The Beer was Flowing Free...

An anecdote to illustrate the culture of story-telling, and highlight its traditional dominance in human culture, particularly in channeling communal religious experience.

                                                                                Prague, 5 January 2013

I want to tell you a story. As it happens, it is true, though to be honest it wouldn't matter if I made it up; it would work just the same.

Recently, an Irish friend of mine invited me out for a night of beer-drinking and conversation. This was in Prague and I liked the idea of having some good beers with an old friend. I expected the night would be spent talking about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We would share our latest news, talk about our problems and our hopes for the year ahead. We would ask each other about current affairs and think about the issues that motivated us, and, if we let our female sides out (after a few pints), we would talk about our feelings and our views on them. The night would end in male bonding.  

Nothing of the sort. 

My friend, who came from Cork, and whose father is a folk singer, began with a series of rough jokes. (This was going the way of a classic business presentation.) He then started entertaining me with a series of witty anecdotes. This was not a conversation, this was a show. Pretty soon, I sound found myself rising to the challenge and striving to dig up similar witty tales and riposts that would bring the night along. And so the game was on: - Who could be the wittiest? Who could top the last tale? Did he make you laugh, touch your soul, make you cry?

Part of me was very happy with this. I hadn't had a night like this in years, not since I had attended parties of the Irish Drama Society in University back in the 1970's, where everyone had sung songs or told recitations; or my parents' 25^th wedding anniversary night party back in 1964, when everyone sang songs, as a matter of course, until the wee hours of the morning. Swell parties! But, as ever at these things, however much I wanted to perform myself, I knew I would be out-gunned by the sheer talent of my more self-confident friend.

I know from experience that in a traditional Irish night of céilíocht, different people will try their hand at amusing the crowd. It not like at a fee-paying concert or play, where one is paid to perform by others who come to watch. We sit in common, with no divide between the performer and his audience, no proscenium arch. And so the roles may change, as different singers or story tellers take up the baton and give the star performers a rest - but there will always be a recognized star performer, and she or he will be the real reason people come, like to hear an inspired minister preach in an evangelical mission, or a gifted singer in a gospel choir. This night, I was happy enough to listen most of the time.

But part of me was frustrated too. I had expected serious chat - about things. I had been interested to learn his opinions about work, about life in the Czech Republic, about the future. I had hoped to get new ideas, some perspective on where he was and where we were both going in our lives. Anytime I tried to turn the conversation to talk about something, my friend just ignored me, and launched into another round of hedonistic story-telling. I was learning, or so I thought, nothing about him, or his circumstances. That had been what I had hoped to get from the night, and I was getting nowhere with it. Nothing.

And so the night ended and we parted, one or two last jokes for the road. I was left on my metro-ride home thinking what had just happened, and why I felt so blind-sided as I did. He had completely hi-jacked my night, taken me on a ride of fun and games, entertaining me at every turn, relishing the joys of story-telling, prodding me for reaction, laughing at the absurdities of the world, touching, even, on the deeper meaning of life itself.

As the stations slide by and I emerged into the night I began to realize what had happened. I had been treated to an old-style party; the kind that story-tellers, singers, musicians and dancers have enjoyed around camp fires for the last 200,000 years, maybe more. This was what “conversation” had consisted of in almost all of human history and not my idea of talking about things. Story telling lay at the heart of human company, not exchanging factoids or confidences.

The more I thought about this, something that would have been blindingly obvious to my friend, and to 99% of all people who ever lived, began to dawn on me; the great literature of the world was story-telling, just like this; a friend amusing his other friends with tales of daring-do, passion and pain, loss and joy, pride and romance. That night, my inner story-teller had been awakened, my critical commentator put back in his place and made quietly sit this one out.

And as my intellectual concern these days is mostly with religious thinking and mythological considerations, it dawned on me also that that is what most religious activity was also about: stories that inspire and move us, that bring us closer to sharing in a world of divine order, myths told or sung, myths danced or enacted before your very eyes: the ripping yarns of the Old Testament, the pointed salt of the medieval Mystery Plays: the Jews and the Catholics got it right.

James Joyce came to my mind, and how, in all things, he was the master entertainer: the tenor, the wit, the spinner of magical words and great, epic (faux or otherwise) tales. How he had looked at the old fathers in pubs with there unrelentingly closed minds and said they were his nemesis, the demons which he must defeat in mortal combat. To take arms against them and their tales, he had no choice but to use story telling, their own weapon, par excellence. - Homer loved nothing more than an audience.

The seanachies of the Gaelic kingdoms had been such men, the Druids and Bards of the ancient Celts; their epic tales sung to honor the dead and praise the living, wise and witty tales to bring the night along, as story-teller after story-telling vied to move the spirit. Competitive, manly, challenging, speech was a game, played by experts, for the highest of rewards: the love and respect of one's fellow men. Rhetoric was king of all arts.

And so, I came to see that I had been a fool. A fool to think that my night our had been a failure. My friend had been a friend indeed; I, a friend in need. He had shown me that a true night out was not a long day at the office water cooler. It was not sharing secrets, or intimate feelings or comparing analyzes or ideas, however clever. It was not teaching each other things, or finding things out; it was not about information at all. It was dancing in circles, weaving endless yarns, and inviting the other to spin, in every sense, with you, weaving time together. Creating experiences. That was the true nature of human conversation, the reason speech had evolved at all. Homo sapiens sapiens told the best stories. His campfire was the best place to sit. - Sure, hunting buffalo requires directions, secret signals, tracking skills build on years of critical thinking, but sharing the kill requires tales, and sharing the kill was the point of it all. Meat should not be eaten alone.

This endless dance was the deep meaning of story-telling. This was sharing in an experience, not sharing information. It is the core of myth. As in dance and song, new knowledge was not the end of the activity. An interpersonal experience was the end. Understanding anything was just a means to that end. And it was always a communal experience, shared between narrator and listener, dancer and on-looker, singer and audience, however freely or often we exchange roles.

© Mícheál úa Séaghdha, Praha 2013