every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, every poem an epitaph
I've been thinking about this for several days, especially since I've been digging through colleges again and trying to understand how I can fit the things I want so badly to study into one interconnected whole. So, here it is:
I want to major in Story.
Watching this beautiful, beautiful video from Ukraine's Got Talent clinched it for me -- because this is a kind of storytelling that I have never seen before and don't really know how to describe. But I know that it's powerful. I know that it hurts and sings like steel and banners in the wind. And I love that. I love that there are so many ways to tell stories to one another, so many different ways to communicate our experiences, our ideas, or hopes, our imaginations. I've thought a lot about Story lately, because when you take all of the things that I love and set them together, that is what they are. Film, mythology, music, dance, novels, graphic novels, folklore, television, poetry, fanfiction, journalism, history, psychology, philosophy, urban legends, photography, drawing with brushes and pencils and chalk and sand, sociology, education. Everything. Story. Whether it's how you tell a story, how you listen to someone else's story, or how you learn to understand a story -- that's what they are. This is why I love public radio -- because they tell me stories, which is better and more real and more human than any of CNN's or Fox News' scandal-mongering. (I remember, after the earthquakes in China, an NPR journalist trying to describe the things she was seeing, and finally sobbing so hard she couldn't even speak. That was empathy and love, and it hurt. It got to the heart of things far better than the endless barrage of cold photographs on television, spoken over by comfortable, coiffed newscasters. This journalist cared about the story, about the people. And she cried. So I did, too.)
So this is what I want to study. I want to study different kinds of storytelling, and I want to study different kinds of stories, and how to understand them and transform them and combine them. I want to study how to work with people and teach them to tell their stories, and how to listen to their stories when they tell them, and how to help them understand their own stories. I want to study how different kinds of stories affect each other. How mythology affects history. How poetry makes us brave. How stories and truth get all tangled up. How sometimes Story goes deeper than truth, illuminates it, is it. I want to understand how stories give us -- everybody us -- a voice. I want to study how different kinds of stories can bridge each other, how to find the best format for the kind of story you want to tell and who you want to tell it to and why. How to use stories to facillitate change, to show love, to further understanding. This is why I want to be a librarian (and a writer and a filmmaker and a musician and an artist and a scholar) -- because it's all about every kind of story and leading people to the stories they need and teaching them how to tell their own, both to other people and to themselves.
"Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith - faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically."
- Madeleine L'Engle
And there it is. Dear Emerson/Harvard/Hampshire (my current triumvirate of Schools I Want To Be A Part Of), this is why I want to be in university. I may have sucky math scores, but maybe this helps? (...can you send cover-letters to colleges? do they do much of anything?)
I want to major in Story.
Watching this beautiful, beautiful video from Ukraine's Got Talent clinched it for me -- because this is a kind of storytelling that I have never seen before and don't really know how to describe. But I know that it's powerful. I know that it hurts and sings like steel and banners in the wind. And I love that. I love that there are so many ways to tell stories to one another, so many different ways to communicate our experiences, our ideas, or hopes, our imaginations. I've thought a lot about Story lately, because when you take all of the things that I love and set them together, that is what they are. Film, mythology, music, dance, novels, graphic novels, folklore, television, poetry, fanfiction, journalism, history, psychology, philosophy, urban legends, photography, drawing with brushes and pencils and chalk and sand, sociology, education. Everything. Story. Whether it's how you tell a story, how you listen to someone else's story, or how you learn to understand a story -- that's what they are. This is why I love public radio -- because they tell me stories, which is better and more real and more human than any of CNN's or Fox News' scandal-mongering. (I remember, after the earthquakes in China, an NPR journalist trying to describe the things she was seeing, and finally sobbing so hard she couldn't even speak. That was empathy and love, and it hurt. It got to the heart of things far better than the endless barrage of cold photographs on television, spoken over by comfortable, coiffed newscasters. This journalist cared about the story, about the people. And she cried. So I did, too.)
So this is what I want to study. I want to study different kinds of storytelling, and I want to study different kinds of stories, and how to understand them and transform them and combine them. I want to study how to work with people and teach them to tell their stories, and how to listen to their stories when they tell them, and how to help them understand their own stories. I want to study how different kinds of stories affect each other. How mythology affects history. How poetry makes us brave. How stories and truth get all tangled up. How sometimes Story goes deeper than truth, illuminates it, is it. I want to understand how stories give us -- everybody us -- a voice. I want to study how different kinds of stories can bridge each other, how to find the best format for the kind of story you want to tell and who you want to tell it to and why. How to use stories to facillitate change, to show love, to further understanding. This is why I want to be a librarian (and a writer and a filmmaker and a musician and an artist and a scholar) -- because it's all about every kind of story and leading people to the stories they need and teaching them how to tell their own, both to other people and to themselves.
"Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith - faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically."
- Madeleine L'Engle
And there it is. Dear Emerson/Harvard/Hampshire (my current triumvirate of Schools I Want To Be A Part Of), this is why I want to be in university. I may have sucky math scores, but maybe this helps? (...can you send cover-letters to colleges? do they do much of anything?)