The Way of Story at GateCommunity.org Conference in LA

Just back from Los Angeles where I was invited to be a keynote speaker at Gate Community Conference in Los Angeles, CA, 2/4/2012. This conference was to encourage transformational media in both the music and film industry in Hollywood. Huge response as over a thousand gathered to encourage more spiritual themes in songs and films.

See below for my talk.­­­­

The Way of Story/ Gate, Los Angeles, 2/4/12

Three days ago, I left my annual retreat in S. India and flew 25 hours back to CA. It’s 13 and a half hour time difference so I have some concern that instead of The Way of Story, this will be known as my Jet Lag Talk.

In India, one is greeted with namaste. Here we shake hands in greeting. In the West, the origin of the handshake dates from when men carried swords, so to offer your hand was a way of saying ’You are in no danger, I will not draw my sword.” In India, it is namaste which means, “The Self in me greets the Self in you.”

The Way of Story

Albert Einstein was wrong. The world is made up of stories – not atoms. Robert Louis Stevenson once said that Community is formed through shared stories. I once heard Bill Moyers interview David Putnam, who produced such films as The Mission and Chariots of Fire. At one point, David Putnam said, “If movies were what they might be, there would be no need to go to church.”

The question is what story are you living and what stories are you telling? From Shakespeare to Star Wars, from Dante to le Carre, the way of story is a journey of discovery forged by discipline and craft. Though it is craft which transforms the initial raw inspiration into form, storytelling begins within, and is as much a part of our past as our genetic structure. Storytelling is not only the root of film, theatre, literature, and culture, but of the life experience itself. The listener or viewer maintains touch with his mythic self and the truths there represented. In losing touch with our myths, there may be a danger of losing touch with ourselves.

I grew up in New Orleans, listening to Southern women’s voices. I can remember even now at the age of five or six sitting unseen on the staircase just around the corner, mesmerized by these vibrant Southern voices. My grandmother would have her friends over for a quilting bee. They would sit in a wide circle and work on the same quilt, sewing bits and pieces of material into one enduring whole. At the same time, the women would share bits and pieces of their lives with one another which made of their friendships another kind of quilt. Later on this led to my play, The Women of Cedar Creek. By the way, I learned an important lesson from writing this play. It was my inevitable dysfunctional family play – something every writer must face. (joke) I was certain it would have no merit commercially, but an exorcism I had to do in order to move on. It seemed too specific to my own life to appeal to others. Imagine my surprise when it won more awards than my other plays! The lesson here is that in the specific lies the universal and not the other way round. People would approach me after a performance and say, “I grew up in Kansas. That was my mother, how could you know?” “I’m from Canada. That was my sister. How could you know?” In the specific lies the universal and not the other way round. So dare to be personal.

I believe we go to movies in order to feel – something we are conditioned not to do at school and sometimes even at home. This is why I encourage clients and students to write not only from their heads but from their hearts. Even if you are not writing about something from your own life, it is vital to write in an emotionally autobiographical manner. Most importantly, to not necessarily write what you know, but to write about what you feel passionately about. Passion is contagious and will leap off the page and off the screen.

Today, in modern life, there is a fragmentation which separates most of us from our central core or soul. With all our outer progress, perhaps something has been lost which earlier cultures knew to value: the soul connection. What story do you choose to live by? The answer offers a clue to your soul, your deepest self.

As with many artists and seekers, my path has been full of twists and turns. During my NY years as actor and playwright, I was a Fulbright Scholar in India, and there studied dramatic forms of shamanism. I wanted to go far from Broadway and the commercialization of art. I wanted to see if drama could be something more than entertainment. In India, I explored forms over five thousand years old, still existing though now unfortunately dying out.

In this way, I became interested in shamanism. For 30,000 years and the earliest forms of oral storytelling, shamans have tended the soul of man. The very word, shaman, coming from the Tungus people of Siberia, means excited, moved, raised. The shaman journeys out of his body to a realm beyond time and space. The shaman’s soul leaves his body in a trance state and travels to the underworld or skyward, returning with a message for the community. In this way, the shaman becomes a bridge between the two worlds of earth and spirit. The shaman is an ear for his community. He discovers where their suffering lies, and speaks to that.

What has this to do with us today? Since the Industrial Revolution, we have been split off from spirit. Today’s Age of Information is a poor substitute for the callings of spirit. Information is not-nor ever was- wisdom. Knowledge is more than the naming of names, and survival more than material sustenance. In olden times, shamans interpreted psychological illness as a separation from soul. His job then was to retrieve the severed soul and unite or return it to the one ill or possessed.

I’ve often wondered if perhaps today’s creatives are meant to tend the soul of the community as shamans did in the past. To be a cultural creative today is rather like bridging the two worlds of spirit and form, inspiration and manifestation. It is essential now to bring all of your self to the writing table, and not just a fragmented mind and wounded heart. The soul of the world – anima mundi –is longing for such stories. It is as if the old gods, discontent with neglect, have spread their lure, calling out to writers who can listen from within. It is time for them to live again through you. It is time for the return of the feminine, as well, so needed to balance the outmoded paradigms of patriarchy. I believe the overwhelming success of Da Vinci Code – both book and film – is because it carried the theme of the return of the feminine.

I should go on record and state straight off that I don’t believe there is any one way to write anything or any one way to launch a writing career anymore than there is one way to live your life. This is one story of one writer only. My career strategy is quite simple. I write what I wish to see on the screen.

So returning to NY from the Fulbright year in India, I was a fire to write from what was deepest in myself.

Later when some of my plays rec’d awards, I was invited to Hollywood to write for television and film. The first film was The Christmas Wife with Jason Robards and Julie Harris. HBO had the courage to produce an unsentimental Christmas story about two lonely seniors, a film without sex or violence. The theme was how it is not possible to relive the past. Of course, this was not television, it was HBO. There was an enthusiastic response from the Emmys and the critics which told me that people wanted something different, something with more substance.

A film I wrote for Disney and Dolly Parton, Unlikely Angel, came to me first in a dream. As is my habit, I wrote it down. The theme was unconditional love. Ten days later, my agent got a call from Dolly Parton’s company asking if I could write a Christmas story for her. I remembered the dream and pitched it, not knowing that Dolly was mad about angels. CBS produced it and it won the ratings – except for the NFL. Nobody wins over football in America – even angels.

I was invited to write for the popular television series, Touched  by an Angel. In the beginning, the powers that be in Hollywood, were not enthusiastic about this show, but the fan mail was overwhelming, so they couldn’t stop it. It ran for nine years. One letter was from a man who had decided to commit suicide. It was a Sunday evening and his television happened to be on CBS and he found himself watching Touched by an Angel. At the end of the show, the man was sobbing, and decided to give life another chance.

As a professor at USC Film, I taught graduate screenwriting for several years. I taught story structure and craft which as we know are important.  But how do you teach writing from the soul? When I moved to Ojai, CA, and left teaching at the university, I began to teach at places like the Esalen Institute and the Omega Institute and other venues in Europe and Asia. I began to teach not only craft, but what I call the invisibles. Intuition, channeling, sensual writing, and writing from what is deepest in each of us.

It is my feeling that some stories already exist in the ether, and my job is simply to bring them down to the gross level. Perhaps this is what Michaelangelo meant when he said he freed David from the stone. The best times as a writer are when I seem to disappear altogether and the story writes itself. It passes through me, but is not really mine – a kind of visitation, if you will. Here is one example.

Years ago, I married and honeymooned in Ireland. I had a psychic experience at the site of a 9^th c. ruin and saw or imagined a story of what had happened there so long ago. Later this story kept nipping at my heels like a persistent puppy and eventually I knew I had to sit down and let it come through. I found out later when I did some research that what I thought I imagined actually had happened there in the 9^th c. and in the same detail as I wrote it down. How to teach this way of writing in a workshop? Well, it may not be taught, but it can be encouraged. By the way, this feature film, a reincarnation action/romance has been optioned three times – yet never made. This is the one I’d like to see on the big screen – and currently it is not under option.

John and the Gate Conference brings together those of us in the music and film industry committed to consciousness-raising stories and projects.

Last year, Werner Herzog gave us the splendid documentary, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which took us into the recently discovered painted caves in Southern France. I was especially struck by the imprint of the artist’s hand on the wall of the cave. These are the oldest painted images known, painted over 30,000 years ago. This handprint was a statement of expression. Little did the artist know that it would appear 30,000 years later, and yet he was compelled to leave his mark. I urge you to dare to express, to put your handprint out there. It is a statement of faith in the universe, a statement of the power of our deeply felt experience expressed boldly, for the sake of nothing but that expression.

Each one of us engages in an individual quest, an inner journey. And from this individual quest comes the songs and stories worthy of serving our community. Worthy of imprinting upon our children, real and lasting values.

­­­­       If we are fortunate to create such an expression which points to That Absolute which lies beyond all of us, then the Journey is well worth the effort. And the angels will sing.

I’m told that The Way of Story books are here and I’m happy to sign them and talk with you. And we have time for questions. But first, to close, I’d like you to close your eyes as I read the brief prologue to The Way of Story book. Close your eyes and don’t just listen to the words, try and feel the words within. Read prologue. (See  The Way of Story book available at www.amazon.com)

During Q & A, www.wayofstory.com for blog, workshop schedule, writing consultant service, and online courses. www.wayofstory.com