Against Storytelling

A Rant

Nothing is worth being told. Do not trust narrators, do not believe in prose, in short: Be wary of art. Every viewpoint, this one included, is by definition untrustworthy. Show me a human with a truth to tell and I’ll show you a human obsessed by ego, starved for social recognition and reeking with fear, banging his head against the rocks so that the other monkeys have something to jabber about while lousing each other. Show me an artist and I’ll show you a liar.

You may either preach to whatever choir you subscribe to, echoing the concerns and affirming the tribe’s delusions (e.g. about finding love, fighting dragons, standing up against dead people), or you may be the antagonist, the trickster getting on their nerves: “You’re wrong. It’s all quite different. You found yourself a belief to cling to, but then, you’re an idiot.” Nobody wants to hear that, and if you’re any good at it, you’ll end up stoned to death, which is, alas, no proof that you’ve been right.

Tales told by idiots, then, are blindfolds longed for by those getting bored in hell. Behold the anchors of values, hierophants of meaning, detergents of relief and flee, wanderer! For narrative art is what religion rots into: Instead of telling tall tales about daft deities, mush is administered about the tribulations of cardboard critters. That’s what comes from dealing with a species that prides itself on being emotional, a species that claims that irrationality is “what makes us human”, a status considered as desirable.

• Did you hear the one about the ant who wouldst marry?
• Mayhem ensues when a couple of guinea pigs decide to experiment on each other. (Five volumes.)
• „I don’t want to die!“ screamed the fly.
• Young rats discover that they are supplied with genitalia. It’s up to little Whatshisname to thwart Nature’s fiendish plot.

In the dismantling of your ill-fashioned selves your salvation lies. Why feed on excreted chimeras? Why cherish your pain?