Wanted: stories to shape the world

By Eric Marks

An old stick rests high on the shore of a lake. The wind and waves long ago stripped it of its bark. Years of lying in the sun have bleached it the even, silver colour of an elder’s hair. One day, a man picks it up. He takes a pipe from his mouth and blows smoke at the stick, watching the way it flows around and away from the wood. As he turns it in his hands, he sees a story forming.

There’s a slim paperback book sitting on the corner of my writing desk. It's a collection of public lectures delivered in November by Native author and playwright Thomas King. Its title is The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. The point he begins from and returns to is as simple as it is universal: "The truth about stories is that that's all we are.”

The man turns the stick in his hands. Tiny shavings fall to the ground as he carves at it with a pocket knife. Beneath the weathered surface, the wood is a warm, reddish tan. The man draws his knife across the wood, and the broken end of the stick becomes a strong, cupped hand, offered palm upward in greeting. The stubs of twigs jut from its wrist.

Our knowledge of the world begins with stories, and from our earliest days we grow accustomed to hearing them – whether gentle (“Once upon a time”) or ominous (“If you don’t stop that . . .”). And we learn to distinguish which of the stories we hear apply to us and which do not.

The first inkling I had of the importance of storytelling came from a visit to the village library when I was a child.

I already knew the alluring power of stories. My parents read every night to my brother and me, and as soon as I could read myself, I spent most of my free time with a book in my head. But, as excited as I was about stories, I’d never given a thought to storytelling. The best stories seemed to tell themselves. They still do.

Then, one autumn, a poem I had written about Remembrance Day as a class assignment was read at the school service on Nov. 11.

That Saturday, a volunteer at the library stopped me while I was browsing for storybooks. She was a slightly stern woman, plain spoken and fiercely intelligent, and an immigrant from one of the Baltic states where the heel of Communism had impressed upon everyone the power of words.

"I heard your poem. You have a talent – a gift. I'm not saying this to make you feel happy; I don't care how you feel about it. I’m telling you; that is all. You’re good with words. But, you should know this: words have power. Words can change the world. But you have to learn to use them responsibly. Otherwise – ” She shrugged and looked away. “Terrible things can happen.”

At the time, I was pleased and confused and didn’t have a clue what she meant, although her comments planted in me the first awareness that I could be a storyteller as well as a reader.

It took me 20 years to understand the truth that she had shared with me and which Thomas King expresses so eloquently in his lectures: that the stories we are told and tell and believe in shape the outcomes of our lives. This is doubly true of the stories others tell about us.

The man turns the stick in his hands. Lines appear on it: bright bands of colour representing the six worlds. There are narrow bands of black for the world beyond the sky and the world beneath the water and the earth, which man never sees; broad bands of blue for the sky world and the water world; between them, a jagged band of yellow ochre to represent the world of earth. Across the surface of the earth, where it meets the water or the sky, the man daubs a dotted line of red for the ghost world, which exists beside our own.

Once upon a time – in an era we regard scornfully as superstitious – storytellers understood the responsibility they carried. They believed, quite correctly, that words used carelessly can kill.

Thomas King cites a story from Leslie Marmon Silko’s wonderful novel, Ceremony, explaining how evil came into the world. A group of witches hold a competition to see who can come up with the scariest thing. The winner tells a terrible, horrible, awful story, "full of fear and slaughter, disease and blood.” The witches try to call it back, but they can’t: once told, a story has its own power in the world.

Reflecting on this tale, King writes, “you have to be careful with the stories you tell. And you have to watch out for the stories that you are told.”

If Leslie Silko’s story is too grim for you, there's a lighter one I've heard. It's a Mi’kmaw tale that was told to folklorist Elsie Clews Parsons in 1923. In a time of great hardship, seven young men journey far into the wilderness looking for a man who is almost as old as the world itself and who can grant their wishes – the hero Kluskap. When they find him, one young man asks for a long life. The obliging Kluskap turns him into a twisted cedar tree. The others ask for useful skills – for knowledge – and Kluskap sends them back to the people with all the fundamental skills of the Mi'kmaw culture.

The young men have learned two lessons: All wisdom is conveyed through stories. And, it is better to live well than to live long.

The man turns the stick in his hands. Figures appear on it: A man raises his arms to the sky. His feet are rooted to the earth. His arms sprout twigs. Below him, figures encircle the stick in a dance of life: hunting. Crafting. Canoeing. Speaking. Healing. Trading. The six gifts of culture.

Most of the stories we tell today are not so constructive. If they carry any implicit lesson, it is likely to be an unhealthy one. Our children are enchanted by the dubious entertainment of television, movies, video games and magazines – media driven by corporate greed and sustained by the promotion of unwholesome appetites such as avarice, envy and lust. Their lives are hexed by stories as constraining as the evil spells that put Sleeping Beauty in her trance.

What stories do these sources tell? The convenience of processed food and easy credit, the romance of alcohol and commitment-free sex. Better living through chemistry and self-esteem through violence. The results are visible all around us: ill health and obesity, record debt and endemic poverty, loveless families, broken homes, an epidemic of depression, frustration and violent acts. Our beliefs are killing us.

The worst stories we tell have developed a life of their own. Willing actors play them out over and over because these stories were born of the hurt inside us and the desire to escape it. They gain power with each repetition. Ask the relatives of any young suicide or of the victims of spree killers, such as Marc Lepine.

We become the stories we tell, because in telling them, we invest them with belief and give them power over our lives.

As Sackville poet John Thompson wrote in one of his last poems, "I’m in touch with the gods I’ve invented; / Lord, save me from them.”

The man turns the stick in his hands, knotting a braid of dried sweetgrass around it like a bracelet. The braid holds an eagle feather. The story is almost finished.

We need stories of honesty and courage to counter the bland, smothering evils in which our culture has wrapped us. But, first we need storytellers brave enough to tell them.

Our best writers have known this for a long time. Think of Alden Nowlan, shaming himself and his audience with the stark, unguarded honesty of his poems – laying bare his weaknesses, his hopes and his fears, knowing that they are also ours.

Think of David Adams Richards and the strength of his characters – besieged by the greed, envy and spite of their neighbours, redeemed (if not always saved) by the simple act of bravery, of turning away from violence and hurtfulness.

Think of the biting humour of Dalton Camp and the cleansing power of the ridiculous, of how the best storytellers can transform tears to laughter, and of how well suited film and television are to comedy. There’s Something About Mary isn’t fine art, but it may be one of the best stories we have about the lunacy of stalking. It's surely gotten more young men to think about the subject than any earnest tract.

For my part, I decided some time ago to be what Thomas King refers to as a "hopeful pessimist.” Writing of himself and his late friend, Louis Owens, King observes, “we wrote knowing that none of the stories we told would change the world. But we wrote in the hope that they would.

“We both knew that stories were medicine, that a story told one way could cure, that the same story told another way could injure.”

We tell ourselves stories to create and convey meaning, to salve our hurts and open our lives to new possibilities. The storyteller’s responsibility is to share that healing with others, and not to sow the seeds of further harm.

The man hands the talking stick to his son. The sweetgrass and the eagle spirit will carry his words across the six worlds to the Creator.
The boy takes a breath, and his story begins.

Eric Marks is a newspaper editor living on the shores of the Gulf of Maine. Thomas King’s book The Truth About Stories (ISNB 0-88784-696-3) is published by Anansi and sells for $18.95.