Talk for the Centre for Oral Narrative Xanthe Gresham

Talk for the Centre for Oral Narrative – Xanthe Gresham

I am an apostate. I only learned what it meant on Sunday listening to Radio 4. An apostate is someone who leaves the faith of his or her country or state and converts to another. The programme was about a man called Juma Nuradin Kamil who was executed in Somalia for converting from Islam to Christianity. He wasn’t allowed to make a choice about his spiritual life. Extremists bundled him into the back of a car, drove him out of town, decapitated him and left his body, which nobody dared bury for two days in case they were associated with an apostate and punished themselves. This kind of murder is state sanctioned.

My ‘apostasy’ is much tamer and far more comic. People laugh and call me nuts because nobody really minds in the UK. I am allowed to get on with letting stories show me how to be happy, how to be whole. How lucky. Right now, I am free to tell about my shilly-shallyings as part of this series of talks celebrating a new Centre for Oral Narrative. Here we go:

I had a gently fundamentalist Christian upbringing, a kind of iron fist in a woolly sock. I was force fed every word of the bible and told each syllable was divinely inspired and absolutely true. ‘This is all for your own good, open wide.’ It carved out a big space in my psyche for a Big Boy God to leap in. I’d like to say I vomited the Big God out but actually he just dribbled away - leaving a vacuum.

I do, however, remember a rather cataclysmic moment at University, reading ‘Prometheus Unbound’ by Shelley and ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’ by Blake. Prometheus stole fire from the gods to give it to humans, and as a punishment, authoritarian Jupiter had him chained to a rock and vultures pecked out his liver every night. I was reading this interspersed with quotes from Blake,

‘Priests in black gowns were making their rounds and binding with briars my joys and desires.’

‘I must create my own system or be enslaved by another’s.’

It began to sink in and I went all funny. This material was incendiary! I wanted to scream but I didn’t have a voice. How could people be sitting cosily in the library, devouring books like hamsters tearing up their bedding, when it was so dangerous? I wanted to protest, I wanted to hot foot it back - to Derby, bible blazing but I didn’t - I just kept calm and carried on.

I didn’t really think about that moment until seven years ago. I had completely fucked up. I’d lost house, relationship and most importantly, self-respect. I didn’t know what to think. I hadn’t got a voice. ‘What’s in this no-longer god-filled chasm?’ I asked myself. There was really, I’m ashamed to say, nothing, despite the fact that I was a storyteller trading in stories - telling them to fantastic young people and also training teachers, saying things like ‘when you tell stories to children they use each archetype as a building block.’ And I began to wonder – ‘how do I use archetypes to build myself back up?’

It was at that point that I decided to counter the fundamentalist Big Boy Jupiters with Big Girl Goddesses. I’d like to take you through it with the help of this bag.

Takes out paper carrier bag with the image of the lotus

It contains all the equipment needed to create a multitasking, multicultural, multilingual, fully-recyclable, zero cost, composite, Goddess to Go. Inside this bag are symbols – each of which stands for a Goddess. Who would like to look after the rose of Aphrodite?

Member of the audience volunteers to hold cardboard image of rose

Aphrodite, Goddess of love had never been in love until she fell for a little baby, with hair as black as midnight and lips as red as berries. She had to wait for him to grow up but she passionately loved him, so passionately she called him Adonis, master.

Aries, god of war got jealous, changed himself into a boar, stampeded down the mountain where the young man was heroically hunting and gored him in the groin. The young man screamed. Aphrodite or Venus, is, as you know from the pictures, usually naked, or has, at least, got naked feet came running over white roses towards that scream - there were only white roses up until this time. And she was so in love and so worried about Adonis that she didn’t notice the thorns were piercing her feet and dying the white roses red, giving her a pair of blood shoes. She caught Adonis, and her tears and his blood fell into the ground and up came the anemone flower, which is black in the centre like Adonis’ hair and the petals are red but they don’t last very long because the wind steals them to redden the sun. And that’s why we have red roses on Valentines Day.

The point is, that there is great redemption in love, erotic love. The fact that the anemone flower blooms every year is fantastic – irrepressible and there is nothing that the No-Sex-Please-we’re-Fundamentalist-Big-Boys can do about it..

The second Big Boy is - deny the dark. – So who wants to hold the snake?

Audience member holds the snake

Snakes stand for the eternal circle. Snakes shedding their skin are a symbol that life will follow death and light will follow dark.

Now I don’t know if you’ve noticed that fundamentalists seem to see darkness everywhere else but in themselves? Obviously darkness is tricky, it’s all very well going to your dark side but you really don’t want to go there too much. Anyway Inanna is the earliest transcribed Goddess. She’s a Mesopotamian Star Goddess and goes down seven levels in an attempt to be Queen of Darkness as well as Queen of Light. This is a cataclysmically big mistake. She goes through a series of doors, in order to descend, and each time she loses a gift - breastplate, necklace, cloak of power, staff of wisdom and so on - she loses everything until she’s naked, right at the bottom of the Underworld with nothing. She has come to wrench the sovereignty from her Dark Sister, but this alter ego says ‘no way,’ fixes on her the eye of death, kills her, throws her on a hook until she turns green and then eats her.

Inanna is saved by a Sighing, Crying Creature and a Moaning, Groaning Creature, tiny little things who pick the locks, go down the seven levels and find the Dark Sister moaning in agony after devouring Inanna.

‘Oh my insides! Oh my back! Oh my heart!’

And at every ‘Oh!’ the Dark Sister makes, the Creatures groan with her.

I think these Creatures really are the key to understanding the cathartic experience of storytelling. You listen, take part, are deeply moved and are ultimately changed, or redeemed by the stories. Your inner narrative goes something like, ‘that was stupid of Inanna to go down there - but she’s suffered - she’s died – ouch - and her sister is also in a terrible mess. She’s eaten the light and it’s burning her up.’ The sympathy of us, as listeners, is like that of the Sighing, Crying and Moaning Groaning creatures - our listening initiates Inanna’s release and redemption. Her sister vomits her out and gives her life as a payment for all the sympathy the Creatures have given her, and Inanna is able to go back up the seven levels to the light. The ancient story was seen as an initiation into the dark side – you could hear about it, understand it, but not be required to live it.

Third Fundamentalist Big Boy is sin, sin, sin; countered by Isis, who is sun, sun, sun.

Audience member holds an image of the sun

Every time Isis wakes up she up she waits in the cold for the sun to rise and when it does she just goes into this spontaneous prayer:

‘Create life, love life, desire life, burn to know life, to protect life, to share life, create truth, love truth, desire truth, create a more pure love, create a more pure light, create a more pure truth.’

Isis puts this into practice during her myth. Set her dark brother, has killed her husband, Osiris. Horus, Isis’ son avenges his father in a fierce battle. He comes to her with Set, bound and says, ‘Mum I’ve saved him for you, here’s the dagger, kill him.’ Isis grabs it and says, ‘Yes!’ but in that instant, the sun rises and she says ‘Oohhh no!’ She drops the dagger and bursts into prayer, ‘Create life….’

So that’s Isis, and now I really want to get on to Hecate. She counters the fourth Big Boy – that of dogma. She is the fire of spirit – so who will hold the flame?

Audience member takes cardboard torch

Hecate is wordless, she’s too liminal for a story, she is the guide. She’s the only one that can lead the dead over the threshold into light and ghosts cling to her. Anyway, the prayer for Hecate is

Mistress of the night

Dishevelled One

Wild dancer who revels with the stars

And sets the world ablaze

Purify our inner fire.

Mistress of the Keys

Open up the flower

Breathe your cosmic breath through the narrow

Spaces of our souls -

Unlock the secret numbers

Mistress of the crossroads Carrying us

Over the threshold of birth and death

Throwing around us

Bonds of love heavy with fire

Ensoul the world with light.

That’s Hecate.

Now I wanted to say that while I was working on the Big Girls, I realised that the Goddess, the feminine voice, doesn’t have any words. It is raw sound – like fire, wind, the buzzing of bees or the roar of wild beasts. The priestess of the Delphic oracle used to sit on a cauldron over a chasm and prophesy while inhaling fumes from the earth. She spoke in tongues, in spirit or gobbledegook and this was interpreted into language by male priests.

So creative bubbling is my new religion and I have this new structure called the honeycomb structure that goes over the void left when the Big Boys of repression, sin and dogma were kicked out.

Audience member takes the honeycomb structure

The honey is any story or narrative that rings true. I know it’s true if the bubbling voice inside me goes ‘yes!’ or rather ‘zzzzzz-shhhh-rarrrrr-zzzz’. Then as the story has proved itself to be honey, it has earned the right to remain in the honeycomb structure.

So who is going to be the Composite Goddess?

Audience member comes to be the Composite Goddess and puts on the cardboard breastplate and multitasking arms

So this is the Composite Goddess - multitasking arms with multitasking symbols of other Goddesses.

Audience members come out and place the rose, snake, sun, flame and honeycomb onto ‘Kali’ arms of the cardboard Composite Goddess

The flower of love, the snake of renewal, the sun of light the flame of spirit and honeycomb of truth – and finally, a feather for the heart. This is the feather of Egyptian Goddess Maat who said, ‘a good heart is a light heart.’ May you be light hearted!