Go with the flow

 　　A life filled with stories. Stories are the essence of all forms of writing and art, and I love listening to and telling stories.

　　When I was little, my grandmother would tell me many folk tales and myths. Watching her silver hair flutter in the wind, I would immerse myself in the world she described.

　　Literature, film, music, drama, opera, crosstalk, sketch comedy, language arts, painting, sculpture, mythology. The literary theory book that influenced me the most, though not exactly orthodox, is simply called "Story."

　　I've read and heard many wonderful stories that I still remember fondly years later. I've also read many novels written by young people and works by young writers, listened to classical music, and listened to pop songs on the radio. I read popular novels and also Lao Tzu and Zhuangzi. Sometimes I feel like I'm a hodgepodge!

　　This hodgepodge doesn't feel good to me; life is chaotic, I admit. But finding patterns within chaos is also human nature!

　　For me, the medium and vehicle for this absorption and creation is story.

　　Telling stories within stories—storytelling is the only thing I do and everyone else talks about. Those theories all discuss how to tell a good story.

　　Traveling, studying, living, working, reading, watching plays, hearing songs—these are all just ways to find stories, to satisfy my own need to witness the lifestyles of others, to observe all sorts of ways of life. For someone like me, ambitious enough to create stories, this kind of life leaves me feeling lost!

　　What I need is to create stories, not just stories. So what are these various methods? How can I use them to tell stories? What are their characteristics? What are the characteristics of storytellers? How should I learn and act? What should I be doing?

　　Thus began a new journey. Having passed the milestone of simply observing stories, I can only stumble and learn, listening intently, smelling with my nose, tapping out rhythms with my hands, walking with my feet, babbling and making noises. When will I be able to enter a realm where I can dance at any time, where the world is filled with music and stories? It's truly arduous. I know nothing, I am utterly foolish, I am filled with envy, and I even feel happy—this ignorant happiness. I look at myself from a high place, this utterly foolish person.

　　How can I understand stories? I

　　don't know, I just follow my heart. Like monks, they are within the precepts and outside the secular world. In short, besides walking this long path and practicing, they have nothing else.

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