Ode to Storytelling By Lucy Wormald (she/her)
Lifestyle and Culture Editor Lucy muses about the power of telling stories, and her own love of storytelling and its ability to transform, reveal, and nourish. What is writing if not the holding up of an enchanted mirror? That which witnesses and asks for witnessing. A way to give voice to your own astonishment, says Annie Dillard. A way to know. The writing of a story makes clear what I think, what I see, what I know, what it means. To use language to reflect a reality, to chronicle a shard of being, is surely a form of magic. But not only a reflection of reality, storytelling holds the ability to shift and mould it. Dangerous, boundless and regenerative like a deep and dark soil, storytelling is an inherently human act. Since the beginning of humanity, we have given shape to experience by constructing myth, fairy tale, parable, history. Our cultures are built on these narratives. Stories both reflect and
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shape what we know about ourselves. A force on loop, story feeds reality while simultaneously revealing its nature. And this, as with all human deeds, has become a domain for negotiating power. It is how we endow and transfer power between our structures and our knowledge. We give voice to some things, paying no heed to others. We spin narratives so insidious, it is forgotten they are merely interpretations of the world, becoming instead sanctified truth. Consider: gender is a story, progress is a story, religion is story. The responsibility of storytelling, of conducting this power, is not to be belittled. Think, the stories in the Bible alone may have caused more death, brutality, and oppression, and more love, charity and redemption, than any other collection of
