Links for the week

This week the links will mostly focus on storytelling and storytelling related things. As you know this is a topic dear to my heart and I spend a lot of time thinking about the ways that we tell stories. But what if it’s all just boring brainwashing in search of dopamine and certainty? What if life is just a mess and all we do is do the best we can wading through it? Well, it’s not that bleak, but this story by Parul Sehgal in The New Yorker asks you to wonder if we are living under The Tyranny of the Tale, and that is a very good question indeed.

Stefan Sagmaister is a designer thoroughly fed up with this idea that we are all storytellers. From the video below, you would be excused if you thought he worked at a university

I am currently reading José Saramago’s The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis and I am ashamed to tell you that I don’t know who the translator is. That is the point of this Guardian article on translators and the skill and sensibility to language that they bring to storytelling. As somebody who just finished translating something, I should really do better.

And this whole post is an excuse to share, again, this short video of Kurt Vonnegut explaining the basic shapes of the story (you can also find a much longer video of a similar lecture).

I walk to work almost every day and love seeing the light changing along the Circular Road. There is no story here whatsoever, just a moment in time…