We’ve all been there. Getting together with friends and friends of the friends, starting to tell a story, it may be from your latest travels, and then be constantly interrupted by someone else who must tell their own story first and faster. Even if something bad happened to you in the said travel story, you are still interrupted because they had experienced something much worse and they must tell it first.
I have always appreciated a good listener, even more than a good storyteller. A good listener always has time for you. You know he/she will listen to you and will give your storytelling the importance, patience and time that it deserves. And if you know how to listen, your future travels, too, will be wiser and more interesting. Because, as photographer Frederique Peckelsen says in our latest interview, “one thing I have learned though is that there is no need to travel just for the sake of it. Sometimes I felt that I had been home long enough and it was time to just go somewhere. Those journeys would never really impact me, because they might have been initiated out of boredom, instead of real interest in a place. I rather have a place coming to me through a photo that sparks a fascination or an article about the history of a place or even an old illustrations book from a certain area than me just picking a place to go to just because I want to leave.”
There are things I have missed since March and things that I haven’t. One thing I haven’t missed is having to put up with someone who needs to be the center of attention all the time. I know now who is willing to listen first. And when they in turn have a story to tell, I will be the first one affording it all my attention.
That’s the beauty about books. You always have the freedom of choosing the books you read. And only the worthy will get your undivided mindfulness until the end. A good travel book will require all your attention and interest, but it will also offer you room to dream, courage to take a leap of faith, power to transport you, the impulse for change. Maybe from now on we’ll be more selective with the stories we choose to listen to so that the experience feels just as enriching as when reading a good travel book.
Beryl Markham and Martha Gellhorn were both reluctant in telling their stories. That’s the first thing that made me interested in their books, the introduction to Beryl Markham’s book, West with the Night, being written by Martha Gellhorn herself. Both unconventional, brave, contradictory. Beryl Markham, a pioneering aviator, who recklessly pursued her life and freedom with a child-like curiosity – “I learned what every dreaming child needs to know – that no horizon is so far that you cannot get above it or beyond it.” Martha Gellhorn, novelist, journalist, war correspondent and great traveller, although she called herself an amateur traveller, who gathered the best disaster stories from her lifelong peregrinations in what came closest to a memoir that she ever wrote, Travels with Myself and Another – “Nothing is better for self-esteem than survival.”
It’s time to take time to listen better, read more and sort ourselves out.
MORE STORIES
Life and Travel Now, with Photographer Frederique Peckelsen
Life and Travel Now: Photographers and Travel Writers Share Their Thoughts
I am curious to know how you found Martha Gellhorn’s book. I read it a few good years back whilst I was living in London and found it at a books charity shop. While I enjoyed it and her travels made me escape and dream of endless possibilities, one thing that struck me was the way she wrote about black people. I remember being taken aback about the directness she used in her speech at times. It did make me thing about how that type of writing would be perceived today…
I’m an avid reader. I have known about this book for a long time. I know exactly what you mean about her writing about black people. Her choice of language can be downright shocking, especially if you read the book today. But people have to be exposed to all kinds of writing, to all kinds of books. That doesn’t mean you have to agree to what a writer writes or to their own way of thinking. Politically correctness is killing initiative, creativity, free expression of thought. Only by having a wide view to what has happened over time and to what has been written can we take the discussion further and make progress. We can not erase the past just because it is not politically correct, just as we can not ban a film like Birth of a Nation because it’s racist. Just as I don’t agree with this whole movement that is happening right now about making the world of childhood as comfortable, bright, and cheery a place as it can possibly be by reading our children only happy stories, I don’t agree with criticizing every book that doesn’t accommodate every opinion.
Parents have started to stop reading traditional tales to their children because they are considered too scary, violent or because they discriminate women or certain minorities. And I want to ask: Where exactly is this censorship going? What are they reading to them instead? Only new fiction written especially to accommodate every opinion, carefully composed so that it does not offend anybody? This is not art, it is not artistic expression, it is not imaginative literature, it does not ignite children’s imagination, it does not teach them right from wrong, it does not broaden their minds. Quite the contrary. They are fed to think in a certain way. It’s terrifying. And I think it’s one of the greatest wrongs we can do to our children.
The large majority of traditional fairy tales and classic children’s books are criticized nowadays for being discriminatory and racist. But it is fairy tales that nurture moral behaviour and show children the strengths and weaknesses inherent in human nature, by contrasting good and evil, rich and poor, vanity and valour. By exposing children to these stereotypes of good and bad, you provide them with a moral code on which to start to develop their own lives.
And this goes with every book. I remember having troubles with Miles Davis’ autobiography when I read it because it is, on the one hand, raw, blunt and compelling, an opinionated, undeterred, in-your-face recounting of Miles Davis’ journey, which is not short of great life lessons. His passion, drive and tireless music innovation shine through. But on the other hand, I disliked his constant cursing, his poor choice of words when writing about certain people and his contemptuous behavior in certain situations. He holds nothing back. But this no-nonsense inability to edit himself was part of who he was. The book is both admirable and enraging. It is also a validation of his musical genius. Maybe that’s all that one needs to know. I think that goes for Martha Gellhorn’s book, too.
What we have come to today is being afraid to write or talk about what we really think, all we want is to conform and fit in. I don’t think we’re on the right path.