Storytelling is hard work. It’s intricate, nuanced and can be expensive. But we crave it, know it and hold good storytelling and storytellers close to our hearts. After all, we all have books that we’d fight for.
But in this world of digital media, simple tools for content creation, video production, worldwide publishing and distribution, we are confronted by so much fog. Static. Unimaginative or unengaging material. There are words but fewer stories that we can get our teeth into.
When I was a child, I would voraciously read short history project books. They were text books for children much older than I, but they set out a world that was familiar but strangely different. I read about Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth as they explored the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney. I read about Leichhardt and the heartbreak of Bourke and Wills. I read about bushrangers and the fear they spread through the isolated parts of New South Wales and Victoria. And on long car trips, I would look out the very same landscape that these people lived in. We would visit the towns that they passed through, and stood in the places that they too, had stood.
Australian history is, after all, a shallow pool. And there are echoes at every turn.
The amazing thing about these stories, is that they have stayed with me always. They resonated deep inside me. And these days, with all the static filling our digital communications, we need to remember and re-craft the type of story that goes deeper. For ourselves and for our audiences. And this great collection of insight from Adam Westbrookwas collected by Martin Couzins – and may just provide us all with a direction worth following.
Michał Koralewski via Compfight
