Logically, I get it, another blog—but this isn’t what you think. The idea here isn’t to give you moral advice, or to teach you how to cook, but instead to tell you a story; a story about the people you share the earth with, share a town with, share the deli counter at the supermarket with – a story that ultimately, may just be about you. On a planet the size of Earth, it’s often hard to imagine anyone mattering more than yourself; this is automatic for us, an inborn agency to look out for the immediate needs and desires of the person you see looking back at you from the mirror each day. Aside from this, we are more-or-less governed by, and conditioned to care about only what is fed to us during our daily gluttonous gorging of media. So what then of the other near 7 ½ billion souls that share this cosmic vessel, for each a beating heart and enough blood to save your life given the need – where do they fit into our infinite attentional onslaught?
The Storyteller Project will be a collection of articles, experiences, and interviews with interesting and heroic people, giving you, the reader a look into their lives. If you’re looking for clean-cut, competent journalism however, you won’t find it here. I, in fact, would rather write nothing at all, than to write the same old story that’s already been written; the same banal platitudes, the same stale agendas.
The project will be a jump, a deviation from what you’ll find in traditional newspapers, a rage against common thinking. Each article will abide by the following format: meet someone with a story, spend time with them, and write about the experience. That’s it, just me, a stranger, and a conversation turned experience. I’ll follow these people, if they’ll let me on their voyage to find what exactly it is that makes them, them and I’ll find new insight as I do – insight that I will then share with you.
The reasoning behind the project’s format is a belief that I continue to hold true, a belief in the written word. I’m a believer in a sense, of a human race that is still willing to put in the work, to accept the cerebral challenge of reading things that stimulate thought – no sexual deviance, no mythical creatures, no hidden worlds; just eyes, paper, and thoughts from salty bastards like me who are sick enough to write them down. For this reason, the project will be almost 100% text, with only one picture to accompany each article. There is a certain type of depth in writing that can’t be reached in any other form of media; there’s a brash brutality that can be uncovered, layers to peel back, puzzles to solve, characters to come unhinged. I choose to write because I choose to believe in the people, in a thinking form of animal; one that uses its head as well as its heart.
The Storyteller Project’s theme will remain broad, there will not be an overarching theme or concept guiding it, nor a big-picture thought about life or death to be obtained (though you are free to try and find one as you wish); the objective, on my end, will be simple – to experience something, and to fucking write about it. That’s all. No animation, no “Buy Here” button, no six-easy-steps. Observe, and write.
In his sprawling opus Infinite Jest, the mighty David Foster Wallace said that “there might not be angels, but there are people who might as well be angels.” I don’t know if this is true, but I’m prepared to find out. I’m on a mission to find the angels, and the demons, and the folks who live under the stones nobody ever bothers to turn over. The ones who look in the mirror, think they’re ugly, and are right; the people who can’t go a minute considering suicide – who would ever give a fuck about them, right? Well, if you’ll humor me for 1,200 words-or-so every few weeks, you might just find out that the answer is you.
So, in this I ask you to come along, so that we may meet the weary and the downtrodden, the broken and the beautiful, the addicted and the starved, those who hope and dream and pray for a better tomorrow, and those who just don’t care anymore. Come with me on this journey if you’d like, and let’s meet them.
My name is D.S. Davis, and this is The Storyteller Project.
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