I am republishing this post from a beautiful & important new substack called The Myth Lab, curated by novelist and mythic changemaker Ingrid Norton—via a unique type of herstory that fills me with joy. After creating the tale spontaneously* within Ingrid’s Myth Lab salon in Brooklyn, as she recounts below, I retold it into a microphone for her to edit and transcribe. The resulting voice astonishes and delights me: it’s my spoken voice, the voice that arises from within my tribe, my clan, my people. She is a voice more deep and true than the writer voice I’ve used since childhood—an unmediated voice, birthed not in self-aware solitude but richly and seamlessly in humanity’s heart. I am astonished and delighted to meet her again!
(*However, the 5 btief chants to the Directions within this tale are not spontaneously invented but crafted over 13 years of revision; they constitute the scaffolding for my just-completed new collection of poems).
Love,
Annie
INTRODUCTION BY INGRID NORTON OF THE MYTH LAB:
Earlier this autumn, at the close of our series at the Library for Arts and Culture, eco-feminist poet and performer Annie Finch drummed up a new myth, narrating a terrible world of human disconnection and the vibrant tale of how it begins to heal in the year 2027. Annie called forth a new myth: performing it, chanting, drumming, and pacing in a circle while workshop participants clapped, laughed, and whooped in relief and joy.
This is how new possibilities find their way into the world—through story, through communal feeling, through song and through sharing. As we sing our way into the close of this year and look at futures near to hand and farther on the horizon, Annie’s created a fresh version of the story to share with The Myth Lab. May we all sing, sway, and move toward this horizon.
IN THE YEAR 2027
by Annie Finch
Once upon a time there was a group of people who lived in a way that was very sad. They had lost connection with themselves. They were so isolated and estranged from one another—estranged from their bodies, estranged from the elements.
They had hearts, they had bodies, they had souls, they had wills. But they didn’t have anything to do with those things; they were totally cut off from them! Their hearts were constantly lonely. They didn’t have people around them that they wanted to be with all the time. They were alone all the time. They had to pick up machines to reach and touch those they most loved. They had to constantly see people they didn’t care about. They spent their lives doing things they didn’t want to do! It was crazy, it was insane!
Half the time they couldn’t even see the mother earth who gave birth to them and the water they drank didn’t even come from where water comes from anymore, and the air they breathed didn’t come from where air comes from; the food that they ate didn’t even come from where food comes from. They were not even living in the world, really. They hardly ever laughed. They hardly ever sang. If one of them wanted to sing while walking down the street they would stop themselves, because they were afraid they would get in trouble. And all of the things that they had been created to do, like dance and sing and be in nature and enjoy being with people they loved, just weren’t happening: it was the weirdest thing. It was terrible. It was tragic.
Instead of living as they were made to live, they were just getting through the world on a little scrap of logic, cut off from all these other faculties and forces. Their minds were still functioning. They spent a lot of time thinking. But their bodies, their hearts, their wills, and their spirits were starving. It was crazy, it was chaos. How could such a culture exist and endure, you may ask?
