I visit the internet. I don’t live there. I wrote this essay as the world began its physical retreat, and I hope my little manifesto is something you can borrow, if you need it. Right now we are hurtling through the adrenaline of crisis updates, but this is a marathon, not a sprint. Pace yourself, be gentle.
I wonder if we will look back to this month as some kind of line, or point in time. A historical crossroads where as nations, as communities, as people, we made some decisions and did not take others. Or if historians will wonder at the strangeness that we collectively organised around this, and not all the other apocalypses. We are not designed to comprehend the magnitude of global calamity, or of long-term isolation, in real time. So forgive yourself if you’re having trouble understanding.
Instead I’m calling my family and community, to see what is needed. And I’m seeking out more stories. Heart swells to learn there are free university courses, free brilliant films, as well as the endless online archives of public libraries opening up. Before this week of chaos I had just published an audio documentary about brave women who pushed for deep change in a time of crisis, in Indonesia, about West Papua. There’s also an article, but listen first.
And in the spirit of the times I am changing the name of this mailing list to Story Doula. I follow in the footsteps of Toni Morrison: “Narrative has never been merely entertainment for me. It is, I believe, one of the principal ways in which we absorb knowledge”.
I’ve been guided by the title Story Doula for my work privately, and then publicly for a while, even as I know how earnest it sounds. But now I want to embrace my vocation completely. To be a story doula is to be in the service of language and stories, to nurture your own and others. When I watch the news and I see our leaders fail us, I remember why this is important. I’ll leave you with Toni Morrison (the superior Morrison, obviously), as to why:
“The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation.”
“It is common among the infantile heads of state and power merchants whose evacuated language leaves them with no access to what is left of their human instincts for they speak only to those who obey, or in order to force obedience.”
“Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created. We will not blame you if your reach exceeds your grasp; if love so ignites your words they go down in flames and nothing is left but their scald. Or if, with the reticence of a surgeon’s hands, your words suture only the places where blood might flow. We know you can never do it properly – once and for all. Passion is never enough; neither is skill. But try. For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief’s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear’s caul”.
— Selections from Toni Morrison’s Nobel Prize speech
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— 28/3/20