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Radical Boy Manifesto: Stories are finite
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Only a handful of true stories play out in this world. We live these stories again and again, they are the real stories of our real lives. They cannot be changed. They cannot be fought. They cannot be twisted. They begin in the same ways and they end in the same ways.
As a thirty year-old adult, I have seen a number of stories repeat themselves again and again. I have seen a number of my peers tell me repeatedly that his or her story is different as a watch a replay in their lives of sad stories I’ve watched before. They say that I don’t understand. That I am not there. Of course they are not telling me. They are telling themselves, but the wise part doesn’t believe them.
Let me choose two of these stories as examples:
(1) The story of the fear to live. In this story, a young man or woman fails to commit to their dream. They mistrust their talent. They mistrust their opportunity. They mistrust their commitment and so they do not commit to their dream. They mitigate. They hedge. They tell themselves that as long as they keep dangling their fingers in the water of the dream that they might brush the Sea Bass of destiny and grab hold despite its slickery scales.
(2) The story of abusive love. In this story, the young man or woman is used and misused by their significant other. There may be passion. There may be flashes of brilliance. There is always sorrow, though, as abuses of emotion or abuses of fidelity or abuses of omission pile up. They tell you it’s different when they’re together. They tell you that of course no one talks of anything but the bad stuff. They steel themselves. They take it. They tell themselves that love can change a lover, but love doesn’t change people. It only loves people. That’s why the preacher reminds you that it is “for better or for worse.”
Stories may merge and blend and have a timbre all their own, but there are still only a few plots and they each only have one resolution. They only change in length and intensity. They do not change in character.
So the artist as Radical Boy must know that fictional stories must necessarily fall into one of two categories: true stories of the folly of trying to break out of the standard plots of these stories and false stories of people who succeed in breaking the ancient patterns of history and the ancient wonts of Man.
Radical Boy Manifesto