Telling new stories with old words

It is very hard to imagine something your ears haven’t heard before; it is hard to tell a storyteller a story which she hasn’t imagined already. How could I come up with a story of which you do not know it all: the beginning and the end, the plot, the structure and the characters— it is simply a story that will not exist. All stories, all songs and all verses revolve behind your eyes in successions you’ve imagined before hand. Even when certain events are hardly describable by previous instances of enunciation, the eventual flow of possibilities will dictate a solution, a position and a plot will emerge from the already existing conditions of the stories that will be.

However I think I know a story of which you haven’t heard before. There is a story without plot or characters, no words or names, no syntax or lexicon. Such story is so fluid, that any attempt to comprehend it as a succession or order will fail. Moreover, whenever stories like these are told, the teller and the audience are bound to act, make sense and apprehend meaning as it reveals not as it is presented. Meaningful story telling will be always beyond the dictatorial powers of the storytellers. The storyteller is bound to tell them, for they exist. On the other hand, audiences will recognize something racially different in these stories.

I contend that such stories are particular and in that sense, they are often just tenable, possible, within the boundaries of common experience. They are told with eyes closed, hands locked and broken backs. These are the stories of hands and feet meeting in the sand with no other purpose and effect than friction. Such stories can be unveiled in the blink of an eye or a calm movement of open affection and embracement. A willful storyteller will always be keen on telling such stories, warding of course that audiences are willing to follow.

We have all heard these stories, and in that sense, probably you’ve heard them too. What is often overlooked is that each time we are presented with them we must ward our eye and senses in order not to conflate them with some other thing we were sure we knew before. For only in that way one would be truly listening to the stories told and not those that already have a beginning and an end. Storytellers should be careful to tell stories as they are, not as they imagine them; for only then, the power of words could reveal that a radical different story will emerge from the old same words.