I have always had a thing for biographies. I loved exploring where someone came from, in which steps their life had happened, and what traces that had left behind.
When I was about ten years old, I read the biographies of Mozart, Avril Lavigne, and Hölderlin, since those were the most important people for me to look up to at the time. I wore all black and played the violin and wanted to be a writer. I loved reading about tracing old letters written in the 18th century, about instruments bought, about which old composer or poet had a very personal problem with whom.
It was probably on those moments that I began to view life as a story.
As a tale to be told.
To be felt.
To be admired and cared for, just as those people do with these old letters, or with deciphering the handwriting in old music sheets from 300 years ago.
… but viewing life from this narrative point of view is risky. It can easily lead to expecting the huge and dramatic moments when there are none. Always looking out for the tragedy, for the moment when things begin to collapse.
Why do the biographies of so many great people (artists, scientists, philosophers, or whoever else) have this moment where it all starts to fall apart?
Viewing life as a story can add a meaning to it. A meaning it might not actually have. It is the faint hope that everything leads somewhere, to a point where it all made some kind of sense. Where some kind of truth is waiting. A kind of conclusion that makes is worth to in the end sit down, offer a glass of wine and talk.
Sounds rather self-centered, I know.
But then again, I like to be the person who listens.
I am not sure what kind of tale I would tell.
Do I want to tell a story about starting of weird and alone in the dark and becoming a whole and ordinary thing totally at peace with the world?
It would be impressive, for sure.
But I think it more likely that I could also tell a story about stepping out of darkness and keeping the weirdness.
Either way, I like to listen.
I like to collect those stories. I like to listen to the sense someone makes of out their journey, and if I am allowed to, use it as inspiration. This feels like writing stories our ancestors once told while sitting around the fire, waiting for the glaciers to meld and the world to become less hostile, not even knowing themselves if that tale could ever be true. I liked it when my grandfather was in the modd to tell his stories and would let me revisit the history he had witnessed I could only ever read about. And I collect the little steps my life once took. From concert tickets, to my prettiest face masks and vaccine certificates from the pandemic years. It all could mean something in the end.
I think our stories are worth something. Each and everyone of us could be the fairytale people in 200 years want to read about.
„It‘s either that, or I am just unable to let go and accept the ending of things“, I admit to my witch, as my thoughts return to my grandfathers things my family had thrown into the trash faster than I could get hold of them, and it starts to hurt that after my death, no one will remember his face. I wish I could keep his face in this world somewhere. In a place where his face, his name, and his stories will matter forever.
What is a world without his face?
“Maybe it‘s both”, my witch giggles.
I am not okay with endings, but I also think that we need to remember.
Sometimes, I want to bury all my little things somewhere in the forest for curious humans in the future to find.
In case, I don‘t make it as a writer for real.
Life can feel just like a silent scream that still hurt the throat.
Mistress witch writes 