Constellative Narration

One morning after a hazy night the words were there, sitting in the typewriter: Write the Stars.

Hokey sounding shit, to be sure, but the basic idea feels true enough. Mythologic constellations represent characters and stories. They are outlines, with stars as pivot points of development. "Writing the stars" is simply a reductive focus of narrative.

Seven stars to Orion, but it's not a literal concept. Just how far down can you distill the story of a giant hunter blinded by Oenopion, only to recover his sight and later be killed at the bow of Artemis?

That's not the point. How many of the words can you eliminate? Can we tell a lush story with sparse details? To do that, the story must resonate. It must be eternal, something that already existed in all of us.

Perhaps constellations don't tell stories so much as illuminate the ones we already know.

Idea: A Mass of energy comes into being. Its presence is immense, significance overwhelming and existence universally known. It is the essentialness of life. It belongs to everyone, and yet it comes into existence in a small forest, just beyond a farmer's field.

There are calls for study. The government intervenes, sets up barriers, tries to keep people back. The Mass expands - it grows, it glows, it reaches past fences towards everyone. It cannot be controlled as it exists in a state of universal dispersion.

How do you tell that story?

Posted on November 12, 2014 .