Wha!? August, where did you go?! Another whirlwind of performer/leader learning curves, noh practice in real life after 3 years @royalholloway, plus reading for a new folktale writing project. I guess THAT’s where! It was joy to continue wading through a vast reading list (originally compiled by @crickcrackclub I think) packed full of the kind of wide-ranging, hand-width-thick old story collections publishers just don’t seem to make anymore (thanks #soaslibrary@abebooks). Delightful tho this binge was, I was sharply reminded again and again what immense power those collections’ compilers (mostly white, male, colonials) have over what I get to read – what cultural surfaces I can scratch. What did they leave out? What did they misrepresent by accident or deliberately – to make a story sound more familiar, to fit it in with ‘Western’ indexed folk tale types? What parts of the oral cultures they visited in the 30’s/40’s/50s (and before) died with the brains of those cultures’ elders – (‘libraries’ in themselves) because they didn’t fit, because there wasn’t the page space? What am@I actually reading? No point lamenting now I suppose, but it IS good to remember that what I get to read of other cultures’ lore (hell, even my own) still depends almost entirely on those compilers: their taste, their writing styles, their publishers’ briefs. Which means so do pretty much all of my assumptions. I’m a lot less ok with that than I used to be. Relieved that nowadays compilers are less likely make pronouncements on whole countries’ stories (stuff like ‘‘the people [of X] unite the character of childhood with the passions and strength of men’ wouldn’t get past a publishers’ legal read now). new collections are coming, slowly – onward + upward!
Meanwhile, reading about how AI learns and behaves got me thinking about the Gods (more on that later!) and a Passion flower dress @wellcomecollection got me thinking about cities as part of (not separate to) ‘nature’. September, you’ve got a lot to live up to, and if my diary’s anything to go by, you will: bring it on! #storyresearch#summerreading#leadershipdevelopment#performancetraining#nohgaku