My journey to storytelling

My Journey to Storytelling What I have learned from my journey to storytelling.

by Wanchain

Falling in love with writing was so natural for me. In fact, it happened without my conscious awareness. As someone in love with writing, naturally I am quite crazy about pens, and as part of my craziness, I travel around the world buying a certain brand of pens, of various colors. Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient, has a preference for a certain Muji brand lined notebooks, and likes to literally cut and paste his sentences, sometimes having several layers of paper pasted on top of each other. I am not as comical as him, but it’s very comforting to know that there are people who like words so much that they play with them like Lego pieces.

Although I fell in love with writing, writing itself is not an art. Transitioning from writing to storytelling was a somewhat mysterious process, one which transported me from technical writing to creative writing, allowing me to experience the literary adventure, I thus fell in love with storytelling quite unknowingly. Such is the magic of love. It happens so mysteriously.

Storytelling is a form of art. It is the assembly of words, like Lego pieces, in such a way that it marvels, uplifts, and inspires.

Melbourne is a special place for me. On the front and back of my Story 9, I mentioned some of my most pivotal decisions about storytelling took place in the city of Melbourne, not because of its thriving arts scene, but because of some very inspiring chats with my cousin.

Melbourne therefore, is a place that marks the beginning of my journey through art. Prior to Melbourne, writing was a tool, either to communicate or to generate an alternate source of income.

In 2014, I met my cousin for the first time in 19 years, in Sydney. At that time, he did not inspire me, perhaps neither of us were in the right frame of mind. Less than 12 months later, using the same one-year tourist visa, I met him in Melbourne. Life is full of magical moments, and one of those moments is when we meet the right person at the right place at the right time. Me meeting him in Melbourne was like a fledgling seeking the advice of an artist. I now come to understand why I felt drawn to Australia in 2015. Not only that, but I also gained a greater clarity on the purpose of his existence in my life—some people come into our lives to plant a seed, which may take years to grow, and when it does, we are not always consciously aware of who have planted the seed in us in the first place. Of all my relatives, he is the only one who could guide and influence me in the direction of making art. It is also from him that I begin to catch a glimpse of some of the challenges of making art.

One of his most poignant comments was, “Photography is 10% art and 90% business.” In fact, the art of storytelling also has the same formula. It was at that moment that it became clear to me that my objective was not to get rich from writing, but quite the contrary, to have my work touch as many lives as possible. The Serbian American inventor Nikola Tesla said, “I don’t care that they stole my idea. I care that they don’t have any of their own.” Thus I arrived at the decision to make my work freely accessible to all. One of my beliefs is that the best things in life are free; eg. sunshine, fresh air, friendship, freedom, love, etc.

It is also from my cousin that I come to realize, there are many people who pursue art, not just for a few months, but for a decade, or more, and still have not succeeded. Some have succeeded posthumously. Some are afraid to try. Some gave up half-way.

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The Iranian artist Ahmad Nadalian began his artistic pursuit by carving rocks on the roadside, on the riverside, all over his homeland. People didn’t know who carved the rocks. When they finally knew, they all inevitably said he should do it for money, he should sign and date his carvings, he should exhibit his carvings, etc. Most people, regardless of nationality, would only do something for monetary compensation, and perhaps even recognition. He smiled and continued carving. He didn’t mind that nobody saw his carvings. He wasn’t motivated by money. He did it simply because he enjoyed doing it. Many years later, his carvings were found all over the world, on land, in the water, and on the internet.

Nadalian’s story is beautiful. He leads by example. He encourages artists to insist on doing what they enjoy without seeking any external motivation, assurance, or acceptance, in other words, be self-propelling. His persistence is his consistent externalization of his inner wisdom and inner strength, which when shines forth, is subtle yet powerful enough to awaken and transform the world’s attitude toward the natural environment.

What is art to me? I will begin with the 25th rule of love from the Persian scholar Shams of Tabriz: There are four levels of insight. The first level is the outer meaning and it is the one that the majority of the people are content with. Next is the inner level. Third is the inner of the inner. And the fourth level is so deep it cannot be put into words and is therefore bound to remain indescribable.

Of Shams’ 40 rules of love, I am most attracted to this rule. To put it simply, we have different layers of consciousness. The superficial layer is the conscious level, while the deepest and innermost layer is the bottom of the subconscious level, where the essence lies.

Art to me is the externalization of the essence from the inner to the outer level, for all to see, and by that I mean to sense and to feel. This is called transcendental art. The concept of transcendence is not limited to art, but may also appear also in science and spirituality, and other disciplines as well, as everything has an inner essence and an outer appearance. When we focus only on outer appearances, we lose ourselves.

Our crisis in the world is not one of social, economical, nor political; but one of consciousness. Godard commented on the trend of human consciousness: “First there was Greek civilization. Then there was the Renaissance. Now we’re entering the Age of the Ass.” The Swiss filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard said, “Art is not the reflection of reality. It is the reality of a reflection.” The Swiss-German painter Paul Klee said the same thing differently: “Art does not reproduce the visible, but rather, it makes visible.” I fell in love with the art of storytelling, exactly because of its power to illuminate the inner essence.

In my 7,500-word story, a condensed version of my memoir, one of my characters complained that I portrayed him as a “bad guy”. A Russian friend said, “Blame not the mirror for its reflection.” Later, in my 80,000-word story, the elaborated version of the same memoir, this Russian friend was extremely upset, claiming that I portrayed her as an unintelligent “bimbo.” What I intended was a light-hearted scene. What I discovered was a concealed image in the mirror.

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An artwork is a mirror. What we experience is the image in the mirror, which is our inner self.

Godard said, “Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.” What was revealed to me by the two responses above was their inner psyche.

The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung said, “The one who looks outside dreams. The one who looks inside awakens.” The more I write, the more I see the essence of things, people, situation, relationship, etc. I begin to realize that I have been blind up until then. Can you imagine the thrill of a blind person gaining her eyesight for the first time in her life? The ecstasy of seeing all the colors, textures, and shapes of everything and everyone is so enlivening.

Some people ask, “What’s the meaning of life?” When you are awakened and enlivened, you would not be asking this. Instead, you will be feeling the ecstasy of simply being alive.

The Russian film director of Leviathan (2014), Andrey Zvyagintsev said, “There is nothing more exciting than making art.” The pursuit of art makes life worth living. It is by making art that the artist fully comes alive. There are people who are alive outside but dead inside. I was one of them, until I started making art.

The making of art is the journey, and the artwork is the destination. I fell in love with the journey, not the destination.

On this journey, I discover that my artwork has the effect of surprising even myself, that the artist is not the sole creator of the artwork, but rather a co-creator. The Iranian film director Asghar Farhadi who wrote the movie The Past said, the outcome of the final scene surprised him, and confessed that he often felt he was co-creating movies with an external force. The Turkish writer Elif Shafak said that her characters always surprised her as she would not know what would happen to them six pages down the road. I have written stories in this way, as well as written stories by first plotting them out. The former is more right-brain dominant while the latter left-brain. However, the approach I much prefer is the collaboration of both brain hemispheres. My Story 9 is an example of a story in which I employed the cooperation of both. My sequel to Story 9 is predominantly a left-brain product, which reminds me a lot of the Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami’s films.

In the creation process, I discover that I am connecting to a higher power, the source of inspiration and intuition. Tesla once said, “My brain is only a receiver. In the universe, there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength, and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.” Specifically, the brain perceives but does not conceive. And even more specifically, the left brain perceives and the right brain receives. However, in order to receive higher thoughts, from our core essence, the left brain must be quiet. On this note, the American scientist Albert Einstein wittily remarked: “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

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Once, I paid a channeler to ask me, “What’s the difference between an intuition and an imagination?” I said, the former does not require straining, that the idea flows in effortlessly and comfortably, whereas the latter requires straining. If we feel the slightest resistance and friction in our mental process, then we are thinking, not receiving.

Creativity is the reception of ideas. It is the opening of the mind to allow ideas to flow in. It is the surrender to the universal forces. It is the acceptance without resistance of what comes in. Human mind, or the ego mind, can think and strain for thoughts, but great ideas do not originate from the ego; they originate from our core essence.

My cousin’s photography instructor measures success by the number of discussions that an artwork stimulates. I agree. I always feel that the purpose of art is to inspire, to raise awareness, to provoke thoughts, in a gentle and subtle way, if and when the audience is ready.

An artwork that promotes thinking has the power to influence and to shape our consciousness. Some artists are avant-garde. They modernize the collective mentality.

Modernization is sometimes greeted with resistance. In a response to the death threats received by the Syrian poet Adonis, the Bahraini filmmaker Eva Daoud said, “The prophet of every age is always crucified at the hands of ignorance and backwardness. History has never witnessed a philosopher killing a man of God, but to this day, intellectuals are being threatened and killed by people who have become religious.”

I submitted my first short story The Lady in Lisbon, to a Writer-in-Residence for critique. A month later, I received her critique, both by phone and on paper. There were some rather shocking remarks from the Writer-in-Residence. On the phone for 39 minutes, one of the strangest questions was, “What’s the message of your story?” My message was designed to be discovered and explored by the audience, not to be spoon-fed to them. If and when my audience is ready, he will hear it; otherwise, there is no point in telling him. Farhadi once said, “I think it's insulting to an audience to make them sit and watch a film and then give them a message in one sentence.”

A few friends had read The Lady in Lisbon and the critique from the Writer-in-Residence.

Most of them did not agree with the Writer-in-Residence, nor did they agree among themselves. A little discussion seemed to be happening. One of them did catch the message of my story. Yes, I deliberately constructed that story in such a way that my audience had to fish for the message, and once they ‘caught the fish’, they would enjoy the story more, because, we will always enjoy eating a fish that we caught more than a fish that we bought.

Alas, not only did the Writer-in-Residence not ‘catch my fish’, she actually told me to throw it away, saying that it was redundant.

The Russian writer Anton Chekhov said, “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there at all.” I asked my Russian friend, “Why did the

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Writer-in-Residence remove my Chekhov’s gun?” She replied, “The Writer-in-Residence badly needed it to shoot herself.”

Different audiences seek different artists. We tend to connect with those who operate at a similar level of consciousness as us. Artists and audiences are no different. Some artworks speak to us at the physical level, while others are more abstract and appeal to a deeper part of us. However, the deepest level of consciousness is universal—we all know love, joy, pain —regardless of cultural, geographical, religious, political, economical, and gender differences. Diversity appears at the surface, while universality exists at the core.

According to Shams, there is also the inner of the inner layer, which is the reflection of a reflection. In my Story 9, my Yemeni friend was both my reader and my character. As a reader, he was exhilarated to see his own reflection and to see the reflection of our friendship. I interacted with him on the outer layer, the inner layer (when I wrote about our friendship, which was based solely on my own perception), and the inner of the inner layer (when I reflected on his reaction to his reflection immediately after reading as well as many days after reading). Going through the different layers is a kind of distillation. At the end of that distillation is a deeper insight into the subject of contemplation.

Art is not entertainment. But an artwork can entertain as well as enlighten. Storytelling is flexible in that it can appeal to the audience at a superficial level, but at the same time, the same story can also penetrate into a deeper layer of the audience’s psyche.

Words hold thoughts. Written words can span time and space. An Egyptian friend who learns English from me encourages me to acquire new languages. My response drives him crazy: I say I wish to learn English. The height of our thoughts is limited by the height of our language skill. As I aspire to inspire, I shall equip my conscious mind with the capability to internalize as well as externalize higher thoughts, succinctly. In response to our crisis of consciousness, it is my wish that only the highest thoughts be circulated.

Godard said, “You don’t make a movie, the movie makes you.” During the process of writing, I explore my characters, their places, and their cultures. At the end of my exploration, I feel transformed. An artwork serves to explore foreign landscapes, for both the artist and the audience. When I reach the end of a story, I feel that I am a much different person than the one who started the story. Kiarostami once commented that filmmaking was a very therapeutic process. Hence we have art therapy.

A journey is not a journey if at the end of it we do not feel transformed, and the transformation is not worth our while if it does not transcend us beyond the superficial, to connect with the rest of humanity.

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