Attack Of The 50-foot Verbose Mutant Killer Fountain Pens From Mars | Page 4

digits.
In our fragmented, restless society that search for meaning can be as little as the author's own personal quest. By writing, they may seek to resolve personal traumas. Beyond that, they seek to impose meaning on the senseless world around them. As readers, we look to be entertained - to escape from the banalities of the world - and in that sense we are little removed from our ancestors. Like them, we want to be enthralled and released into a world of mystery and adventure. And if in some way we can find some kind of meaning, so much the better. No matter that the sense is far from profound, as long as it reinforces and reassures our own personal shield against reality and the uncertainties that surround us.
Beyond this there is surely the desire to be noticed. In the days when the material and the spiritual worlds were separated by no more than a thought, the story was the means by which humankind danced among the Gods. We strive to be noticed, to make our mark in a cold and vast cosmos. Perhaps, as he wove his visions into words, that ancient storyteller perceived his Gods and Spirits on the outer edge, listening along with his all too human audience.
The same is true today, in a way. The writer craves attention. Not of the Gods, perhaps. Ours is too secular a calling. We crave the attention of our peers, we wish to make our mark in the human world. The story is our graffiti - 'Kilroy is here!' we are crying - our plea for attention in an indifferent world.
Even as we have gained with the advent of writing, we have lost something. Though our stories have flourished with the time machine that is writing, we have lost our ability to provide a sense of community, we no longer transmit those cultural messages that bind us together as people. That isn't to say that stories still can't - and don't - perform that function. But as our world has grown ever more complex and fragmented, so too has the human experience, and so too has the unifying potential of storytelling. We see ourselves reflected in a broken mirror.
Yet this provides a wealth of material for the storyteller. The very stuff of drama: conflict. Not merely the conflict of every day life set within the narrow parameters of a particular sub-culture - but between sub-cultures, between class. We have a new age of heroes and villains, new demons and angels in our modern myths. That is the rich and the poor, the struggle for human dignity to raise itself above poverty and the struggle against those who enforce it.
A rich vein indeed for the storyteller, if only they choose to delve deep beneath its crust. For all too often the world of storytelling reflects only a narrow view, a view of only one facet in our seething society. The novel arose on the backs of a triumphant bourgeois class. It helped to shape their view of the world, gave them a sense of identity and purpose even as other writers gave shape to their ideas of business and social organisation. Like those ancient storytellers, these magicians of imagination carried forth their cultural values to infuse others in their struggle to pull down an aristocratic world.
Where are the storytellers in a similar vein today? Where are those who dare to dream of a world beyond the narrow strictures of the commercial, and seek to disseminate their dissent through characters and stories and enthralling, captivating words?
Underground. Existing here and there, far from the light of the flickering fire, making do with candlelight and the glow of the moon until their time comes to bask in the full limelight. That is where the hunt leads, the story plays with us in the ongoing drama of humanity's struggle for freedom and dignity.
The chase is still one of meaning and understanding, but in the face of an ever more complex - yet paradoxically simple - world. And with it the story still develops, the real and the imaginary still bubble and boil in the dreamscape. Completely untamed.
For the moment, we writers remain hunters, tracking the spoors of inspiration - if only we dare to follow the trail to its phantasmagoric conclusion.
October 1998

Dance With The Muse And Write To Dissent
ACCOUNTANTS and management gurus are the Commissars of Capitalism, and they make for extremely bad muses. Likewise, the real muses have no time for balance sheets and cost accounts. They don't care about the bottom line. All they want to do is sing.
Writers are - or should be - addicted to this sweet melody of inspiration that magically transfers raw thought into crisp prose. Without it, the writer is frustrated and grumpy, as if a lover has