My dream for the Mural Gazer – my elephant with wings – is a set of stories that involve the community of Chemainus in the telling, through theatre, art, literature, and any other mode of experiencing and expressing that comes to hand…
Writers go through phases as they mature. As a young writer, I didn’t want anyone to say anything about how my stories should unfold. They were mine, all mine, and I would have considered anyone else’s fingerprints on the manuscript as evidence of tampering!
Fifty or so years on, I want lots of forensics showing that so many people have been involved in the writing, that no-one in particular has to accept responsibility – or credit – for the results. Seriously, for a long time I have aspired – and failed – to make story-writing a process that draws in and on the community. The more fingerprints on the cover, the more people who can say, ‘There’s a bit of me on these pages,’ the better.
So I’ve posted an Intoit page on MuralGazer.ca with a few ideas – more to come – about how people can make the story their own. In the coming months I will be reaching out to the community, tapping into their memories and experiences.
Visions narrow down to points of perspective, where the lines of sight converge giving reality its three-dimensions, its shape, its weight, its presence. We fool ourselves into thinking those points of unfolding perspective lie somewhere beyond the horizon, that the scene is outside us; actually, it’s centered in our own consciousness, renewing every instant if not as a Big Bang, at least as a series of Big Pops…
I digress. What I’m trying to say is: When you know where you want to go, all the intervening steps, be they difficult, or tedious, or fun, or fascinating, become part of a larger journey. It’s that spot where the lines converge that keeps you on track. Whether or not the objective is attainable is almost beside the point in one sense, even though we have to convince ourselves it is the point.
My dream for the Mural Gazer – my elephant with wings – is a set of stories that involve the community of Chemainus in the telling, through theatre, art, literature, and any other mode of experiencing and expressing that comes to hand.
Hope you’ll join me.
Craig Spence Writer