually saw them, digging for coal in the cellar) in addition, each evening that he wasn’t ‘on nights’, granddad would tell me stories at bedtime. He would hitch up his trousers and sit with a sigh on the little chair by my bed and begin.


Each story had me as the eponymous heroine, whether fighting for Earth’s survival against aliens in ‘Rachel and the Spaceship’ or hunting for rainbow cloth in ‘Rachel and the Fairies’. But my favourite was ‘Rachel and the Dragon’. This would see me questing for gold and magic rings, looking to slay an ancient dragon and steal its hoard, but eventually panned out to a battle of wits in which me and the dragon would become firm friends and I would get a fair share of the treasure, leaving the dragon enough to see it through till old age. I swear that the man had magic. No doubt the tales were forged from a mixture of Ursula Le Guin and Tolkein with a smattering of C.S. Lewis thrown in for good measure, but the detail and the clarity not to mention the affection which he wove into them, made them as real as could be. He read a lot, complained as he was getting older that there were ‘no new stories.’


Granddad died 7 years ago, and I miss him, I mourn more for the fatherly comforting presence that my younger children are denied, I do tell the children stories in which they emerge as the heroes, I base them loosely on Enid Blyton but they aren’t a patch on granddad’s. He began telling stories to his brothers when he was a lad, carried on telling them in order to survive school and openly admitted that he made them as bloodthirsty and erotic as he could as he moved into his teens, then a hiatus for the war, before more stories with his own children and eventually his grandchildren. The last time I saw him before he took to his deathbed, he sat with my two boys then aged 7 and 8 and I went out to the backyard to watch the tableau through the window. My view was made swimmy with old glass and tears, but he leant forward, spittle on his lips, in the certain knowledge that this was his last chance, vehemently telling them tales of his childhood and the war, teaching them, through stories, how to be men.


Granddad once said when I was very young, ‘You’ll be a writer when you grow up, because you’ve had a bad childhood’. Granddad, some of it was terribly bad, but I survived, thanks to you and Grandma, and I am a writer, not because my childhood was bad, but because you made it enviable.



http://writeoutloud.net/profiles/rachelmcgladdery

Read More