What’s the point of stories?
Everybody realizing that life is what it is — it’s just the most basic thing in the world. When you wake up in the morning there seems to be so much wrong, and stories are the things that we tell each other to let us know that all these things that you feel about how fucked up everything is, that is how it is, so that it resonates. Providing language for the things that are bouncing around in your head, that’s what art is. If you look at a painting in the Louvre and you start to burst into tears it’s because somebody put something on a canvas that you thought could only ever exist in your brain -or a brain- and you suddenly burst into tears cause you’ve been connected with.
For me story is…I’m tapping in the rhythm of life and death with you so that you understand that when you woke up this morning and you felt bipolar, you felt like
‘Why am I in a good mood but I’m in a bad mood?
Why -if I was in a good mood- did I listen to a sad song?
Why is my mom’s death a thing that’s fucking up my job right now?
Why do I hate the people I love? Why do I love the people I hate?
Why am I depressed?
Why can’t I get anything done?
Why am I different?
Why am I scared?’
Everyone’s walking around in their Pizza Hut uniforms and they’re up and down the sidewalk and they all seem to have their shit together. I turn on the tv and everyone’s having Certz encounters and trying on high heeled shoes and everyone seems to knows what’s going on, Ross and Rachel know what’s going on.
Every once in a while you drive by and a couple cars hit each other and there’s broken glass everywhere but you’re not supposed to look and everyone that does look is a bad person so you keep going. This conveyor belt, this concrete jungle, it puts a pressure on you and you feel like -because you have this turmoil in your brain- you’re like ‘I’m gonna fucking snap! I’m the only one walking around with this secret that we’re all fucked up, that everything is going to hell.’ And stories let you know, no, Ulysses had that happen to him, he felt that way, he went to this place — it’s a way of articulating that inarticulable fact that just when things feel their worst, that is actually the thing that is actually giving you the most strength and all that kind of crap.
For me, community stories are always about people vs the system and it’s always about reminding you that no matter how fucked up you feel, you’re supposed to be the way you are, you’re not supposed to actually grow and change — before we ever get to that point, first and foremost the most subversive, most heroic act you can do is just be proud of yourself the way you got out of bed that morning. And people go around the circle of those stories experimenting with the idea that maybe they can improve themselves for the sake of improving their life or the system or something…and they come back around to the conclusion that they should’ve just come clean and been honest about the fact that they felt like a piece of shit.
That’s what stories are, to answer your question. — Dan
Harmontown 77: Carpool Diem