Creating the Webbd Wheel: Point of View
In which everyone has a story ...
One of the most fascinating things about stories, no matter how old they are, no matter if they’ve never been told before or been passed on through generations, is that we can’t ever tell the whole story.
Story is complex, multidimensional. For the sake of clarity, on the page they have a beginning, middle, end, and are told in some kind of logical framework so the reader/listener can follow along. But lived stories involve all kinds of points of view, backtracking, leaping ahead, contradiction, knots, and mess.
Life is messy. Stories are groomed. Life is bedhead, sleep-gummed eyes, a creased cheek. Stories have been washed, combed, and dried in the sun.
A common creative device consists of considering a well-known story from the point of view of a different character. Doing so inevitably changes the story. If I’m the central character telling my own story, I necessarily leave out my centrality and how that position affects the other characters. What do they see, hear, and think about me, other characters around me, and whatever the action is?
We are notoriously bad at observation and memory. Everything we experience enters through our own individual emotional and experiential filters. We make assumptions and believe in them. We distort facts and believe in them. We’re sure we know, but we can never know everything. We can never know another’s experience, especially of us. We often don’t realize how far we are from objectivity. We pay attention to what matters most to us, or to what we recognize, and miss important details. We make mistakes. We get confused. We mishear, misremember, and misunderstand.
In post #29 of The Hanged Man, we meet Eurydice again. When this character was first introduced, it was in the context of her known story. She was an olive tree nymph with whom Orpheus, the greatest musician who ever lived, fell in love. They were married, and almost immediately Eurydice was killed by a snake and went to the Underworld. Orpheus persuaded Hades, by means of his music, to allow him to take Eurydice back to the world. Hades agreed, with the stipulation that Eurydice could follow Orpheus out of the Underworld but he must not look back until they had both moved out of the shadow of her tomb. Orpheus, predictably, failed to keep his end of the bargain and Eurydice returned to the Underworld alone. Orpheus subsequently refused to stop grieving and eventually died.
Maria met Eurydice in the Underworld in Mabon, so Maria has heard the story, or part of it, and has a point of view as an acquaintance of Eurydice’s. Persephone and Hades interacted with Eurydice and Orpheus in the Underworld, and they each have a point of view, and we know their views conflicted. Hades believed Orpheus loved Eurydice. Persephone saw his love as narcissistic; Orpheus loved that Eurydice loved him!
Now we hear Eurydice tell Mary, in her own words, her story, which keeps getting longer, of course, because our stories are organic and go on as long as we do. Or until some interfering, nosey, busybody like me comes along and imagines what might have happened next!
You’re reading my point of view on the Eurydice/Orpheus myth, and now Mary also has heard the story, and she’ll interact with it as well – another point of view.
Story is a changeling. Pick an hour in your life. Unless you’re completely isolated during that hour, every single person you interacted with has a story of that particular period of time, including you. All the stories are incomplete. All the stories are “true.” Unless there’s a liar in the mix. Or you yourself are an unreliable narrator! Naturally, you’re the center of your story and your experience. But if you were standing in line at the grocery store that hour, the cashier may not have even noticed you, because she’s thinking about the fight she had with her teenage son that morning. The bagger may say hello to you, but he’s thinking about swimming after his shift, and that’s far more interesting and important to his story than you are. The person in line in front of you, the person in line behind you, all the people in the store, the people on the other end of all the phones in use, they’re all part of the story. And you’re part of theirs!
Yet every single story would be different, and none would include all the characters who were actually there.
How many people know the old Eurydice/Orpheus Greek myth? My retelling and expansion is one among who knows how many. Mother, Mary, and Molly, however, are mine. This is the first story ever told about them. It will go out into the world and grow now, go on long after I am dust and forgotten.
Oral storytellers often use traditional beginnings and endings. One of my favorite endings is this: “Now the story is yours.”
Go out and retell it. Reimagine it. Continue it. Pass it on.
(This essay was published with post #29 of The Hanged Man.)