Recently, following a conversation in one of my favourite online groups, I felt a key turn in a lock. An old lock, with a heavy brass bolt, with an oval head of pressed metal on the key shaft and a tab with specified contour and profile on the far end, so as to marry the internal mechanism with a positive spring-loaded rotation to the hand, and a satisfying “klak” releasing the bolt. As the door swings open, key, lock, door and entire enclosure dissolve into thin air, revealing what I knew all along. At least that’s how I dreamt it.

What is it that obscures our vision up to the moment of seeing, and after, realising we knew it of old? A deep remembering, a restorative process, to which I say, “I know you. I lost you and now have found you again. I’ve always known you and now I know you name. You are me! Hello there!”

We are not merely connected to this Earth. We emerge from it and are part of it. We are but one facet of the story that belongs to our place of origin. What springs to mind, like the second half-turn of the spring loaded lock that completes it’s own rotation, is an image from a book I encountered doing my Masters in Social Ecology; a book entitled “Yorro Yorro, Original Creation and the renewal of Nature” by David Mowaljarlai”, or in the vernacular - “Everything Standing Up Alive”. Are not we each, one of the many fruits of this bountiful Earth, standing up alive?

Enter the Storyplex

This week I’ve adopted a new word, “Storyplex”. It comes out of my research into telling stories in 360º spacial immersion. Stephanie Riggs refers to it in “The End of Storytelling - the future of Narrative in the Storyplex”. I was shocked when I read the title, wedded as I am to storytelling from 20 years of documentary filmmaking. With a dire sense of the need to keep moving forward, I immersed myself in this small book. It was delighted and immediately won over to experiencing stories in a new way in 360º digital spaces.