every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, every poem an epitaph

[ontology]

I've been thinking about this for several days, especially since I've been digging through colleges again and trying to understand how I can fit the things I want so badly to study into one interconnected whole. So, here it is:

I want to major in Story.

Watching this beautiful, beautiful video from Ukraine's Got Talent clinched it for me -- because this is a kind of storytelling that I have never seen before and don't really know how to describe. But I know that it's powerful. I know that it hurts and sings like steel and banners in the wind. And I love that. I love that there are so many ways to tell stories to one another, so many different ways to communicate our experiences, our ideas, or hopes, our imaginations. I've thought a lot about Story lately, because when you take all of the things that I love and set them together, that is what they are. Film, mythology, music, dance, novels, graphic novels, folklore, television, poetry, fanfiction, journalism, history, psychology, philosophy, urban legends, photography, drawing with brushes and pencils and chalk and sand, sociology, education. Everything. Story. Whether it's how you tell a story, how you listen to someone else's story, or how you learn to understand a story -- that's what they are. This is why I love public radio -- because they tell me stories, which is better and more real and more human than any of CNN's or Fox News' scandal-mongering. (I remember, after the earthquakes in China, an NPR journalist trying to describe the things she was seeing, and finally sobbing so hard she couldn't even speak. That was empathy and love, and it hurt. It got to the heart of things far better than the endless barrage of cold photographs on television, spoken over by comfortable, coiffed newscasters. This journalist cared about the story, about the people. And she cried. So I did, too.) 

So this is what I want to study. I want to study different kinds of storytelling, and I want to study different kinds of stories, and how to understand them and transform them and combine them. I want to study how to work with people and teach them to tell their stories, and how to listen to their stories when they tell them, and how to help them understand their own stories. I want to study how different kinds of stories affect each other. How mythology affects history. How poetry makes us brave. How stories and truth get all tangled up. How sometimes Story goes deeper than truth, illuminates it, is it. I want to understand how stories give us -- everybody us -- a voice. I want to study how different kinds of stories can bridge each other, how to find the best format for the kind of story you want to tell and who you want to tell it to and why. How to use stories to facillitate change, to show love, to further understanding. This is why I want to be a librarian (and a writer and a filmmaker and a musician and an artist and a scholar) -- because it's all about every kind of story and leading people to the stories they need and teaching them how to tell their own, both to other people and to themselves.

 

"Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith — faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically."
- Madeleine L'Engle

 

And there it is. Dear Emerson/Harvard/Hampshire (my current triumvirate of Schools I Want To Be A Part Of), this is why I want to be in university. I may have sucky math scores, but maybe this helps? (...can you send cover-letters to colleges? do they do much of anything?)

Comments

[bornofstars.livejournal.com]

That video blew my mind. How does one manage to manipulate sand like that?

This post...yes. Yes. What is life without the stories we tell, to ourselves and to others?

[aliseadae]

You can send essays to colleges. They always want a college application essay.

And this, this is what I want to. I want story and meaning and the /why/ of things. I want myth and culture and what people believe and why they believe it and why it is important to them.

[lady-moriel.livejournal.com]

Sigh. Yeah. I think I'd have got disenchanted with college a lot less soon if I could've figured out a way to do this, because...yeah. I mean, take my interest in idiom and slang, for instance--I don't find it fascinating just because I'm a linguistic geek, although that's part of it, but because it's about people, and human behavior, and how language evolves and develops in actual usage, and somehow that seems more real than other kinds of language development even though really I suppose it's all the same. I don't think I can even quite articulate what I'm getting at, actually. But it is about stories, all of it; that's the most universal human thing there is, telling stories.

Just based on what I've seen in UAA's catalog, I have the feeling you might get the closest to this with a general Liberal Arts/Liberal Studies major, although...not sure really, because that tends to involve some sciency stuff too, so...

[take-a-sadsong.livejournal.com]

Oh gosh Jo, this post may be my favourite of all your posts that I've read thus far. It is beautiful and I feel like you are reading my heart with it. I love Story, too. Story is me, and my heart and my pulse are elementally built with it. I know just how you feel. Everything I love is mixed with storytelling, too, (except that I really would love to work for NASA, because my other love besides stories is infinity; it's endless and a story all its own), and I want to study it too. Basically everything you said here is exactly how I feel. I've been researching Celtic culture like I always wanted to, and I'm seeing all these connections between the Celtic nations and their folklore and how it--Arthurian legend for example--changes so much and yet it still has so many common bonds. And it just inspires you to research and to write more and to become more interesting by being more interested.

And I mean, hey, God called us to be storytellers. Everytime we share Jesus, or share a testimony, or simply pass on encouragement or warn people of bad things or share our heartbreaks in attempt to better the world--we are telling stories. Stories that are bigger than us.

Also, that video is amazing, really beyond amazing. I don't know exactly what's going on (well, WWII and Ukraine obviously and a family torn apart by war), but you don't really have to. The piece delivers the emotion to you and it hurts you deeply even though you aren't exactly sure what it really means.

I really need to start listenin to NPR now. :)

[tobie-rosemary.livejournal.com]

Very beautiful.

Keep one thing in mind, that I have learned over the last year or two: learning about Story is not something you find, but something you bring with you. The University will not offer it to you. In part you must create it.

However, if you go to a university expecting to find it, you probably will. :)

(Sorry, it is way late at night and I've no idea if any of that made sense.)

[burningstarsxe.livejournal.com]

Dittoes to aliseadae. Colleges always ask for an essay with your application - frankly, I think an essay on your desire to major in Story would be fantastic. I am a fan of the idea that our lives are stories. Each and every person has a story that is important, that should be told, to a friend, to a lover. It's why Stories are so important to us, legends and fairy tales and books, fictional or non-fictional.

[wanderlight.livejournal.com]

I love you a lot. I can't even say anything to this, other than, YES, EXACTLY, THAT, and some floored head-nodding and things. You are inspiring, my dear. ♥

[barefoottomboy.livejournal.com]

frantically downloading papers before a trip away with the folks - had to stop and say YES YES YES.

love you, dear.

[spockodile.livejournal.com]

The challenge will be finding ways to learn about the human art of stories and storytelling rather than the dry scientific study of stories and storytelling. I suspect it's much easier to find classes dealing with the latter.

That video was really quite something. I watched it without sound, but it still communicated its story.

[thesoundofduck.livejournal.com]

I found you because you are also interested in folk music festivals. :)

Other than that, our only lj interest in common is subways. I think that may be the most often thing ever. That said, I also enjoy candles, love, and fairy lights, so that pretty much seals the deal. A deal. Of some sort. Somewhere.

In other words, would you like to be livejournal friends? :) I'll add you! Just let me know if you want to be friends or not and I can act accordingly (but choose the "be friends" opetion)!

[pearlessence.livejournal.com]

My dear, my dear...this is beautiful.

You have captured in one entry the spirit that fuels everyone who has ever sought to share what is in their mind and heart. I love your description of what Story truly is - a bit of every social science and art mixed together. (If such a major existed, I'd have certainly majored in that, for it allows you to sutdy everything without having to stay in school forever, which is what I suspected I'd have to do ;)

Most universities do ask for a personal statement or essay, so perhaps that could serve as your cover letter/introduction.