Translator: Patricia Martínez López Reviewer: Maria Pericleous
Hello.
Today I want to tell you about the importance of telling stories.
While my five-year-old daughter, Violeta,
loves it when I read her stories before she goes to sleep,
what she likes the most is for me to make up stories.
And just beginning with...
"Once upon a time. there was a girl who lived in a forest".
"No,no,no", she says,
"better if it's a squirrel".
So...
"Once upon a time, there was a squirrel called Carolina,
who lived in a forest".
"No, better if she's called Florecita Rosita".
And so I end up telling stories
like the one about a squirrel called Florecita Rosita,
who is rescued by a giant wolf
called Colmillo, who, for over 100 years,
had been sleeping inside a mountain.
At that moment, between rivers of imagination
captivating her curiosity, the story brings us closer.
Through the story we share, she has the tools
to discover the world around us, as well as ourselves,
but also to feel fear from a safe place,
knowing that everything's going to end well,
because, if not, nobody will sleep in our house.
She learns about traditions, culture, moral dilemmas,
but also the importance of absurdity
and laughing at herself, not taking herself too seriously.
When I was a boy,
I didn't have any friends in the neighbourhood.
And as my parents worked all day,
the TV was my best friend.
I loved watching TV,
I even watched the test card while waiting for the programmes to begin.
But what I loved the most about TV
was the quantity of stories that I could find there.
I watched all of them without discrimination,
from the man with X-ray vision, to E.T.
From Willy Wonka to a remake of the Wizard of Oz
with an entirely African-American cast.
I saw the original years later, thinking it was a remake,
the best remake ever done in history.
(Laughter)
Also, whenever I could, I watched late-night movies
and many times, those stories kept me awake,
or I just couldn't understand them.
I still watched them whenever I could,
because my house was run on a strict timetable.
So my mom used to tell me,
"Daniel, it's eight o'clock, time for bed".
"But mom, it's still daytime".
"Don't argue, go to bed and turn off the light."
"It's not light, mother, it's the sun".
We could say that stories appeared
practically in the moment in which language appeared,
satisfying the human need
to describe our experiences using a story.
And these also worked as a glue,
reinforcing community bonds,
connecting the present to the past and future.
Nowadays, stories continue being very important
and an intrinsic part of our culture and society;
they are in films, books, on the radio, in the media,
in architecture, in fashion, in religion,
wherever you look, they are there;
defining our values, our prejudices,
our dreams, what we hate,
and also determining every aspect of our lives.
Perhaps we could think that, after so many centuries of telling stories
there is nothing new to tell, right?
We could be right,
as Renato Díaz said,
"Every plot in the world could be summarized
in just 20 main plots".
And Joseph Campbell talks about the hero's journey,
which is present in so many stories and folk tales,
where the hero goes through the same adventures
in different cultures.
When I wasn't watching stories,
I was making them up, playing with action figures,
with Lego, or perched on a tree,
or simply on my bed staring at the ceiling.
The important part is that, to this day,
those stories are still relevant to the lives that we live now.
In that sense, there's no need for us to go to jail,
or to be a neurosurgeon doing a brain transplant,
or to be a sponge with squared pants who lives under the sea
in order to write those stories.
All we have to do
is to be totally honest with ourselves
and expose ourselves as we are,
so that we can bring that into our stories.
This is the only way to make our stories authentic:
to give them our positive and negative obsessions,
our fears and our dreams,
to give them part of ourselves.
It's not as easy as it sounds, because to do that,
we have to make ourselves vulnerable, naked,
and to face people who can criticize and make cruel comments.
But that's also the cost of telling stories.
In order to bring a story to life,
we have to give it part of ourselves.
So I invite you to dare
to look for those stories inside yourselves.
If you are not good at telling or writing them,
you can also sing them or act them out or paint them.
And if you feel stuck,
you can start with the classic words, "Once upon a time..."
Thank you so much.
(Applause)