what are the forces that drive narrative?

i was watching a movie recently, and i found myself thinking about the way the story represented reality, about how stories edit real life. the movie still had a powerful and profound affect on me, but i don’t know why. the more i thought about it, the more uncomfortable it made me feel.

i suspect that the part of us that creates narrative is the same part of us that builds all sorts of stories around us. these stories are ones like how i dress, or how i like my coffee, the place that i live, the things i do… the stories represent ‘me’ and my place in ‘this’.

what are the forces that drive us to be creatures of narrative? what drives us to make connections, and look for meaning? does the universe possess the same sort of creative energy, or is this drive an aspect of nature, of the laws of nature that are no more relevant to us than the elements that rain or shine on us everyday no matter how fortunate or unfortunate the circumstance are for us?

i got thinking about these questions in relationship to two pieces i am currently working on- departure, and landline.

in departure we are directly playing on the forces that make story. all the pieces j. and i present you with are more or less separate from one another. they are related to a process of working, which is evident in how the pieces are made. we realign these pieces in ways that are meant to produce connections, to further a story in your imagination that is not the story of the making process.

in landline, i am interested in the force itself, the drive to make the connection, that human drive for connection, and the happy accidents that sometimes appear all by themselves in pursuit of that.

if i may speak to the whole of human existence, we are strange and wonderful creatures us people. i suspect that we do nothing more than participate, and the stories we make are nothing more than representations of how terrifying/amazing life/we can be, of how brief it all is, of how the power of sharing/telling/expressing can bring us into community with an other.

there is something weird about separation, and how we are designed to be separated yet empowered to be together. if i were looking at it as a ‘thing’ i might say that it was designed rather poorly because there is so much left to chance. what if you don’t find community? what if people don’t connect to each other? or, maybe when i relax and look at it with soft eyes i can see just how incredible of a design it is because it employs dynamic.

what drives you?