STORYTELLERS

Pages from my sketch-of-the-day sketchbook for August 2023

Bees tell stories by shaking their tails, directing other bees to pollen sites. Elephants mourn their dead. Dogs communicate with us with facial gestures. We show our emotions by moving our bodies to emphasize our stories. We humans tend to think that we are superior to other animals and insects, and that we have special characteristics that set us apart, but scientists keep proving our assumptions wrong. Instead, we could recognize we are all storytellers, and those stories help to build our communities.

Storytellers in my family regaled us with the adventures and escapades of local farmers, of ancestors who arrived in America by escaping the French Revolution or landing in New York City and walking to Minnesota or driving across the country to live in California. Those stories helped to build for me an image of our family's strengths and weaknesses.

Sitting at a coffee shop in a new town watching all the people around us, I start drawing and making up stories about who the people are and what they are doing. If we were in our old neighborhood, the familiar faces would have told their stories long ago. In new places, I can let my fantasy expand. I noticed the young woman busy at a computer with headphones on, talking continuously as if to herself. The young man with a long beard lifts his son up to his shoulders while his daughter grabs his pants for attention. The couple with hoodies sitting in the drizzle from the high fog, his hoodie grimy with dirt, hers, clean. A young man walks by with his head shaved except for the sumo-wrestler topknot. An old woman hunched over a walker trudged past me. All of these people have real stories to tell, but it is also fun to make up a life about them. Together they could be the source of a new story.

Here is a first sentence to start a story: "The wind ruffled Camille's hair. She looked up and watched as her parents stood, pulled their hoodies tighter, stared at her for a moment, and walked away."

Could this be the beginning of a mystery, a romance, or a multi-generational tale? What would you add next to make this a good story? Show me.

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The idea of community has been a recent topic for several columnists and essay writers. Check out David Brooks' essay at The Atlantic, "How America Got Mean" 

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/09/us-culture-moral-education-formation/674765/

and Perry Bacon's point of view in the Washington Post, "I Left the Church and Now Long for a Church for the Nones."

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/21/leaving-christianity-religion-church-community/

Both food for thought of the importance of community and what we lose when we think only of ourselves as individuals.