Stories of the essential
Sometimes, more and more often these day, I have less and less clue about what might save us. And more and more, I find myself leaning upon stories and myths and magick and and imagination and trickster things, without so much as expectations about being safe or saved. More like — like it or not, we are here, might as well play.
Martin Shaw is a great mythologist and storyteller and he has just started a new series Jawbone.
The first episode HOW A STORYTELLER’S MADE: The Salmon, The Crocodile & The Selkie opens with
Maybe we have a Connla's Well in us. Maybe we have Lascaux's cave depths in us. Maybe in us, there is the movement of horses in us. Maybe in us, there is a snorting cattle. Maybe in us, there is a salmon or two. Maybe in us, there is a heron, standing on one leg, crooning at the moon.
It's been a long time since I've been told stories like that. It's been a long time since I've been told stories, actually. Sometimes, I do get a sense that stories offer a way for us to remain tethered to the world when the world becomes too hard to look at directly. We need oblique ways of looking.
If you could do with a story or two, I hope you check it out (: