What are your impossible stories? There’s a quote that’s stuck with me this past month or so, and it’s from the writer, Saidiya Hartman, whose book, ‘Lose Your Mother’ has me gripped this January. Elsewhere, in another one of her works, she’s posed the question: ‘How do we tell impossible stories, and how do we […]
Here’s a queer question. What are your impossible stories? Read More »
I fell for the same Edenistic charms that Melville, Gauguin and Robert Louis Stevenson had all succumbed to. Tahiti, it was then.
Tahitian tales (and the selfish desire to sail away) Read More »
Neuroses matter to me, because – forgetting the scientific bit for a moment – they damn well frighten me. What’s more, they damn well piss me off.
Why we’re not just our neuroses (and how we can transcend the pain from our past) Read More »
There’s pride for some of us this Pride Season. For others, such terrible, corrosive shame remains. Worse, prejudice and, yes, punishment remains for countless millions, simply on account of their being lesbian, bi, trans or gay.
Pride, shame and some pride today (and still shame) Read More »
When I was in the Royal Free hospital, recovering from my kidney operation, I needed to search for my story. I was releasing painkillers into my body every five minutes: the pain stabbed at my sides. Sleepy, I thought to myself, ‘why am I here, why have I chosen to donate my kidney, and what comes next?’
We’re all storytellers. You might not know it yet. Read More »
Whatever (or whomever) we lose, we must lament and later mourn, commemorate and acknowledge. Whatever lessons history teaches us, let’s at least agree, there are lessons that need to be learnt, that we can’t let our histories simply fade.
The Hidden Histories Read More »
Memoir can and must be written because each of us has our own created version of the past. We own it, no one else does, no matter how incoherent our history is.
The power of remembering (and not letting others distort our stories) Read More »
it is very difficult to be open and to protest loudly when living under the most intolerable and oppressive forms of government. I can’t criticise those who remained silent. What I can criticise is those who remain silent now, who still repeat when it’s put to them, ‘why not remember the victims of the past?’ – “these things are better left in the past”.
The silence of others Read More »
As well as providing career coaching and wellness coaching, I am now setting myself up to provide a ‘life story’ service. Put simply, I’m drawing on the extensive body of evidence that demonstrates that storytelling can be good for us.
Why it might be time to tell your story Read More »
Nobody knows what dystopian futures lie ahead and whether stories will be denuded of their humanity as Artificial Intelligence takes on a new role as storyteller. For now, though, we must continue telling our stories, try to pass them down generations, hopefully learn from them.
Storytelling is good for us Read More »