Storytelling is a key component in modern life. With the enormity of available information, it is difficult to get cut through unless you can tell a story well. To explore this special skills further I listened to a podcast interview with Boyd Varty, a lion tracker who runs retreats in South Africa. According to Boyd, the key components of story telling are PREP (prompt, role, be explicit, set parameters).
As Boyd says, any form of leadership is context creating. A good storyteller is a meaning maker for the village. They help people understand how to feel. Good leaders are very convicted. But how do you find meaning in the first place? How do you turn your attention to something specific? Boyd recommends:
- Develop a way of seeing and drop in a set of principles.
- The more you are aware of what lights you up internally, the more you are willing to follow your curiosity.
- You should have a willingness to try things and then you will find yourself in interesting places.
- Storytelling = attention. Think about all of the threads that have brought you to where you are today – all of the plot twists / what is the narrative of your life.
- Live outside in rather than outside out – get tuned I not your internal knowings – this will lead you to other unusual people and places.
- Return to the curiosity that got you to where you are – embrace the tension in creativity.
- Storytelling is a practice, not a destination – be willing to be in states of reinvention – changing identity/reinvention is an art form in itself.
- Step out of life and let what other people think you are melt away and be comfortable with the unknown.
- Be aware go original curiosities and new meaning will constellate around you.
- Stay original – your consciousness is malleable – art needs to come out of self-knowledge and to gain self knowledge to some degree you need to remove yourself from social constructs from time to time.
- Back your conviction – have a strong moral sense where you believe in yourself – embodied activism = infectious passion.
I found these recommendations to be incredibly helpful in giving me the courage to be more vulnerable in my peer-to-peer interview and the benefits this will bring to my own practice as an interdisciplinary artist.
This week in politics
It’s been a big week in US politics (and therefore global politics) this week with the convincing election of convicted criminal, former President Donald Trump for a second four-year term. Many political and social commentators are wondering, with the benefit of hindsight, what went wrong with the Harris-Walz Campaign.
Some of the loudest voices are pointing the finger at the increase in the number of young male voters who voted for Republican nominees with Trump being described as a “bro whisperer”. They point to increased job insecurity, the rise in male suicide, poor education outcomes as well as the rise of ‘influencers’ such as, podcasters Joe Rogan, Dana White (CEO and President of the Ultimate Fighting Championship) and Elon Musk (founder of Space X, Tesla and now CEO of X (formerly known as Twitter). All of whom campaigned vigorously for the Trump-Vance Campaign.
Arguably Trump ran a campaign of fear, drove wedges between men and women, denigrated immigrants, used crass insults and ultimately engaged in crude populism to reach a broad audience. The tumultuous campaign trail provided United States with an opportunity to hold a mirror up to itself and ultimately I didn’t like what it saw. With a cost of living crisis, high interest rates and an unaffordable housing market, people were looking for solutions to their woes. As Joseph Campbell states “‘culture at the edge of corruption’ and ‘world at the edge of utter destruction’ are two of the oldest themes to be found in stories of the human race”.1 And Trump and his advocates provided future stories of redemption. He positioned himself skilfully as the ultimate hero to America’s woes.
It would appear, were we to follow the long genealogy of heroes and heroines in mythos, that it is via the soul being stolen, mismanaged, disguised, disrupted, pre-empted or trodden upon, that some of the purest features of the psyche may rise up and begin to long for – call for – the return of that radiant companion and counsel.
Campbell, J (2012). The Hero with a Thousand Face (3rd ed.) New World Press, p xlv.
While there is much commentary addressing the deficiencies in the Harris-Walz Campaign, there can we little doubt that Trump was the master at creating and amplifying his hero identity. While Kamala had many highly regarded celebrities endorse her campaign, such as Taylor Swift and Beyonce, Trump was the star of this own show. He played the role of economic populist while at same time cleverly banging the culture war drums to create hysteria around issues, such as, illegal immigration and transgender rights.
Moreover, as Campbell argues, the “standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero a magnification of the formula represented int he rites of passage: separation – initiation – return: which might be the named the nuclear unit of the mono myth.”2
I wonder what myth making we are creating today through our engagement with the political system. As we await the final part of Trump’s hero story – ‘a domestic or micro-cosmic triumph’ – we can only begin to wonder how this moment in US political culture will be told by future generations.
- Campbell, J (2012). The Hero with a Thousand Face (3rd ed.) New World Press, p xliiv. ↩︎
- Ibid, p 581. ↩︎
Will art and activism rise to meet the challenge of holding rogue billionaires who buy political votes by brainwashing populations to vote for a candidate that will make decisions in his own best interest? IN the United Kingdom, a political art activist collective, Led by Donkeys, is attempting to create political transparency through public interventions (billboard, projections and, most brilliantly, the lowering of a banner during a campaign tour by Liz Truss (below)) and their social media influence.
Led by Donkeys was founded in 2019 by four activist friends frustrated by political hypocrisy, corruption, ineptitudes, greed and the need to hold power to account.