The Thread that We Follow

Constructing and reconstructing multiple narratives about our one and only life are integral to humanity. Narratives being stories about specific happenings or sets of related events, where the characters - at times ourselves - partake in specific behaviors with social meanings attached to - and detached from - them. “Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.”

Narratives do not need to be detailed, embellished, intricate stories, with some kind of “moral” locked up in them. They could just be. “I can never say 'why' about anything I do. I suppose I can say 'how' and 'when' and 'what.' But 'why' is impenetrable to me.”

In autobiographical narratives, expressing feelings and evoking actions about personal particulars are key elements we search and find inside us. Our lives being nonlinear stories, chaos stories, quest stories ... become prime matter for an infinite number of narrative forms. “The funny thing is that I feel close to all my characters. Deep, deep inside them all.”

Indeed, the narratives we construct are ways in which we parade, shape and work through our day to day experiences. They help us make sense of it all. “We construct a narrative for ourselves, and that's the thread that we follow from one day to the next.”