There is a sensory landscape to childhood memories.
For me, it is this:
Petrichor, the smell of the forest after heavy rainfall, is the scentscape of my childhood. A small river running over grey rocks, the gentle crack of a skipped stone over its surface, is the soundtrack. The blueish, flickering glow of the television screen upon the carpet in the lounge of my old house, watched from the top of the stairs at midnight whenever I couldn’t sleep is the abiding image (I could never squeeze myself close enough to the ground to actually see the screen). Small cubes of cheddar cheese and sliced green apples, cream cheese and fried bacon on tagliatelle, the remarkable gustatory discovery (after visiting the US) that peanut butter sandwiches could be improved a thousandfold with the addition of raspberry jam, all followed by a insulin-spiking cocktail of Sunny Delight (always ‘California Style’) mixed with blue raspberry lemonade; these are the flavours I taste when I dream of those days. My mothers smile when she didn’t know I was awake, the view of the world from atop my fathers shoulders, my little sister struggling not to laugh at something I said because her mouth was full of Dr Pepper, the smell of flowers I thought only grew in my grandparents’ respective gardens, are all in the places I dwell when I reminisce.
Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.
- Guy de Maupassant
None of these things, however, come close to the immediacy of, and the fundamental importance, of the lessons I learned through the words and deeds of loved ones, friends, and those people who influenced me as child.
Second to this would be the lessons learned through experiences (including my learning via the canon): the snapshots of such events may not be as vividly rendered as the broadly brushed landscape painting I’ve outlined in the opening of this article, but they’re viewed more often, with dogeared edges to each page.
Memory, both of an individual nature and collective (history), is a prized scalp for those who wish to take and wield raw power. They’ll dry it out, wear it as a pelt, and deny to your face that it was what it was.
“It’s just a bit of fur, a mere trinket, get back to work”
I refuse to allow this.
The term ‘gaslighting’ has become a tad glib, often applied to situations that doesn’t fit the definition in order to shut down conversation, but the scale of its actual employment has become dizzyingly common - as with so much nowadays, this is almost solely due to the internet. The speed, ubiquity, and sheer volume of information makes such deceptions easier than ever.
Mercifully, it also makes disassembling such nonsense far quicker, and more thorough, than the propagandistic narratives disseminated in the pre-internet era. But this aspect of the new discourse is young, and often a struggle to employ.
It will come as no surprise that I believe (quite fervently) that the art form I hold so dear should be afforded a role in returning to a place of understanding. Explication, a clear-eyed reading of history, philosophically cogent discussion, well-ordered political systems all being necessary, I’d venture that there are a glut of individuals (despite a seeming dearth nowadays) who can ensure these systems are renewed by actually doing the thing. But culture gets left behind.
That, in part, is why we slide towards totalitarian or nihilistic pits. Culture gets left behind. Or, worse, gets weaponised by forces who seek to become rulers of the pit. You’ll know, you friends who’ve read my work here before, that I oppose and rebuke this. But what can I do?
I’m reaching out: here are some people who I’d dearly like to work with. To undertake projects that combine what they do and what I do, to build, to renew, to forge new and beautiful things that people, everyone, can enjoy and call their own.
I expect nothing more than for you, dear reader, to be exposed to some cool people with a depth of thought and expression that inspire me. I hope that my call will be heeded, projects can be undertaken, and normal social order can resume.
Fixing Cracked Mirrors, Leaving the Foxing
Here’s a list, in no particular order, of incredible people I’d dearly like to work with, alongside a brief description of their work (follow links for more info). Any projects I’m currently involved with, and the amazing individuals I have the privilege to work with, won’t be mentioned here.
This lady is my hero (which I don’t think she likes me expressing, but tough - she simply is), and very luckily for me, a friend. I cannot overstate the effect this person has had in my life. She is, quite literally, the reason I do what I do.
I was working as a docent at the National Trust site, Dinefwr back in 2019 having just decided to hang up my… um… make-up bag (?) as an actor. I really had no idea what I was going to do with my life. Truth be told, I was in a rather dark place back then.
A storytelling festival was moving to Dinefwr from their home in the Vale of Glamorgan for the previous 20 years, and I happened to be working the day of their first pilot event. My boss asked me to do something I really, really did not want to do: accompany a couple of these storytellers as they took guests around the grounds of the main house, stopping periodically to tell a tale apiece.
This was my own vision of hell.
Failed actors doing bad monologues based on butchered Hans Christian Anderson stories is what I expected.
I was so gloriously wrong.
Beneath a willow tree, Clare started her first tale. Within a minute, I knew this was what I was meant to do all my life. And, further, the woman who was allowing cynical ole’ me to see the tale as she wove it with her words had just become the standard I had to aim for.
I still do.
The Potential Project: Not enough people know about Irish culture. Don’t get me wrong, people all over the world recognise leprechauns, pints of Guinness, and the diddly-diddly music, but seldom can your average person recount even the faintest outline of an Irish legend.
This situation is even rarer regarding my nation’s canon.
Something most don’t realise is, despite the closeness of our respective cultures in every conceivable method of analysis, we have often been the gravest of enemies. Nobody fights like siblings, am I right? Much of this enmity occurred in a time before the concept of both England and Scotland even existed! These are the tales I’d like to explore with Clare. In fact, I envision it as a duel of sorts - two great traditions, their views of the other, dancing a war dance. I like the name “Tales on the Knife’s Edge”, and see us conducting this battle in the more extreme reaches of our respective homelands. How cool would this be?:
I first came across Ms. Pluckrose’s “work” in 2018. Alongside philosopher Peter Boghossian and Mathematician James Lindsay, she embarked on a campaign of academic paper writing so ingenious that it should have changed the academic landscape forever.
It did not, it would seem.
However, it did aid in changing the wider public’s view of the academy, forcing your average Joe and Jenny to look more askance at news reports/articles that rely on “experts say”.
You see, the papers that Pluckrose et al produced weren’t actual papers. They were carefully crafted, but ultimately bogus works, designed to show the absurdity of the current slate of journals, mainly in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Indeed, they highlighted the absurd depths those fields had reached. Here’s an overview of the whole affair:
Beyond this initial (and EPIC) foray into public discourse, Ms. Pluckrose has contributed to Liberal thought, and its application in public discourse and the workplace, as much as anyone in recent years on this side of the Atlantic. For this, as a Liberal, I will always be grateful.
I have had some interaction with her online. I think she enjoys my sense of humour, but I can ensure you all that I get a LOT more from her work. This is something I’d like to change.
Helen Pluckrose is a medievalist, really, and has recently taken up an interest in Ancient Norse studies. This is my jam.
I’d love to work with Helen on exploring the works alongside the performance element.
The Potential Project:
Helen’s ability to critique, and to analyse, is as good as I’ve seen. I’d dearly like to see how she’d do immediately after hearing a tale performed on a stage. This concept, not yet done as far as I’m aware, would be an invaluable exercise for the oral traditions and it’s contemporary expression. Like a public lecture on, say, the Poetic Edda except with an actual professional storyteller performing the relevant parts between explication/analysis.
Further, it would be a true expression of the principles outlined in my treatise on embedded storytelling and the re-formed role of cyfarwydd (see here), that being the performance of the canon and a philosophical discourse predicated on the works themselves.
I cannot imagine a better person - sometimes fellow traveller, sometimes adversarial interlocutor, I’m sure - than Helen Pluckrose.
This bloke is rather important to me. Our second storyteller, Daniel is my mentor. I was very fortunate to be paired with such an excellent performer, especially one who turned out to be such an excellent man.
His work speaks for itself, just as loudly as his reputation, but one thing he did for me was truly special.
I was struggling with a particular piece I was to perform at a festival. I’d tried everything, and was beginning to lose confidence in my ability to perform it. Daniel suggested we take a walk. We went to a small wooded area, wandered, and he instructed me to tell the tale as we did. It worked.
It still works. Every. Single. Time.
I now have a bank of tales approaching 350 in my head that I can draw from. This little intervention may seem small, but I cannot express how fundamental this is to be able to do what I do in the way that I do it.
That’s Daniel Morden. He’s my pal.
The Potential Project: Where to begin? Having set aside the 90 or so ideas as to what Daniel and I could produce, I have landed on one that I think would be great.
I’ve been fascinated by the idea of chessboxing for ages - events where participants face off in the boxing ring for a round, followed by a round of chess, going on until a checkmate or knockout (no, Daniel, I don’t want to play you at chess…)
Multi-disciplinary competition has never raised to the level of specific pursuits, but have been more popular than they are today (more people will tune in to see the Olympic 100m finals than, say, the final of a Ninja Warrior Assault course).
I propose we put on a night, demonstrated by us at first, for a willing audience to go “round-to-round” changing between comedy and storytelling. We would then have a system whereby the audience/a panel of comics and tellers could judge the performances.
I have no idea if this would ‘work’, but with God as my witness, I want to see this occur. If it fails, it’ll be hilarious. It it works, it will be glorious.
Indeed, I’m quite sure her X.com username is not her real name.
Conversely, I really do know Mae very well.
During our interactions, both written and in Spaces, a few things have become quite clear to me: Mae is very bright, thoughtful, and has the very same mindset I had around her age; “I don’t know what any of this is yet, but I really want to find out”. In fact, she expressed this herself better than I can paraphrase:
Ive been thinking a lot about my future. I want to start contributing to the world in some meaningful way. I am unfortunately very picky with what I decide to spend my time on, but I’m done waiting for the perfect moment. Im just gonna try it all and fail as many times as I need to bc perfectionism is death. I prefer to live.
- Mae Jordan
The issue I suspect Mae will come up against, as I did many times, is that it is very easy to claim that facing down the spectre of failure is necessary in order to learn, and eventually succeed. Very easy when you consider it as a spectre. It isn’t. It’s an ogre, with large square teeth in its gaping maw, hungry to consume you whole. It isn’t perfectionism, but rather egoism and idealism that leads us to the monster’s belly.
I want to explore this with Mae, to show her via the tales how one overcomes this. (Spoiler Alert: one doesn’t - you aim to, and you learn to love questions as an end, in and of themselves)
So what would I get from Mae?
She’s an incredible singer, who should be known by multitudes of people as such.
The Potential Project: This idea is simple, but will prove complex to complete for many reasons; I’d like Mae to use the tales we explore to influence her music. I don’t mind if it would be in her choice of extant songs, or to write new ones. I’d imagine this would be documented and disseminated online.
Imagine it as a journey through the tales, expressed by Mae, and questioned by her too. It’d stand as an experiment in seeing exactly what the extent of storytelling can be on another art form, as well as sensemaking more broadly.
I’ll clarify; we begin before the finished piece with a discussion - what is the big question bugging Mae? I’ll tell her a tale that I think may hold the answer. She would then find a song to fit, basing her choice/creation on the answer she thinks she’s found, or the better questions that emerge, or the failure to find clarity. We’d finally work together to fit both the tale and the song together, as a recorded/streamed artwork.
If it were at all possible to bring whatever we’ve made to a live audience, that’d be ideal. But, given the geographical distance between us, that’d be a tall order.
Still, this is one of seven dreams, after all. Anything is possible here.
From the moment I started my career as a storyteller, Tamar was there. She has been integral in my professional development, progression, and indeed, often in my creative improvement.
I’ve shared an IRL stage with Tamar more than any other storyteller, spoken to her on the scene in our country more than anyone else.
Our styles, outlook on the art form, political and (I assume) religious views, are very, very different. So why would I want to work on a specific project with her?
She’s very good at what she does, indeed, at whatever she does. She’s a good person. I’m very curious what exactly we could do as co-creators of a piece. I have no idea what would result.
She needs to hear this next bit, and to know I’m entirely sincere in stating it:
Tamar is a force of nature.
She’s diligent, and organised in a way I admire and aspire to emulate. I SUCK st that bit.
The Potential Project:
No idea (sori, Tamar - ond beth oeddet ti’n disgwyl? Fi sy’ ‘di ‘sgrifennu hwn😉).
Maybe a dramatic piece? A book. She’s an excellent writer.
I dunno.
It’d be awesome though, I’m sure.
Of course, sometimes not knowing is a better place to be, and in this instance, quite exciting.
Here’s another pseudonymous X account that has restored my faith in humanity! American political heritage is something I hold very dear to my heart - as I mentioned above, I am a Liberal in the classical sense of the word, and America is the crowning achievement of this philosophy of governance - but find it extremely frustrating to follow these days.
Whilst new media produces a glut of content, very few independent political commentators have emerged that rise above the hyper-specific descriptors of:
banal, niche, wrong, propagandists, rank self-promoters, grifters, or dull.
Theo is none of these things. He truly loves his country, but doesn’t shirk his intellectual responsibility to due diligence. Put it this way, I don’t like Theo’s work because I agree with his all the time (although I do more often than not), and in fact, I don’t always enjoy his tone in writing; none of that matters when you have an honest actor, and evidently, a good man, expressing his views on subjects he’s researched well.
Our interactions have been nothing but my utmost pleasure, and he has regularly highlighted my posts on social media without prompt. I’m quite certain we can build something quite special for America, and therefore, everywhere else.
The Potential Project:
Theo has expressed his interest in American history a few times. He doesn’t strike me as having a dour, academic view on the subject, nor is he a LARP-y type of history guy either. Rather, he is someone who loves his country so much that her past is a necessary thing to explore for him.
We share this, both respectively, and on the subject of America specifically.
I’d love to work with Theo on a project that involves the broad sweep of America’s story tradition - early folk tales, the later ‘tall tales’ tradition, the specific cultural expressions of the peoples who settled the land, Native American mythology and, my personal favourite, Urban Legends (although, Algonquin legends run them close).
I envision a podcast - a subject from the socio-political or historical realm that is currently on Theo’s mind, and some tales to accompany; “The Sexual Revolution in America VS Christian Conservatism” alongside tales like the ‘Embarrassing Cheque’, ‘NASA Doc. No. 12 571-3570’, and some of the stories surrounding the moral panic over gel bracelets in the early 2000’s (yes, this really happened).
We will end where we began. Lisa and I connected via Clare Murphy. I loved her story, her personality, and the obvious talent which radiated from her smile.
Side note: isn’t it weird how that can happen sometimes? It isn’t always - I’ve certainly been surprised - but mostly I find that I can tell if someone is very talented by their facial expressions.
Lisa and I have since had many chats via Zoom, covering a great number of subjects. I try to play devil’s advocate as often as I can, try to bring her elements of my own culture and practice, but adore listening to her tell me about whatever is going on with her. That’s the amazing thing about Lisa - she’s extremely engaging. I don’t tell her stuff, I want to tell her stuff. I want to hear about what she’s up to. And what she thinks.
On that, I often disagree with her positions. As with other people on this list - it doesn’t matter. Lisa is a great person, and an incredible artist. There are things we all believe that may be untrue, or bad, but those things aren’t us. It’s Lisa I’d like to share with the world, to question, to show my work to, not whichever ideological meme that currently possesses her (or anyone, myself included).
The Potential Project: Lisa’s life story, and her writing/talking about it, is truly incredible. I envision a collaboration whereby she (and her band) engage in a more literal telling of her tale (coupled with musical underscore, of course - it’d be a shame not to hear her/them play) and I would craft a narrative that accompanies it; perhaps an antimärchen, where the fairy tale elements remain but we don’t hide away from the darker, more real elements (including eschewing a happy ending - Lisa, after all, has not ended!)
Despite folk/lighter classical being the usual go-to genre of music for fairy tales, I’ve often considered Jazz and her subgenres as being a better fit for certain expressions of the tradition. I’ve rarely seen this performed, however, and would love to explore this on a stage (maaaaaybe in Italy?) with this incredible talented, and thoroughly lovely person.
Right then, these should keep me going for the next 50 years or so. That is, of course, if they come to fruition.
