Telling Stories pt 2

Hello out there!  Do people still read blogs anymore much less ones on blogger?  I must confess that anytime I find myself on a blogger, wordpress, or typepad blog I'm surprised if I find an entry more recent than 2014.  That's fine though.  In a sense these low-fi blogs are like the zines we used to make in the 90s and in a very real sense I am doing this for me and not you.

My very first course at university was called Telling Stories.  As with most things from that era in my life I had a very narrow view of what I was interested in and what I was going to get out of it.  I took that course because it was the only one available to first years that had a filmmaking/film theory component (if you are at all familiar with TESC - my alma mater - then you will know that each term you get to take one course that covers a number of different disciplines).  I learned many interesting things in that first term - things about Rilke and Japanese Noh theatre and Carl Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc, but right now I'm sitting here wishing I could remember more about the overall theme that tied these individual threads together.  If I were to take a guess it would be the very human need to tell our stories.

The Garment Thread started its life with the intention to tell stories.  Stories about clothes.  Since first reading it, I have been deeply inspired by the Diana Vreeland quote:  “a new dress doesn’t get you anywhere; it’s the life you’re living in the dress, & the sort of life you had lived before, & what you will do in it later.”   I wanted to write the stories of my clothing (and maybe also give myself a justification for hoarding so many of them).  I don't want to write the stories of my clothes anymore.  I want to tell different stories.  Stories about an ageing rock chick from Los Angeles living in the woods of Northern Ireland.  Stories about healing myself with birds and bees and gardens, rocks and seashells and crystals.

A teacher of mine recently told me that singing was going to be the key for me and I think that's true, but I think maybe more importantly writing is going to be the key for me.  So I'm going to give it a go and see what this key might unlock.  It was important for me to come back to this space to try to find my storytelling voice again because I strongly believe that the present is built on the foundations of the past.  Whenever I find a new blog that I love, the first thing I do is dig deep into the archives - five, ten years back and start reading from there.  I want to start from the beginning and understand the progressions.  If you have found yourself here and have any inclination to dig, then welcome - it's all here and I have no regrets.