It is a skill we learn early, the art of inventing stories to explain away the fearful scared strangeness of the world. Storytelling and make-believe, like war and agriculture, are among the arts of self-defense, and all of them are ways of enclosing otherness and claiming ownership.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the human inclination to use storytelling as a means to make sense of the world and alleviate fear.
William Kittredge's quote emphasizes the innate human ability to create narratives that help us cope with the uncertainties and fears we face in life. Storytelling serves not only as a creative outlet but also as a fundamental method of understanding our surroundings, framing our experiences, and exerting control over the unfamiliar aspects of existence. Just as war and agriculture can be seen as means of defense and control, so too can storytelling act as a powerful tool for personal empowerment and understanding.
In practice
In a motivational speech about creativity, one might use this quote to illustrate the importance of storytelling in overcoming challenges.
We tell stories to talk out the trouble in our lives, trouble otherwise so often so unspeakable. It is one of our main ways of making our lives sensible. Trying to live without stories can make us crazy. They help us recognize what we believe to be most valuable in the world, and help us identify what we hold demonic.
I play the notes as they are written, but it is God who makes the music.
The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.
Good actors I've worked with all started out making faces in a mirror, and you keep making faces all your life.
THE POET A moody child and wildly wise Pursued the game with joyful eyes, Which chose, like meteors, their way, And rived the dark with private ray: They overleapt the horizon's edge, Searched with Apollo's privilege; Through man, and woman, and sea, and star, Saw the dance of nature forward far; Through worlds, and races, and terms, and times, Saw musical order, and pairing rhymes. Olympian bards who sung Divine ideas below, Which always find us young, And always keep us so.
With this mistake I deprived myself of the possibility to make a contribution to the treasury of chess art.
I concentrate in my work on preserving and displaying the original flavor from each ingredient in a dish.
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