Feeling Known

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/magazine/george-saunders-just-wrote-the-best-book-youll-read-this-year.html?pagewanted=3&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130106&_r=0

So I've never actually written anything George Saunders has written. But now I'm adding him to my list.

"One thing is that you read them and you feel known, if that makes any sense. Or, possibly even woollier, you feel as if he understands humanity in a way that no one else quite does, and you’re comforted by it."

I think that is one of the essential functions of art, of books. We all hunger, deep down, for some sense of connection. The feeling that we are not alone in feeling whatever it is that we are feeling at the moment - lost, maybe. Confused and scared and maybe even despairing.

The fact that someone you have never met and probably never will can lift you out of that self-pitying stupor through a line in a book or a phrase in a song and make you "feel known" is a certain type of magic.

To feeling known.

Vaddey Ratner: The Power of Storytelling

http://www.npr.org/2012/08/14/158691935/in-the-shadow-of-death-stories-survive

"I actually want to tell a story about the power of storytelling to transcend suffering. Because it was the stories that saved me, the stories, the poetry that my father left behind."
-Vaddey Ratner

I haven't read this book - I only read this review this morning - but this quote pretty much encapsulates everything this blog is about. I think words and storytelling have immense power - the power to transcend, to transport. To save.

To stories, poetry and words transcending suffering.

Francesca Lia Block: On Stories

“Stories are like genies...They can carry us into and though our sorrows. Sometimes they burn, sometimes they dance, sometimes they weep, sometimes they sing. Like genies, everyone has one. Like genies, sometimes we forget that we do.
Our stories can set us free...When we set them free.”
- Francesca Lia Block

I completely believe this quote. I don't think this only applies to stories, though. I think this really can apply to any type of art, anything you can pour yourself into: painting, singing, dancing, drawing, etc. You always have that power to make music, make art, write a story, to create from whatever is in your head, no matter what's going on.

And setting it down, pouring it out...it can free you sometimes. Lighten your load.

To telling your story (even if you're the only one who ever reads it).

To Beginnings

There's an Aristophanes quote I love: By words the mind is winged. 

I read news articles a lot. Pretty much on a daily basis. It's easy to get sucked into thinking that the sky is falling. It can get depressing.

Plus, sometimes things just aren't going the way you want them to. Sometimes, life isn't really going the way you want it to. But there's one thing I know - that words can inspire you, comfort you (hokey as that undoubtedly sounds).

You know that feeling you get when you read something that speaks to you? It's like it was written just for you. You read it aloud to yourself, again and again. Maybe try to memorize it. Write it down. This is an effort to compile quotes, articles, poems, etc. to wing the mind.

First up:  http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/05/14/152442084/alzheimers-patients-turn-to-stories-instead-of-memories.

"It turns out that for people with dementia, storytelling can be therapeutic."

I think storytelling can be therapeutic for everyone. 

Here's to storytelling and words. And to beginnings.