Part One in the first season of Stories from the Hearth's bonus historical and interview series: The Wandering Bard. Each season of The Wandering Bard examines a different aspect of the history and nature of storytelling, as well as people behind it. In season one of The Wandering Bard, we ask the question “Why do we tell stories?”, and in today's episode, we examine how storytelling helps us to make sense of the world around us.
Part One in the first season of Stories from the Hearth's bonus historical and interview series: The Wandering Bard. Each season of The Wandering Bard examines a different aspect of the history and nature of storytelling, as well as people behind it. In season one of The Wandering Bard, we ask the question “Why do we tell stories?”, and in today's episode, we examine how storytelling helps us to make sense of the world around us.
In the next instalment of The Wandering Bard, we will be looking at how storytelling creates, preserves, and challenges our cultures.
Stories from the Hearth is an experimental storytelling experience ft. truly original fiction and thoughtfully produced soundscapes. The aim of this podcast is to rekindle its listeners' love for the ancient art of storytelling (and story-listening), and to bring some small escapism to the frantic energies of the modern world. Stories from the Hearth is the brainchild of queer punk poet, environmentalist, and anarchist Cal Bannerman. Vive l'art!
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Welcome to The Wandering Bard, a bonus historical and interview series on Stories from the Hearth. Today, in Part One, we will be examining how humanity has told stories throughout its history, as a means to making some sense of the world around us. In contrast to the main focus of this podcast – the monthly fiction episodes through which I can experiment with my creativity – The Wandering Bard is the place where I get to indulge my other vice: history. I am a student of history, and think that it may just be one of the most important areas of study out there. After all, everything we do, everything we are, everything we aspire to be as a human species, all of it is contained within the vial of history. Studying history, therefore, is the best means of studying ourselves. In this bonus series, I’ll be presenting short, ten to twenty minute episodes on the history of storytelling in culture, society, religion and art, as well as the history of the people behind it. Occasionally, I’ll even sit down for a chat with another storyteller spinning yarns in the universe today. Episodes of The Wandering Bard will pop-up from time to time. If I can produce one a month, I’ll do so, but you’ll have to forgive me if their publishing schedule is a little more erratic. After all, this is a one woman show, and I’ve got stories to tell! If you’re enjoying this podcast, then please do tell your friends and review it on your favourite podcast app, Spotify, or iTunes. If you’re really enjoying it, then you can support Stories from the Hearth on Patreon and help yourself to early access, behind-the-scenes insights, bonus content, physical copies of the stories, shout-outs and much much more. Just head to patreon.com/storiesfromthehearthpodcast or hit the link down below.
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Many thousands of years ago, a long time before we knew what we claim to know today, when Homo sapiens sapiens were first emerging, and the world was as yet unpopulated by beings as conscious as we, that world must have been, in many senses, truly terrifying. Unexplained would have went droughts, floods, thunder and lightning, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis.
Telling stories, was a way for us to make sense of those things, to make us feel like we had some sort of understanding of these seemingly supernatural events; perhaps even to install us with a sense of control – for example, by creating gods out of the sun and sea, that we may worship them and hope to garner their support.
We invented gods like Thor: the protector of humankind, whose strength was displayed in and who governed the lightning. To the Norse and Germanic peoples who worshipped Thor, this combination of deific protection, with something as scary and destructive as lightning, must have gone a long way to reassuring those peoples that lightning was no longer something to be afraid of. But then, there were the Xhosa and Zulu peoples of South Africa, who transferred control of lightning into the body of Impundulu, the lightning bird: a wicked familiar of witch doctors, and a thing to be feared. Here we have an entirely different approach to making sense of the world, and yet one which still does the same job. Lightning, to the South African peoples living in a dry brushland of constant bushfires, was a constant threat. Yet still, they connected it to the enigmatic witch doctors of their culture, thus grounding this most powerful of natural forces to human will – something which was understood and made sense, regardless of whether it was an evil or benevolent force.
Friend or foe, scary or comforting, these stories helped explain the reason for things like lightning, and we were comforted, feeling like we now knew why the sky lit up, tore apart, cracked and boomed and let loose its fire. When our children cowered beneath their beds for fear of the rumbling thunder, we could soothe them with tales of Thor, or of Impundulu the Bird.
And so we evolved. We stepped out of fear and into a perceived understanding, which whether through pride or ignorance, allowed us to feel, over time, as if we had mastered the world, as if nothing it could throw at us could not be explained. We imagined god and monsters, responsible for the random chaos of the universe.
Floods were caused by the Leviathan, shipwrecks the fault of Harpies. In Japanese folklore, their god Kagu-tsuchi’s body was broken down, and became the tremendous volcanoes which comprised the Japanese islands, and wreaked so much devastation upon its people.
But not only could natural catastrophes be explained away by storytelling. So too could human stresses and anxieties of the everyday. We created the idea that adultery was often the fault of a witch’s magic – the woman to whom the husband had gone from his wife was, in this story, a magic woman, capable of drawing the poor man away from monogamy. (I wonder who it was came up with that story...) We created the story of the Leprechaun, who hid pots of gold at the end of the rainbow, which may have served as a slim hope for those suffering in poverty. And hope, we all know, is a great salve for all sorts of ailments.
Now, today, with our understanding of modern science, technology, and industry, we may well look back on these stories, which we humans told ourselves in antiquity, and call them silly, stupid, ignorant, contrived. Legends and myths long since disproved or consigned to mythology. But to our ancestors, these stories were indescribably important. They were things you could hold onto when the world around you made no sense. When your home had been destroyed by an earthquake, or your loved one taken by famine.
Today, we still tell stories for the same reason. One may argue that science, though of course based in a methodical means of accurately deducing fact from fiction, is in itself a type of storytelling, which we continue to use to make sense of the world. And speaking of science, it is now particularly popular, as with my stories for Stories from the Hearth, to tell science fiction stories – tales which attempt to predict the direction in which the world is moving, or to warn against a direction it seems to be moving in. Stories which continue to help steer ourselves through this chaotically, ever-changing universe, preparing us for any eventuality.
But far from stories only explaining the natural world, the future and past, stories also help to explain the mundane, the everyday. If, for example, we hear a bump in the night, we might tell ourselves a story: about how the bump is just the upstairs neighbour dancing, an uneven object settling into place, a storm at the windows. It is not important to us whether the story that we tell ourselves is true and accurate, so long as it helps us feel centred and safe in this crazy, crazy universe.
Because without stories, we humans would still be lost, perhaps cowering in caves or in forests, perhaps never daring to think of trying to master the world around us. For without stories, the world would make no sense…
Thank you for listening to this month’s episode in The Wandering Bard bonus historical and interview series on Stories from the Hearth. Next time, we will be examining how storytelling helps to preserve our cultures, and to form our identities. If you liked what you heard, please do subscribe, and share this podcast with friends, family, and anyone you know who could use just a half-hour’s respite from the chaotic energies of the everyday. You can also now rate podcasts on Spotify, so if you’re listening to it there, why not drop us some stars. If you wish to support the podcast, please head to my Patreon by hitting the link in the description down below, or by heading to patreon.com/storiesfromthehearthpodcast. Similarly, you can check out the podcast’s Instagram, Twitter, website and email address via the links below. Story episodes are released on the last Sunday of every month. Further episodes of The Wandering Bard will pop up from time to time. Until next we meet around the fire, I’ve been Calum Bannerman, and you’ve been listening to Stories From The Hearth.