Story is saving me - as a gerund, as an infinite, as an ongoing process. I am here because I can tell it, because I am am telling it. I am alive and living and doing the work of living and breathing and storytelling because I believe in it; because hope is an active, fighting, fluttering verb. Because story and hope are that which pull me out of Anne Boyer’s holes that are not my grave.
Good story flits through form after form. It is alive in the mouths of those who speak it and in the ears of those willing to hear. Story is the hard, thickening work of saving ourselves, one after another, one with another; story is the revolution is Old French and Latin sense: a returning to what is making us human and living. Story is being televised; it is being told in the dark in whispers and in living.
The moment a story is stultified, it is made reflexive; it is made already told. The moment a story is transmitted, it is made revolutionary; it is made exoteric and chiastic both. The moment a story is recorded, it is made agonistic; it is made ongoing and inspiring of new battles and new songs. Story is our human instinct to rebel against our own transience, as Philomena Marie inimitably said, to push through the murk and insist ‘I AM HERE, I AM HERE, I AM HERE!’.
Here are some stories that keep me alive, that are making me into something that revolting and reviving and living. Here are stories that remind me that I am not alone, that no revolution is ignited or bellowed or raged alone, that the collective is the winner and sole survivor of all our collective failures. Here are stories told by others in other mediums, and the lessons they taught me, accompanied by visuals paired with lyrics from the consummate Friday Pilots Club:
Little Miss Sunshine (2006) - That to lose, to “be a loser”, is an individual thing, and that loss does not exist in the collective, that gasping breathless and desolate and suicidal together is how we win. That Olive’s dance routine would not have survived without the desperate, messy joy of her family after they lost everything. That the film ends on a high note for a family in nascent grief. That we haul ourselves off the ground so that we can join with others in lifting the smallest of us up on our shoulders.
Give it away, give 'em a taste
Yeah, you got nothing to lose
Pick up the pace, put on a face
It's all about you, yeah - “Breaking My Bones”
The Terror Season 1 (2018) - That knowing the dire end does not determine the worth of the long, long middle (Arrival (2016) gets an honorable mention here). That a spectacular group and collective failure and loss of life based off the decisions of a privileged, hubristic few does not negate the individual acts of desperate kindness and trying. And oh, they try so hard. Goodsir tries to be kind (until his final act of spite), Stanley tries to be awful (until his final act of violent mercy), Fitzjames tries to be someone he’s not (until he can’t). And we get quiet acts of sweetness - Bridgens and Peglar’s book exchanges, Tozer’s clumsy care for the comatose Heather, Silna holding a sobbing Goodsir. And Crozier, oh Crozier, tries so hard to be miserable and run, until he is forced, again and again, to be a leader. Interspersed with violent, imperial death are haircuts and songs, dressing up at salvaged parties, and sharing chocolate. Despite the end, all their ends, the ends we saw coming from the first episode and from history.
A hole in the ground or a talk of the town
Where does your throne lie?
The arrow and the doe, the guest and its host
Dance as we collide - “For the Wicked”
Swiss Army Man (2016) - That we are worth loving in our grotesque messiness, that we can drag our own deaths through isolation and learn from them, that we can find joy in teaching and in creating whimsy out of garbage, that life is hilarious even as it is tragic and creepy and heartfelt and weird. That we can fall in love with death, with ourselves, with people we don’t know, and with people we know too well.
Maybe I'm wasted
Or dreaming, love don't go changing
For once I feel alive
'Cause hell let's face it we're wasting our time
So what if I'm wasted?
God I'm satisfied - “Gold and Bones”
Encanto (2021) - That telling the truth in one’s own family is the hardest task of all, that ignoring and “agreeing to disagree” on a problem is to lengthen the cracks in the walls, that our pain and conflict hides but always returns, that behind every competency is a lot of pain. That we don’t have to hide, and sometimes another’s bravery can help us face our own devils. That the black sheep just might be the sheep to find all the others and help them save themselves, save everybody. That no one is evil; that everyone is hurt. That hurt people hurt people.
What you don't see is
The line that we've been ridin'
And what you don't know won't
Kill ya but it's tryin' so hard
I been feelin' caught up
I lost the god that's holdin' me down - “Bury Me”
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) - That the Jester has power no one else can understand but that everyone ultimately loves (except, perhaps, the truly self-absorbed and miserable), that you can never go too far, that our circumstances do not define our lives, that having fun is the meaning of playing this game, that facing problems head-on and ruining them entirely is always always always going to solve them faster than avoiding them.
Honey, lover, what would I do without you?
But at the end of the day, it's a game
So many mouths, and they're moving the same way - “End of It”
Hamlet - That we live to tell others’ story. Hamlet dying on the tails of his uncle, mother, and killer - grasping at his best friend’s sleeves and begging him to “absent thee from felicity awhile and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain to tell my story”. Horatio, grief-stricken and held off from his own self-destruction, speaks this to the next living being he lays eyes upon: his enemy, the invading young Prince Fortinbras. Hamlet saves Horatio by charging him, the play’s survivor, to transmit the tragedy to others. In spending the play grappling with the grief of Hamlet and Laertes’ lost fathers and love/sister, Shakespeare leaves us, finally, with Horatio’s unfinished and truncated grief. We begin anew, hoping with bated breath that Horatio’s untold story will be different. Hamlet, after all, is Shakespeare’s own storytelling and transformative grief over the death of his son Hamnet.
I'm too angry to sleep
Too tired to keep runnin’
But I'm wanted by a god
Who's so afraid of death, he's starting to become it - “Glory”
I live, I am alive, I am living - I am here to tell it. I am always climbing out of the hole, and here am I, telling you all about it.
Beautifully and poignantly written! I love that you took these media and analyzed them in a touching way I haven’t considered before.