This episode marks the start of a new season on the Liminal Space Podcast. This time we are starting the season with a framing question as a theme; Can stories change systems? Tristan and Rashid explore this, and other questions, through conversation, anecdote, wondering regarding the power of storytelling to shape culture, values, and possibilities.
We consider how the stories we tell—and those we privilege—frame our understanding of the world and define the norms we conform to. Together, we grapple with the implications of this: what happens when certain narratives dominate? And where might there be gaps in reality where imagination can creep in to challenge these narratives and inspire systemic transformation?
The music in this episode is composed and arranged by Rashid Epstein Adams / Arkenstone. It also features two original poems. The poem at the start was written by Rashid and is read by both Rashid and Tristan:
New Stories Towards a New World
Our world is in desperate need of new stories
But where do we find them?
How can we hear them?
And in what ways can we learn from them, and allow them to shape our world towards something altogether more beautiful?
Perhaps the stories we need have always been here
Resiliently present
Echoing in the mountains and which ground
Flowing in the sweet rivers which give life
Maybe there are stories which are found in the land,
And we need to explore new ways of knowing and being in order to hear them
Our world is in desperate need of new stories
Stories of hope which demand justice in the face of ongoing, global systems of oppression
We need new narratives which can help us imagine and dream
Stories towards the uprooting of a dehumanising world order
And the planting of new Ways
Perhaps the stories we are seeking are not new ones,
But have been carried by our ancestors from generation to generation
Maybe they exist in the lived experiences of our grandmothers and sons,
All of those humans walking in a world not made for them
Yet always pursuing better paths for them and their neighbours
Come to think of it
Perhaps our world doesn’t need actually need new stories,
Or at least that is not where the story should end…
Perhaps what we need is a new world!
And stories are part of its making!
The poem at the end of the episode was written and read by Tristan:
How do you change a world?
How do you change a world?
By changing a story? By starting the story? By telling a new story?
Stories shift the world, they move us through progress. Carry us beyond setbacks.
Stories are poems of belief systems.
If we can’t get our stories straight villains will be indistinguishable from heroes. Evil may look like good. Or even worse we will get stuck in the binary of heroes and villains. Everyone one or the other incapable of being both.
Such is the power of a story that it can motivate us to work together for something larger than us or prefer radical individualism with the self at the centre of the world.
Stories can shift us from complacency to action. They are places of refuge and safety but at best they are places of courage and vulnerability.
There are stories about why the world has to stay the same and stories about why the world must change.
Someone once said you can't kill an idea, with a bullet. Stories make ideas come alive. They are the carrier medium. an idea can change a life, a community, a world.
Shifting a narrative is the work the world needs. This world hell bound on imploding under the sheer weight of our existential dread.
We need to hear new stories about new worlds so that we can become that. And that doesn’t mean more stories of empire or colonising distant planets. It is not about stories of the hereafter or make belief. It is fantastical, hopeful and not wishful. It is stories about this very earth, your very body.
New stories about what becomes possible if we allow our wildest imagination to meet our grounded selves, in a collective moment of liberation for all.
