Coming Home to Story: An Interview with Lisa Schneidau
In the first of a new series of Story Conversations, last week I met with storyteller and ecologist Lisa Schneidau, to hear a story about a blackbird. With and around the story, Lisa and I talked about folklore, ecology, imagination versus anthropomorphism and the nature of making a home. It is very difficult, in today's increasingly urgent world, to justify a space for luxurious, awe-struck, fantastic imagination. It is difficult, as we become more and more aware of the toxic, anthropocentric warping of our Western viewpoint, to comprehend how our old tales, in which it is blissfully easy to have a conversation with an obliging animal, can have anything of depth to say to the profound divide between us and the wild world; both in terms of respecting its otherness and acknowledging the enormity of our destruction of it. And yet we still need story, and we still have a sense that holding a space for wonder can make a difference. I was delighted to have a chance to discuss all...