Transcript: Episode 23

Hey friend, and thank you for being here for today’s episode. I’m Mary, and I hope you’re doing well whenever and wherever you’re listening.

Or, as I guess I should say this month for my fellow US listeners – I hope you’re doing as well as possible. And if that’s not super well, then I feel you, and that’s okay too.

I allude pretty clearly to my political leanings on this podcast, but I don’t generally structure entire episodes around talking about specific political issues. And I do like for this pod to feel like a supportive container, or a kind of quiet space where you can come to recollect your creative self, whatever’s going on in the world and in your life. But I decided it wouldn’t feel genuine to not talk at all about the fallout of the election this month. Because it’s certainly affected my creative practice, and I’d imagine that very well may be true for you as well.

So, I am about to briefly but explicitly name my politics, and then talk about how the election has been impacting my creativity, and what I’m doing about it. So, fair warning – and if what I say next makes you not want to listen to this podcast anymore then… you know where the metaphorical door is.

I really, really, did not want Trump to become president again. I did not want this because I am a queer human possessing of a uterus – and also possessing of queer and trans human friends who deserve things like access to healthcare and just the freedom to mind their own damn business, as my very own MN governor Tim Walz put it. I did not want Trump to become president again because I don’t think racist mass deportations are the solutions to our problems, and because I don’t think climate change is a scam, and because I don’t think economic policies that pander to billionaires have historically proven to actually make things better for the rest of us. And I really don’t think someone who idolizes despotic, fascist, and genocidal leaders is fit to run our country.

But okay, you’ve probably either turned this off by now, or you really don’t need to hear me perform a full personal political platform for you. In summary, I voted for Harris, and I think it’s a pretty bad thing that she didn’t win.

So apart from just dealing with the general emotional fallout of the election – what does this have to do with the topic of this pod, which is to say, what does this have to do with creative practice and wellbeing?

Even though the political stakes of this election were so high, and even though it intersects with so many ethical beliefs that are deeply important to me… I’m realizing that the election has paradoxically disconnected me from the deepest things that are important to me. It’s disconnected me from my driving force – which has naturally disconnected me from my creative force as well.

One way to explain this is that I think the specific, concrete, practical aims of the election, and of politics as a whole, have had the effect of substituting a desired strategic political outcome for what I actually desire in my life and in this world. Basically, I’ve lost touch with my longing.

For me, the concrete desired outcome of getting Kamala Harris in the White House was not actually a reflection of what I deeply long for in the world. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it would have been fucking amazing to see the first Black, South Asian, woman president in this country. And as far as Democrats go, I was perfectly happy to vote for Harris. Better her than someone else.

But the election of Kamala Harris wouldn’t really have addressed what I’m actually longing for, or at least it wouldn’t have fully addressed it.

What I’m longing for and have been longing for isn’t actually a world where Trump isn’t president, or a world where Harris is. You know the meme about not dreaming of labor? Well, I also don’t dream of presidents. Which is not to say that it’s not important who the president is, or that I think politics can be disentangled from life. But I don’t long for a Democrat in the White House – I just know it’s the most plausible or attainable scenario for ensuring my community gets to survive and be an equal part of this batshit and precious experiment of democracy.

So, sitting in the reality of where we are – the thing that’s giving me a fragile, vital bit of hope is reconnecting with my true longing, or at least the hopeful promise that I can do that in the moments I’m able to open up to it.

What am I truly longing for? For protected legal equality for all, yes. For economic justice, yes. For collective stewardship of the earth, yes. For not enabling genocide, yes. But what’s the thing underneath, the common groundwater that fills the well of all those huge but specific hopes?

For me, it’s a longing for presence and connection and awareness with and in the world. It’s a longing for embodied empathy, of being fully open to the experience of being here with everything and everyone else who is here, in the day-to-day. And the most immediate and vital way I can practice that in the daily way I live is to live creatively – and to let my creative connection with the world feed and shape the way I interact with others, and the actions I take. That’s what I’m needing to rekindle in the aftermath of the election.

When it comes to creative practice as embodied empathy, I’ve found that there are certain ways of thinking about writing that encourage this ideal more than others. Ways that keep my writing more directly tied to my longing.

I’ve talked in past episodes about storytelling models like the Hero’s Journey and how they can mold the way we think stories work, for better and for worse. Today I want to explore an alternate model of writing and storytelling, as just one possible shape for nurturing creative longing. You may have seen a resource link a couple episodes back for an essay by Ursula Le Guin called “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,” and this is the creative model I’ve been thinking about in these weeks post-election.

I’m going to be quoting copiously from the essay while I’m talking about it today, because it was so hard to choose what bits to share (I had the same problem with the episode I did that was about books on the writing life, which also quoted pretty copiously from Le Guin’s work, I think it’s episode 14). But I really encourage you to go to the link in the show notes and read the whole thing if you like the sound of any of it. It’s a quick read and really worth the time.

And just as a final note, the essay is about novel writing, but I’ve taken the liberty of substituting “story” for “novel” and “fiction” in these quotes, because I think the point of the essay holds no matter what genre you’re writing in.

So, here’s Auntie Ursula’s carrier bag theory of fiction, or of storytelling.

The essay is built off of an anthropological theory of human evolution that came out of second wave feminism in the late 70s. The term “carrier bag theory” comes from a book by Elizabeth Fisher called Women's Creation: Sexual Evolution and the Shaping of Society. There’s a chapter in the book titled “The Carrier Bag Theory of Evolution,” in which Fisher describes the theory that containers and bags were the key first tools that set off human cultural development, and not the masculine-coded pokey stone tools that usually get the credit. This theory formed the basis for some feminist critiques of the dominant cultural narrative that weapons and hunting were the key technological development in humans becoming human.

Le Guin sums up the anthropology this way: “The first cultural device was probably a recipient .... Many theorizers feel that the earliest cultural inventions must have been containers to hold gathered products and some kind of sling or net carrier.” (end quote)

I really wanted to be able to make a little note here about whether this framing for human cultural evolution is still considered plausible or is backed up by current archeological knowledge. I mean, the theory makes a lot of sense to me on the surface, but what do I know?

But when I tried to do some basic research on the science, I actually had quite a hard time finding reliable sources, partly because Le Guin’s essay has utterly eclipsed Fisher’s book. The fact that this is the case – plus the fact that the only source that would give me a definitive answer about bags vs. weapons is the Google AI – that leads me to think that maybe we just don’t know (presumably because bags made out of organic matter don’t survive as well as stone tools). And it seems pretty reasonable that both bags and scrapy-cutty-things would be essential, co-developing first tools.

Anyway, if you, dear listener, happen to know of an accessible scientific source on this, please do let me know via the contact page on inspiritedword.com, because it’s kind of driving me crazy that I wasn’t able to research this. (Like, I keep thinking I just must not have googled the correct magical phrase that would have brought up the source that obviously must exist that would answer all my questions?)

But: back to the carrier bag theory of storytelling, which I think has narrative and aesthetic and even ethical value regardless of the archeology. Le Guin’s essay wants to do for storytelling what the feminist theory of tool-making does for anthropology: She wants us to be able to imagine a trajectory for storytelling that isn’t yoked to weaponry and conflict and violent heroism.

The carrier bag theory states that what first kept humans alive and in community with each other (or in other words, what started human culture), was gathering and sharing – collecting seeds and leaves and nuts and berries and small critters that could be plucked from shells or the dirt. The first truly human skill was the ability to notice what was good and available and life-giving in the world, and then to collaboratively gather it up and store it and share it. Hence the bag or container or recipient being the foundational cultural development, the original shape of culture.

This starts to have bearing on storytelling when the conflict-laden practice of hunting enters the stage, when people first decided to, as Le Guin puts it,  “slope off and hunt mammoths.”

She says, quote: “The skillful hunters would come staggering back with a load of meat, a lot of ivory, and a story. It wasn't the meat that made the difference. It was the story.

It is hard to tell a really gripping tale of how I wrested a wild-oat seed from its husk, and then another, and then another, …and then I scratched my gnat bites, and Ool said something funny, and we went to the creek and got a drink and watched newts for a while, and then I found another patch of oats.... No, [that story] cannot compete with how I thrust my spear deep into the titanic hairy flank white Oob, impaled on one huge sweeping tusk, writhed screaming, and blood spouted everywhere in crimson torrents, and Boob was crushed to jelly when the mammoth fell on him as I shot my unerring arrow straight through eye to brain.

That story not only has Action, it has a Hero. Heroes are powerful. Before you know it, the [people] in the wild-oat patch and their kids and the skills of the makers and the thoughts of the thoughtful and the songs of the singers are all part of it, have all been pressed into service in the tale of the Hero. But it isn't their story. It's his.”

(end quote)

You can see why this theoretical contrast of the “carrier bag” form of culture to the “hunting mammoths” form of culture had a lot of utility for second wave feminists. When the vital importance of the carrier bag is overlooked and forgotten, it’s all too easy to craft a firmly masculine-coded narrative that the ability to do violence is the core, primary ability that sustains human life and culture. If we can’t hunt, we can’t eat. We can’t survive and grow communities. We can’t wield our revolutionary new weapons to protect ourselves from those other prehistoric guys who now want to make off with our mammoth meat and our defenseless women and children who have their hands full carrying all the unimportant stuff.

These days I’m seeing a lot of connections to the story of the masculine-coded Hero and the story of the president – even when I had hoped that the next president would be a woman. The story of the American presidency isn’t a carrier bag story, at least not now and probably not ever. It’s a Hero story, a story about “battleground states” and “war chests” and “paths to victory.”

And I think this is fundamentally why I dream of neither labor nor presidents: Nobody can trick me anymore into believing that story will ever have all our best interests at heart, that it will provide the kind of connected and nurturing embodied empathy that feeds the wellspring. Hero stories serve a function in the world, just like presidents do. But I don’t ever want to forget that we need more than one story – that there are other stories that probably have a lot more to do with the way I want to live and the best things that are possible.

Le Guin was also not a fan of the Hero, or at least not of his dominance. As she puts it in the essay:

“I'm not telling that story. We've heard it, we've all heard all about all the sticks spears and swords, the things to bash and poke and hit with, the long, hard things, but we have not heard about the thing to put things in, the container for the thing contained. That is a new story…. And yet old. Before… the tool that forces energy outward, we made the tool that brings energy home.”

And she goes on to say:

“[If what it takes to be human is] to make a weapon and kill with it, then evidently I [am] either extremely defective as a human being, or not human at all. …

[But] if it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it's useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter… or put it in… the shrine… the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then next day you probably do much the same again – if to do that is human, if that's what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time.”

(end quote)

Le Guin’s description of human-ness here feels so powerful to me right now because it’s radically simple: To be human is to discern the things that are truly worth wanting, and to treat them with respect. It’s to create containers for people that are filled with what’s edible and useful and beautiful, and to tend to a sense of home that always contains a space for the sacred. We can create that kind of home because we know how to weave a sturdy sling to carry it.

Lest this sound too Pollyanna-ish, I can think of some corruptions of the carrier bag story that are just as unwholesome as corruptions of the hero story. Bags can be used to horde and steal as easily as they can be used to nurture and sanctify. Home can become defined by the things it excludes more than by the things it cherishes.

This is where I think creative longing comes in – desires tied to exclusion and greed tend to be stagnant, and to be driven by fear instead of longing. I mean, sometimes survival requires that you take actions determined by fear. That’s why we have fear in our heads in the first place. But I don’t think our creative imaginations are driven by fear, at least not primarily. I think creative longing is primarily how we discern what’s truly worth wanting and worth carrying home – the things that develop our humanity beyond the more narrow dictates of fear.

So if you want to write a carrier bag story, a story that nurtures possibility, a good place to start is by looking around and remembering what you actually long for (or maybe finding it for the first time). It’s looking beyond or inside or under desired strategic outcomes like “keep fascists out of government” or “protect access to healthcare.” Because the longing that drives you is even more instructive than fear. Letting yourself discover and feel it is how you craft the story of your own hope, even when there’s a lot to be afraid of.

As Le Guin says, quote:

“It is the story that makes the difference. It is the story that hid my humanity from me, the story the mammoth hunters told about bashing, thrusting, raping, killing, about the Hero… It sometimes seems that that story is approaching its end. Lest there be no more telling of stories at all, some of us out here in the wild oats… think we'd better start telling another one, which maybe people can go on with when the old one's finished. Maybe. The trouble is, we've all let ourselves become part of the killer story, and so we may get finished along with it. Hence it is with a certain feeling of urgency that I seek the nature, subject, words of the other story, …the life story…”

And here I think it’s important to remind myself and you that what Le Guin calls “the life story” doesn’t have to be a shocking work of staggering original genius. That kind of creativity is a tall order in the best of times, and chasing it in the worst of times is probably not going to help you maintain or restart your writing practice. The best kind of carrier bag stories are some of the oldest stories we know, told again and again and yet somehow always new when we each add our own humanity into their telling.

If you love stories, you already know the life story. You’re already holding a good, sturdy carrier bag. You just need to follow the thread or the sound or the scent of some useful, edible, beautiful things to put in it – the day-to-day things that call to your particular human longing.

As Le Guin puts it, “People have been telling the life story for ages, in all sorts of words and ways. Myths of creation and transformation, trickster stories, folktales, jokes, novels... The novel is a fundamentally unheroic kind of story. Of course the Hero has frequently taken it over… [But] I would go so far as to say that the natural, proper, fitting shape of the [story] might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A [story] is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us… its purpose is neither resolution nor stasis but continuing process.

It’s clear that the Hero does not look well in this bag. He needs a stage or a pedestal or a pinnacle. You put him in a bag and he looks like a rabbit, like a potato.”

(end quote)

I think the power of the carrier bag story works in many fractal directions, as the power of any story does – we can craft written things that are carrier bags, and those written things can also help us see ourselves as a kind of carrier bag. After all, humans are prone to carrying around all sorts of stuff, stuff that is sometimes maybe better to put down and other useful but neglected stuff that would be good to remember we’ve got rattling around in there. Times of trouble are good times to drop dead weight and know where the most useful and sacred rations are stored.

So in this sense, storytelling and creative practice can be a vital method of tending to yourself as a human carrier bag – of sorting through what life has handed you and seeking what you long for and placing these truths in relationship to each other. Your creative work is how you take notice of what’s good and available in the world, and it’s how you collaboratively gather it up and share it. The carrier bag story is how you become and remain human, even and especially when hope might feel hard to come by.

Or, in the words of Ursula Le Guin: Storytelling is “a way of trying to describe what is in fact going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everything else in this vast sack, this belly of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of things that were, this unending story. … [And] still there are seeds to be gathered, and room in the bag of stars.”

 

If you’re a current subscriber to the newsletter circle, check your inbox for a couple ideas on how to gather seeds for your creative practice, wherever you’re at mentally and emotionally these days. And if you enjoyed this episode and are not yet on the newsletter list, I share some bonus thoughts and practices every month to help apply the vibes of the podcast to the reality of your creative work. You can join the circle by scrolling down in the show notes and hitting the link to join the newsletter, or you can head to inspiritedword.com/contact. Just look for the big peacock green button that says “join the newsletter.”

Before I sign off today, I also just want to let you know that I’m going to be taking a brief podcast break for the month of December. Part of me really hates to break my almost two-year monthly streak – but I’ve got a combination of work deadlines and holiday observances that are going to cut into my time to put together a fully thought out script, and I don’t want to throw together something just for the sake of my scheduling ego. Maybe someday I’ll be able to podcast without a script… but to be honest, I don’t even really aspire to that even though it might be easier, because my verbal brain does not work off the cuff. And part of the whole vibe here is that one is allowed to acknowledge and accept the way one’s brain works.

Anyway, if you are also heading into a month of balancing work and seasonal festivities, then I hope you’re able to find enjoyment where you can and give yourself grace with the other bits – including your creative practice. May your carrier bag be full of things that are good to eat and things that are useful, beautiful, and sacred. And as always, keep well, keep writing, and I’ll see you in January, in the next episode.