Andy Barry Sweeney

From an anthropological point of view, storytelling has been a central part of human life since the dawn of our consciousness. Storytelling has been the way in which knowledge, culture and values have been passed down through generations and was the principal wºay in which humans shared stories and created myths and legends to explain our existence here on the Earth. 

The written word changed how stories are told and remembered and provided a physical copy of a tale that became the basis for the mental structures and thought processes that are dominant across cultures around the world. The spoken word and remembering stories, ballads, histories and songs required massive discipline which was usually tasked priests or knowledge keepers in our tribal societies.

 The advent of monotheism and the spread of writing from the far east changed how we share stories and legends. Some stories would pass into the realm of mythology and would inherit a connection to a past that still was filled with magic and heroes.

 At this same time, we should think about aboriginal peoples of Australia and Polynesian and their stories of creation. Unlike cultures that wrote down their stories of creation and eventually would codify them into myth and legend, aboriginal tribes used songs to create a map of the world around them and those songs also contained the mythology and origin of our existence and purpose on this Earth*. The enlightenment period shone a light on the European myths and revealed the intention or purpose behind them.  And even this revelation we have numbers of stories and serendipities.  Umberto Eco’s book on Serendipities is a great essay on how and why these serendipities happen.

 Story telling is unique according to culture the ability to add images, sounds and tastes and smells allows a person to create a portal to a moment of time and transport their audience to the place where they want to be, feel, see and enjoy. Using multimedia gives the storyteller more tools to bring their audience on that journey.

*Bruce Chatwin “Songlines”