“Getting to know other people first involves an encounter; the more unusual the encounter, the more wonderful the experience…”
I saw the above while reading a press statement about Chinese film director, Zhang Yimou. For some reason I can’t get it out of my head—perhaps because it seems so relevant to being a storyteller. Not that stories have to be unusual to be wonderful, but there should be something about the tale that speaks to you like no other. Encountering books is a lot like encountering people; some are better than others. And some you want to run like hell from.
Someone in yesterday’s comments mentioned Neruda. Here’s an interview with him, translated and published from a radio program in 1971: You have only to go over my poems, only the title of my poems. I write on everything imaginable, and on the revolt of man as well. That�s important; it�s a part of the poetry. Very important, and very honorable. It�s not all the poetry; one has to clarify that. I was going to tell you that I am the oldest of poets. I want to sing about the stars, the moon, the flowers, about love, exactly like Sully Prudhomme, like Victor Hugo, or like, before all else, all the poets of all time. I don�t want to be a revolutionary in poetry; I don�t have a poetic doctrine; I don�t have a poetic ideology. I am a poet by vital, biological need, and that is my whole doctrine.
While looking up Neruda’s name, I also stumbled upon something totally different: a website about exopolitics, which concerns the “political implications of the extraterrestrial presence”.
As if terrestrial politics weren’t complicated enough.