[Written at a family reunion in Gulf Shores, AL, though my mind was taking me elsewhere]
Even as an aspiring historian, I have spent embarrassingly little time thinking about either myself as storyteller, or the role of stories and their smiths in the world.
Historians, it is said, do make certain claims to the t(T?)ruth of their stories, which sets them apart from other storytellers. The stories they tell and the words they use are intended to be as congruous as possible a description of a disappeared past. In that way, the historian is a sort of cartographer of temporality. In fashioning maps, their own contribution can, or should, rest as the elucidation of the physical record- though the real stuff of history (history in this sense, as the creative act of individual historians) is the debate of what stories can be constructed from the evidence before us; the contrast of differing viewpoints and philosophies is of course ever ongoing.
There is that old line that goes “There is no such thing as new history, only new historians” and the still older one that reminds that “there is nothing new under the sun.” (And besides, matter is neither created nor destroyed) I suppose there is some truth there, but the domain of the past nevertheless does continue to grow, and the wisdom of old clichés is not discerned without some wrestling.
The last volume of history may be no more correct than the first, which is quite likely to be the case. It may be that the last word will take its name and place on the timeline merely by accident of history—one final, forgotten (perhaps forgettable) unromantic oeuvre just as humanity by either whimper or cataclysm finds its stories unneeded, or unwanted, and itself unable or unwilling (or happily unpresent) to relate them. But enough waxing apocalyptic.
I think though that I’ve devolved too far into unprofitable speculation on the Philosophy of history (or the philosophy of History) when all I really wanted to say was that there seems to be such great power in stories, and that the historians craft taps into that power. As it goes with such things, this is but one account, and anyone else would present it differently—perhaps radically so.
There does seem to be great power in stories, but it could rather that the power lies not in the stories themselves, but beforehand, in the very impulse to tell them-- In our desire to make ourselves known, and to express ourselves at present by an exposition of our past, to give an account of our development.
We perhaps best understand --or at least best explain ourselves-- as a series of point A’s to point B’s. How we then frame, package, contextualize, and present our stories, how we color-in our past and put flesh to the bare bones of individual and anecdotal fact may tell as much about who we are at present as it sheds light on the Truth of the past, or how the past became the present becomes the future.
Our act of coming to know each other by means of telling stories about ourselves-- explicating why, the fuck, in our view, we are where we are; and in turn listening to others tell theirs--gleaning the stories for fact and stylization to understand the person before us. Perhaps we attempt to weave together the smaller stories into a (buzzword) master narrative of how we (or We) understand ourselves in grande totale. I know that old master narratives that I believed to be living have become anecdotes themselves as they were subsumed under the awning of a newer and grander story—as points A, B, and C needed to be reconciled with the emergence of points D, E, and F. Narrative does need to be coherent as long as we live in a universe governed by laws that we can understand mathematically.
(I know there are numerous other means of coming to know someone— though perhaps many may be uncivil, uncouth, salty, or sultry—maybe even overtly aggressive. These sundry devices have their advantages, and any well rounded individual should utilize a broad repertoire of techniques in the effort to engage and understand the world. History is but one such tool in the shed.)
I fail to find rest in a perfect comprehension, but am ever-interested in how certain folk are more inclined and attuned to the exchange of stories than others. Of those sharing such a general temperament, what mechanism accounts for the proliferation of stylistic diversity and the different intentions, rationales, and emphases that underlie the storytellers’ basic impulse?
Since we are of course part of the natural environment, and can be at least partially explained by it, perhaps an analogy to biodiversity would help elucidate the aforementioned proliferation of stylistic and intentional differences. Nature abhors a vacuum, and part of the story of life is that if life can find a niche, it will happily fill it. It seems there must be a connection there, but it also seems that my abilities to maintain and expound on it have largely run dry.
I do know, and have experienced so often right here in Gulf Shores that the act of telling stories has a unique power. The ritual of recitation is both the struggle to hold onto oneself, and to reestablish and shore-up the bonds that so delicately hold us to each other. We are left with only the present and the promises of a future, mercurial and finite. And then they are so bittersweet, telling stories! But, that’s how it goes.
