1:5 – The Power of Stories

In the beginning there was Nothing. Nothing with a big N. Not true nothing. Not the absence of things that no-thing seems to imply. But the nothing that we mean when we say that outer space is full of Nothing. Or the Nothing that greeted European explorers when they landed in North America. Big N nothing just means that everything was new and strange, unrecognizable. This is what the beginning was like.

At this time, there were witch people. Not Whites or Indians or Blacks or Asians or Hispanics. Witch people. And since the world in the beginning was full to the brim with Nothing, these witch people roamed the world. Exploring and experimenting, turning all the Nothing into somethings. Eventually, the witch people had explored the whole world, they had found all the nothing and transformed it into things. They had run out of nothing. They didn’t know what to do now.

So witch people from all over the world came together for a witches’ conference. In a cave. To talk about things. It was a contest, actually. To see who had found the most remarkable thing, and to see if there was any Nothing left in the world. Some of them talked about the animals they had found. Some of them talked about the mountains and rivers they had crossed. Some of them talked about the fruits they had eaten.

It must have been fun to watch.

Until finally there was only one witch left who hadn’t said anything. No one knew where this witch came from or if the witch was male or female. And all this witch had found in all her wandering was a story.

Unfortunately the story this witch told was an awful thing full of fear and slaughter, disease and blood. A story of murderous mischief. And when the telling was done, the other witches quickly agreed that this witch had won the prize.

“Did you really see that?” they asked.

“No, it was just a story. It was Nothing.”

“Okay you win,” they said. “But what you said just now – it isn’t so funny. It doesn’t sound so good. We are doing okay without it. We can get along without that kind of thing. Take it back. Call that story back.”

But, of course, it was too late. For once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world.

By introducing the concept of Nothing, I hoped to give a redeeming quality to the role stories play in King’s story (King 9-10). In my version, yes stories brought evil, but they also brought mystery and excitement back into a too-ordered world. Judging by the reactions of my friends, I was only partially successful in conveying this concept. My storytelling definitely has room to improve.

In the process of writing and then telling this story, I realized something interesting about the story I was forming. What I was creating was not the same as what my friends were hearing when I told it to them. To myself, I was making a copy. An imitation of King’s true story , and a poor one at that. But to my friends, my story was the original. Having never read King’s story, they assumed that mine was true. Or at least, as true as a story about witches can be. Even after being told about King’s story (and in some cases reading it) by virtue of being first in their mind, my modified version seemed to have some strange authority over King’s version. I wonder if this power of being first is generalizable? If so, it might play a significant role in the types of stories about Canada that gain mainstream recognition and those that are buried. Perhaps what they say about first impressions applies to stories as well, they really do count.

Work Cited

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2003. Print.