The Social Value of Art, in Two Words

This is most of a post I wrote on the GMTWP digest, in response to something written by Joel Derfner. (Who is a beautiful writer, and a gorgeous person, and whom I thank for sparking thoughts in me.)

I don't see myself having a responsibility as a writer. Not in those terms. I see myself just BEING a writer. It's sort of hard to explain. I am one. I can't be anything else. Even during long periods of not writing a word, I'm a writer. I never wanted to be one. I mean, I never planned it. I just am.

Mind you, BECAUSE of the fact that I am one, I do have some responsibilities. I'm responsible for the work. No, I'm the caretaker... no, the conduit. I have the opportunity to be responsible for opening up and letting stories flow through me and onto the page. I don't HAVE to do it, but I have the ability to do it, and I can take responsibility for that ability.

If I do, that means letting the story come out as it chooses to, not as I think it should. Oddly, in being a writer of fiction, I have a responsibility to reality. If it doesn't have the ring of real to it, it becomes inaccessible, and if I'm choosing to act as conduit to the page, then I'm choosing to act as conduit through which the performers can connect with the audience, and vice versa.

So for me, the key thing is to remain open. I sort of do a class on this, too. Someone asked me to run a session called "The Art of Storytelling", and he actually offered to pay me a little money for those few hours, so I agreed before I'd even THOUGHT about it, and then I had to bloody think about it.

I tried to make it as simple as possible, mostly for my own benefit, so I could figure out what I wanted to say. Also, I tried to make it all factual rather than my own personal interpretation. (I knew I would fail, but it was a helpful simplifying tool because I'm looking for something more universal.) Here it is in brief:

I think stories exist in three forms:

• a story told
• a story heard
• a story known

Actually, that's a circle rather than a list. Any of them can come first: you hear a story, you know it, you tell it. You make up a story in your head which you now know and can tell to someone else, who hears it. And so on. But I'm working in the order of that list for now.

The first one, a story told, is told for a reason. The sharing of a story might be for moral reasons, to try and make the world (or one person's life) a better place. It might be for self-confirmation, like he-said-she-said stories over coffee. Whatever the reason, there's usually an emotional desire driving it: the way the emotion is expressed is in the telling of the story.

I'm choosing to call that confession, for now. An emotion is confessed into a space that is created between story-teller and story-listener by the story itself.

The story then becomes a story heard, by the listener, who must have a reason for listening if they are, in fact, listening. That reason is based on a connection they want to make, with the story-teller, or with the story, which is (I think) usually based on some kind of emotion.

So I'm choosing to call that the connection stage.

Now the listener knows the story. They made an emotional connection with it (and/or with the teller) and they now have some knowledge, a story, a tool that they didn't have before. I call it a tool because the confession was emotionally driven, the story rode out on emotion, the connection was emotionally driven, the story rode in on emotion, and therefore catharsis is taking place.

Regardless of whether we're aware of it or not, even loathing the story is an emotional catharsis of some kind. It's unavoidable if you chose to listen to something.

So here's the journey of storytelling, for me: confession, connection, catharsis.

I should say that I think it is possible to stand there while someone tells you a story, and not actually hear a single word of it. In fact, another thing that appears to be true is that you can best hear yourself. Or rather, you can only hear yourself in any story. It may be that your way in is obscure, but without a connection to yourself, I suggest that you have no way into a story and therefore won't listen.

And it seems to me that in order to be a storyteller, you should be aware of how listening works. (Hence my wish to be aware of how learning works in order to understand teaching.)

So I told the Art Of Storytelling class that it seems to me that, AABA aside, The Rules Of Writing has two misleading words: Rules and Writing. I think it's more like The Rules Of Hearing, or rather, The Habits Of Hearing.

Because, I realise now as I write this, never mind responsibility, I don't think it's my ABILITY to change people. I don't think I can teach anything, but I can open up a space for other people to access if they want.

I can make a confession. It will help me. I'll feel lighter.

It might help others because I went first.

Most of all, though, when someone tells you how THEY feel about something, if you recognise that feeling, you feel... heard.

So I don't think I should have asked what art is. I think I should have asked what art DOES.

It listens.