"How can you say what’s important in a life, really? Could you sum up a whole life in twenty chapters? Or would it take twenty-one? And why is the person who lived the life the only one talking? Could you pass the mic, let someone else talk, and just shut the hell up for a minute and let them call you on your inevitable bullshit? I don’t know exactly what would work, but experimenting is more interesting than just telling the story straight through from A to Z."
I love this. So far so good - feel like this is a mad quotable book.
It is time to pass the mic. In a global sense. We all know there isn't one story - ever. We've all done enough work to realize that we are made up of the tens, hundreds, thousands of stories that create communities. This whole "project of me" not only is never done - it's completely beside the point. The point is people. How we live together is a good bit about how we live with ourselves, but nobody lives by themselves, no matter how great their effort to do so.
Another of my favorite books about people I admire or maybe wanted to be - Bill Graham Presents - does exactly this - it is just a cut and paste of the stories told by him and others about his life. Even within those pages, there is no truth. But what great stories.
We are made up of stories, inspired by stories, we all have them and we all need to find voice.
But there's no correct answer. It's not a multiple choice test, or, if it is, all the answers might be right.
Pass the mic. It's a talking stick. Or to quote some friends, from back in the day at Karma Coffeehouse:
What you see before you is an open mic…
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