The irony of launching a podcast when your power and internet are down is as deafening as a gas-powered generator.
This weekend, I continued to recite the new podcaster’s creed “please listen and subscribe to my new show, KnotWork Storytelling” while the power was out all over the Hudson Valley, and along much of the east coast.
As we waited for the electricity and WiFi to return, I wrangled with the strangeness of pouring so much time and passion into retelling ancient stories on a modern medium that is much more fragile than we care to imagine.
But then, we always create at the crossroads of disruption and daily life, don’t we?
Paradox is a key ingredient in the mix of modern existence.
And, if we’re aware of it, we can use those paradoxes to our creative advantage.
We were fortunate and made it through the “Great Icing of 2022” with only a twenty-four hour power outage. According to NPR, residents in twenty-five states were affected by this weather front, and many fared far worse than we did. I’m deeply grateful for a partner who is prepared for anything and for good friends with whom we could ride out the storm.
The Mystery of Finding Comfort in the Midst of Catastrophe
On Saturday, after the skies cleared and the sun streamed through the ice-laden branches, we popped champagne, devoured take-out, and shared ice cream cake. We had a birthday and a creative milestone to celebrate. For a little while, we were carefree. Underneath, we were conscious of how the luxuries of modernity and friendship wrapped around us the way dangerous layers of ice wrapped around the outer world.
As with all of the joys of life right now, this gathering felt decadent, necessary, impossible, and well-deserved.
Has life always been this paradoxical?
Have delight, pleasure, and connection always taken place against a vast, frozen “out there” where the night is dangerous and lonely?
Of course they have.
These days, we know that the divisions between the “haves” and “have nots” isn’t an accident of destiny or the will of the gods. It’s got everything to do with institutional racism, classism, colonialism, sexism, and the structures inherent to the capitalist patriarchy.
It can be hard to have those conversations though. Those words can get stuck in the throat when everyone is supposed to be having a good time. Folks don’t want to bring down the mood by welcoming the worries and the inequities through the door. (I am grateful for friends who will “go there” with me, because any party at my house is bound to include several book recommendations, an eclectic playlist, and a curse upon myriad forms of social injustice).
But, of course, this resistance to hard conversations is why we have stories. Stories help us explore the difficult emotional and intellectual territory that can be too hard to explore in its raw contemporary form.
What If Stories of the Past Are More Familiar than Many of Modern Life’s Luxuries?
Back to the paradox I began with: the strangeness of launching a project about ancient mythology and folklore on a purely digital platform while marooned atop an icy hill with minimal access to the online realms.
As I’ve dedicated myself to the idea that ancient stories are medicine for our modern maladies, I have worried that I am looking in the wrong direction. Am I slipping into nostalgia when I should be finding ways to root into the present moment? Shouldn’t I use my skills and creativity to contribute to solutions to the problems that plague the future rather than lavishing all that attention on imagining the past?
I keeping asking myself whether I am burying my head in the “good old days” of my long ago academic career and the fantasy realms we call the Celtic world.
That inner conflict is largely resolved after this weekend.
When we couldn’t heat our homes or power our lives as usual, friends gathered together. We let the kids run wild as the adults raised a glass. We laughed and we lingered. We discussed the state of the environment, culture, and society. We made room for some tears when the difficult, intimate stuff came up. We listened. We created our own warmth and light on that long, dark night.
Our lives are ruled by the towers, satellites, and transoceanic cables that make up our global web of electricity and information. Very few of us actually understand how those work, however. (That well-prepared husband of mine, an electrical engineer, is an exception).
Mostly, we only think about how the tech stuff works when it doesn’t.
Digital creatures that we may be, we are actually a lot more like our ancestors from hundreds and thousands of years ago than we realize.
We might panic about getting through one night without central heating in a way that would make our foremothers and forefathers scoff, but the stuff we know in our bones–the importance of nourishment, companionship, and a powerful story–is a lot more immediate and intimate than our knowledge of electrons, waves, and particles.
Even though we’re 21st century creatures, we could connect in the most human and important way without any of the modern trappings of life.
When you look at it through this lens, really, what do you understand more readily: the innovations that makes our cellphones and power grids function or the experience of a 17th century Irish woman who lost her greatest love and then found a way to keep her home and children safe?
On the KnotWork Storytelling Podcast: A Most Ferocious Lady of the Castle
The newest episode of KnotWork Storytelling offers you the story of Máire Rua MacMahon O’Brien, an Irish noblewoman who was known for pushing at least one of her many husbands from the roof of her County Clare castle.
There is so much more to this story, of course, and my friend, the brilliant storyteller Maura McMahon, illuminates the nuances of this story in Episode 3 of our show. This woman’s story is really about love, loss, survival, and sovereignty. (And if there was a murder or two thrown into the mix, well, that part of the reason we’re still so fascinated with this story four hundred years later.)
I hope that you have access to all the modern conveniences to listen to this episode now.
My deeper prayer? You have good friends with whom to share it.