Some of my best friends are Storytellers

just another old geyser letting off steam

Don’t get me wrong, some of my best friends are storytellers, but there is nothing in the world (apart from quite a lot of things) that I hate more than a smug celebrity at an awards ceremony on stage telling the assembled masses how special they are because they are all ‘storytellers’.

Honestly, it makes me want to heave – the television set out of a window. What’s so special about stories? None of my favourite films are stories. None of my favourite books are stories. None of my favourite theatre shows are stories. I prefer listening to opera sung in languages I don’t understand so the story doesn’t spoil the music. The Human League’s ‘Don’t You Want Me’ is a rare lapse of pop music into ploddingly literal storytelling, which is what makes it essentialy an novelty single and so bad it’s good (officially of course I don’t believe in ‘so bad it’s good’). I even prefer attending dance to theatre because you are less likely to bump into a story while you’re there, though admittedly this is a high risk strategy, as there is little worse than a dance telling a story! So what are that smug bunch of ‘storytellers’ so smug about in that plush red theatre in their bowties and ball gowns?

True, stories are often a useful excuse for doing a load of other more interesting things. True, there are great TV shows with absorbing, complicated stories. Strictly speaking I’m not anti-story, what I find unbearable is the totally self-absorbed, myopic, complacent attitude that doesn’t see or acknowledge that there is a valid and valuable world out there beyond, before, above or beside ‘the story’.

This is a futile rant I know – screaming at windmills – and the solution is simple, never watch the things. I don’t, I haven’t for years, any of them but even so that’s not quite enough. You see I still know they’re out there peddling that same old lie, attempting to dupe the world. Occasionally I just need to let off steam about stories.



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