Why tell Stories?

What makes someone into a writer? From earliest childhood I ve always wanted the answer. It’s a part of me and the question is why? I believe it’s a part of all of us. Why are we here, why do we live and died, why is the universe so vast and unknowable? The answers are received were repeated parrot fashion all the way through school and at home in an unthinking style and language, which I could not relate too. In primary school I was told God made the universe and that was all there was to it. In secondary school I was given another point of view a more modern one that the world was created by this huge explosion, and creatures from time immemorial adapted and changed with it without meaning or purpose. However society has purpose, life has purpose but how to find it, it’s a mess, and capitol and status do not define us either.

At young teen I started training in the martial arts for self-defense but soon became interested in Eastern philosophy firstly of Japan but then developing an interest in both Chinese and Indian philosophy . I later learned that Bruce Lee was a philosophy student and I read the books that he read on Taoism, Buddhism and Hinduism which are related in the way that the Abrahamic religions are related through geography and the common context of thought, compassion and at its heart rationalism. For Eastern philosophy for all its poetry and profundity which is beautiful is at its heart pragmatic. As a school leaver I went backpacking firstly around America and Canada and then to the Middle East and Australia. On my travels I was confronted with different cultures and different social memes and mores, I saw both tolerance and intolerance certainty and confusion and Chaos. In Israel I saw both great division but also signs of hope in Israeli and Arab cooperation within a Kibbutz I volunteered at the Haifa. In Australia I became interested in surfing and the cultures of Polynesia and the aboriginal people whose concept of the dreamtime has no parallel in Western culture. It is however referenced by Paul Davies in his book” the mind of God” when talking about non-linear concepts of time, an Outlook shared by the ancient Greeks saw the world is essential cyclic.

I returned home with no money with which to continue travelling which I've fallen in love with, being far better than the limited job opportunities presented to a working-class boy in Thatcher's Britain. My mother suggested travelling without moving, through reading travel books, I devoured Jack Kerouac, Bill Bryson and Jack London, and I learned much about the history of the world from these writers. I became intrigued with philosophy in general, and this brought me back to an interest in spirituality which I viewed with suspicion throughout my teenage years, being so divorced from the everyday experience. It seems to me the proposition put forward by J Krishnamurti held the most truth that “no school, institution or individual has a monopoly on the truth”

I found a couple of authors who really spoke to me, these being the pragmatic 20th-century philosophers Alan Watts, J Krishnamurti and Joseph Campbell. Alan Watts was an interpreter of Eastern thought for a western audience. Although he was born in Britain he spent a large part of his life lecturing delivering radio broadcasts and writing books and articles in the United States. He sadly passed away in 1973; however there is resurgence in interest in his writings and philosophy that has taken place on the Internet. Alan Watts’ main interest was in the parallels between Christianity and the religions of the East. He was particularly interested in Chinese Taoism and the practice of zazen from Japan. He was a practitioner of Zen methods and also practiced the Chinese martial art of Tai Chi in his later years.

He was also particularly interested, in how man could live a balanced life with nature. From time to time he would go retreat into the wilderness in order to meditate. I find this idea fascinating and it is at the root of both the disciplines of Tai Chi and yoga, to use the physical body, and the environment as a path inwards towards enlightenment. Although Alan Watts could be described as an intellectual he was very interested in how all individuals could come to terms with the cosmos and our place in it. He wasn't interested in extreme forms of religious practice, which he considered overemphasized difficulty at the expense of understanding. He was no antistatic and his practices could always be explored within a secular or even agnostic context.

Although he became a prominent speaker in the 1960s he also was quite wary of the psychedelic revolution and although he was close friend of Aldous Huxley, he questioned chemical means of attaining insight considering meditation to be a much more useful practice. I have found this a great help in my personal life by the use of meditation has helped me recover from two family bereavements in the course of a year. Meditation has been described as the dive within, and is a method for stilling the chattering mind. In Western thought it is common to identify oneself with the ego the voice within ones head. As Descartes said” I think therefore I am” this creates the concept of dualism, separateness which is in fact scientifically untrue. Alan Watts was also very interested in current scientific developments and expresses his own views on quantum theory in the book “the taboo against knowing who you are”. Quantum entanglement was of particular interest as it confirmed his belief that the self and the entire cosmos are really one and the same thing.

Another figure whose works can readily be found on the Internet is Joseph Campbell. Similarly his writings and series of documentaries including “The hero with a thousand faces” and “the power of myth” are also available online. Joseph Campbell's work is often highly reflective of the same issues addressed in the work of Alan Watts. However where in Alan Watts’ work deals mainly with the religions of the East and their similarities with Christian and Judaic traditions, Joseph Campbell's work also considers other diverse cultures from around the world and primarily focuses on their mythic and storytelling traditions, Joseph Campbell also had a keen interest in the arts and was a huge influence on Hollywood filmmakers such as George Lucas to whom he was a personal mentor and too good friend the author Richard Adams who based his mythology in the book Watership Down on Campbell's central tenant in myth of the hero's journey.

Joseph Campbell was a great storyteller, and his work explores the reasons and motivations for storytelling both culturally and individually. I found” hero with a Thousand faces “a highly inspiring work; in fact I would go as far as to say is the best book I've ever read. I believe storytelling is how we make sense of the world, Campbell talked of the Monomyth the way all stories are essentially the same in that they are all explorations of the human condition and what it means to be alive.
I write to explore what it means to be alive, to explore both deep joy and despair, success and failure and the wonder at the heart of the world and also just to express myself. I find no comfort in my own skin in dead end jobs, at education which leads nowhere, at the government which lies and is useless. I must find something which is mine and only in writing and performing do I find this, but writing is deeper than some soap opera or episode of the x factor, people use to fill their time. It points the way to deeper things and gives a person hope ,to understand and be understood , to leave a mark when you are no longer here, to say I was , I thought ,I dreamed , I demanded, I was Silent , I raged, I loved. To leave a statement in a world of bank accounts, mortgages cancer and Debt, a real world which is not perfect, but must be described and understood.