Fires and Anchors
I read a book called “The Crisis of Narration” recently. It’s quite a book. Short, at just 68 pages, and yet absolutely packed with concepts and descriptions that had me thinking for days at a time.
A bit like the Fish & Bear stories at our events. They are ‘strictly’ time-limited to be very short, but when you listen fully, they are packed with thoughts and experiences to reflect upon. I still get flashback thoughts to F&B stories I heard weeks ago, even though each story is less than 3 minutes long.
Sometimes they are silly thoughts, like remembering the story of the grandfather who couldn’t understand why his grandson (Jeremy) had been named “Germany” - and wouldn’t be told that he’d heard it wrong. And sometimes the thoughts are more reflective, and lead me to wonder what I have assumed to be true for decades, and I may later discover to be false.
The book makes the argument that it is the sharing of narrative stories that unites communities, and it is the modern-day experience of a firehose of information and connectivity that separates us from each other.
“Adrift in the sea of information and data, we seek a narrative anchor.”
I agree with a lot of the book and its concepts, but there is one sentence that I completely disagree with:
“No amount of ‘the stories shared on social media’ could recreate the fire around which humans gathered to tell each other stories. That fire has long since burnt out.”
I believe there are still glowing embers, and the fire can easily be relit. Fish & Bear metaphorically relights that fire every week, and on June 19th at The Valley Hive in Chatsworth, the plan is to have an actual fire too! We are going to host Fish & Bear outdoors, in the grounds of the nursery garden, with a fire pit! We won’t have all of the creature comforts of the MacLeods brewery, but the sheer simplicity and connection with nature should make this an experience not to miss.
Even when the fire is metaphorical, there is a lot to learn, and last week we learned that my generation’s irrational fear of quicksand had been replaced with slightly more rational fears of tsunamis, that ether smells like coffee, and that we can make anything special by simply pausing each day to notice.
Hope you can come and join us this Thursday at MacLeod’s (and next Thursday at The Valley Hive).
Mark
xo
Fish and Bear is held every Thursday at 7pm.
Check out our WEBSITE: https://fishandbear.net
If you like Lynn’s writing, then check out her weekly Notes From The Valley at lynnfergy.com
