THE STORIES STORY

 

Once upon a time there were stories and these stories helped people make sense of things. These stories lived for a long time and got to be very very old. Some of the very first stories were from Arnhem Land and came in the form of songs. Those who sang these stories believed they were singing reality into existence. What is a rock before it is named a rock and given a story about how it came to be a rock? The answer: well, nothing at all really. Perception is everything.

Not all stories were to be taken as truth but all of them were there to help their audiences deal with reality. Stories were analogous and elastic. There were fables, cautionary tales, epic poems, and morality plays. Even when tragic, it was said these stories could purge the soul with pity and fear. These stories provided solace and guidance and held great power. This was noticed by certain people and the power of stories was harnessed and then everything changed.

New stories came to be. Rather than born of the communities to which they were applicable, these stories were constructed in laboratories by committees and sent out into the world. The new story teller was not the shaman or the seanachaí. The new story teller was the PR consultant and the behavioural psychologist. The new stories did not tell us how to live, instead they told us what to want and they told us who to hate. These stories did not sing, they scuttled. They scuttled all over the globe like cockroaches and the people of the world initially loved them but soon grew tired of them and then became disgusted by them. The people of the world went back to making up their own stories instead of listening to these new ones.

But there was a problem. The people of the world had been listening to the scuttling stories for a very very long time. The cockroaches had crawled in their ears and eaten away at the parts of their brains they used for making up stories and the cockroaches had laid eggs in there. The people of the world started making up their own stories of ‘truth’ but it was literal truth and it was absolute truth and it was not analogous or elastic or interpretable truth. And these new stories were full of confusion and loss and rage and they didn’t sing and they didn’t scuttle, they screamed. And these stories were screamed over and over and there were a great many of them and most of them were about how you could not trust the rest of them. And these stories went to war and none were on the same side and they donned armour and waved swords about the place, all over the place, and instead of singing reality into existence theses stories screamed reality into extinction. A rock was no longer a rock. A rock was a cover to an Illuminati passageway or a terrorist booby trap or an MI5 bugging device. A rock ceased to be a simple rock and became the source of great anxiety.

And then something awful happened. Something really awful happened. And no one knew why it happened or how it happened so they started to scream stories about why and how it happened and these stories clashed and clanged and clattered and the noise was unbearable and the noise went on and on and on and on until the human race lost its communal mind.

And that is the stories story and if you take my advice you’ll stop listening to stories for a while and if something happens, something really awful happens, cover your ears and listen to no stories and don’t even try to make up your own stories because you are fucking terrible at it because you have forgotten how. You are no story teller but a story will one day be told and you will be in it and we will all be in it and we better hope it has a happy ending.  

 

Discussions with The Mother - #2 -Topic: Desire.

(depicted above: the overriding existential experience of being perpetually thwarted)

‘The only desire one should entertain is the desire to overcome desire. Desire is the sole originator of discontent. Most desire is unachievable and clashing desires (between two people or competing groups) are commonplace, ergo desire inevitably leads to animosity, conflict and misery.’

At least, that’s what I said to The Mother as we rode the donkey home from mass. She, needless to say, disagreed and said that it was more common for people to desire things that are readily obtainable without any fear of ill feeling. Although I could see the truth in The Mother’s argument, I refused to admit as much.

‘Well’, I said ‘you might say that but to fulfil one’s desire is to be satisfied and I think it is quite obvious that the majority of people are unsatisfied, just look at the state of the world. For example, we all desire harmony yet we can’t agree on how to obtain it and often go to war over this.’

‘Whatever’, said The Mother before requesting that I stop the donkey so she could get a choc-ice. A choc-ice in the dead of winter! I ask you, how illogical a desire is that? It’d only make her cold. Another example of desire’s detrimental effects upon the individuals that harbour it. I ignored The Mother’s request and instead began to form a manifesto of sorts.

‘What if we could somehow regulate desire on a legal basis?’ I asked The Mother. ‘What if all desires were banned except for harmless desires, like the desire to go to the jax or something. We could list all permissible desires in a government publication. This would prevent potential clashes and alter our overriding existential experience so that it is not one of being perpetually thwarted.’

‘Sure, go get yourself elected and do that then but stop the donkey first because I want a choc-ice’, said The Mother loudly.

‘Of course’, I said ‘the powers that be would probably exploit such regulation to their own corrupt ends. They’d probably just sanction unrealisable desires to keep us striving for the impossible and feeling bad about our lives. To keep us lost and discontented and dependent upon them, like with advertising. Advertising is equivalent to the way we dangle the carrot in front of the unfortunate donkey here. It’s all about making us feel we are missing out so we keep buying and keep working to earn the money to buy.’

‘I’d like to buy a choc-ice now if that’s OK’, interrupted The Mother rudely. I told her we should keep going as I wanted to get home in time for the Fair City omnibus (Harry Molloy returned from the dead that Tuesday and I missed it) but The Mother completely lost her cool. ‘Choc-ice!’ she roared, ‘Choc-ice! Choc-ice! Choc-ice! I desire a feckin’ CHOC-ICE!’

The Mother’s protestations startled the donkey and he suddenly let out a deafening bray. He then reared up and bucked the pair of us off his back and onto the road. As the beast darted off into the horizon, I looked at The Mother and delivered my coup de grace. ‘Well now The Mother’ I said, ‘look at where your desire for a choc-ice has got us’. The Mother scowled and said nothing. Then, she got to her feet and walked off into a nearby Londis.