The distance between two people is no more than a story.

Conversation with Colum McCann, one of the greatest contemporary writers, but also a human rights activist and the inspiration behind Narrative 4, the organisation that activates mutual understanding between people through the telling of their stories.

Narrative 4 is fundamentally based on a bet, that what happens to the readers with the characters in novels – that is, becoming able to live their lives and often finding a piece of themselves even in the most seemingly repugnant character – can be reproduced in the same way when people in the flesh unravel the plot of their lives and compare it with those of others. Does the process that is set in motion really work in the same way? Or how much or in what way is it different?

It is not so much a “bet” as it is an informed hunch.   We began the organization 11 years ago when we gathered a number or writers together in the mountains of Colorado and we began to examine the nature of stories and storytelling.  My co-founder Lisa Consiglio was the brains behind this.  She had already organized a number of “exchanges” between young people and she wanted to harness the power of stories.  When we gathered and exchanged with one another, we knew we had hit upon a nuclear force.

Stepping into one another’s stories and telling it from the first person ripped our souls open. 

From there it was a question of how to build this thing, how to make it global, and to use storytelling to help heal an increasingly divided world.   Stories are our vast democracy.  We all have them.  We all need them.  They cross all boundaries. There are no restrictions in time or in space.

And you’re right that it’s fundamentally a literary exercise to step into the character of someone else.  But this is real life and we have real life issues at stake.   We generally find that people tell stories that they want others to hear.  We can bring people from across divides (social, political etc) and they tell each other a personal story.  Suddenly they realise that they’re not quite as different as they thought they were.

The distance between two people is no more than a story.

We want people to feel valuable.  We want them to feel authentic.  The course of every true idea ends in the obvious: stories are good for us.  They are a form of narrative medicine.  We are creating a narrative for social change that is based on the belief that we must see the world, and ourselves, differently through the exchange of stories.  You take responsibility for my life, I take precious care of yours.
Stories are the engine of who we are.  They are a mighty weapon.  We must treat them with respect.
You tell my story, I tell yours.  Together we recognise the need for change.  That change leads to action.

Today, young people constantly tell themselves on social networks, they make their lives an egotistical narrative without confrontation, reflecting an image in which the other bounces back, without any osmosis taking place. Certainly, the young people who approach your programmes also have this experience of narrating themselves on social networks: when do they become aware of the leap in knowledge that allows them instead a narration from close confrontation with the other? And also of the pain it can entail?

It’s hard to be a young person these days.  There has been an epidemic of loneliness and isolation that is reinforced by the fact that we all spend so much time in a five-inch glass/silicon box that we carry with us everywhere.  Mostly it’s about ourselves, and you’re correct, there is very little osmosis.  Or at least any osmosis is on a surface level.  But I don’t know that they are being especially egotistical.  I think it’s more about a box that is hard to escape.  We have not used our technology in ways that benefit these young people … but Narrative 4 is trying to combat this by developing an online platform.  A good-hearted Facebook if you will.  We are still very much in pilot mode.  The important thing is not to blame the young people.  Let’s blame ourselves
Let’s look in the mirror and see what it is that we have developed.  Let’s also understand that it is the stories of others that power the world.
When these young people get together in a Narrative 4 setting they are transformed.  They get a chance to spend some time face to face.  Suddenly the world is more complicated than a flat screen.  They become aware of one another.  They don’t have confrontation as much as they have revelation.  And they can help one another with the pain.

How capable are people of narrating themselves? And when their life turns into narration – is it no longer that impelling pulse of blood, breath, sweat – how much it deviates from its truth, as happens to any of us in narrating ourselves? And when is the opposite moment triggered, when the narrated plot regains that pulsing of blood, breath, sweat, and manages (perhaps precisely because it has, at times, passed through the fabric of fiction) to shed light on the shadow side of life?

Everyone has a story.  Everyone.  And everyone can tell it in one form or another.  Storytelling is not an Olympics.  Every story matters.  There is no gold, silver or bronze.  Sometimes young people come to me and they say “I have no story.”  But of course they do. The stories just have to be discovered.  When they find them, they feel validated in an extraordinary way.  And then when they hear that same story being told back to them they are doubly validated.

We find that they tell “true” stories.  It’s amazing really.  I think it has to do with the fact that they are giving the story to another person.  It’s like a gift.  It comes wrapped in words.  And they want it to be real.  So they don’t deviate from the truth all that much.  And then when the opposite moment is triggered, as you so aptly put it, something extraordinary happens.  They care for their partner’s story sometimes more than their own.
They have stepped into the shoes of another person.  And they want to be true to that experience. Of course, some people may make things up.  But that’s the real world.  In many senses, we are all fictions.

Then there is the second bet on which Narrative 4 is based: that the empathy aroused by the encounter of lives, after transforming people, will also succeed in transforming people into action, and thus into change – small steps – in society. Beyond the change of opinion and attitude, how many young people after experiencing N4 become activists for a cause? Does Narrative 4 simply follow them by witnessing this path of activism or, again, is it also a support and active part of it?

You’re so right.  The empathy is aroused.  And the empathy is not enough.  Empathy needs action.  Which leads then to change.  These are small steps, yes. Whether it’s kids in the Bronx who start to work with gunshot victims, or young people in South African who start a recycling program, or students in Ireland who start doing 4K walks narrating their stories.
All these small actions lead to a larger sense of possibility and change.  The tiny eventually becomes epic.

We find that many of our young people do indeed follow the N4 ethic on a lifetime basis.  It’s amazing.  I don’t have the statistics (but I will pass this along to my colleagues who have a better understanding of this figures).   We want to be able to support these young people as part of a global network.

The key to transformation lies in the sharing:
when you hear someone else’s story deeply enough to inhabit it and re-tell it as if you’ve lived it, you become “the other” and see the world through his/her/their eyes.

The power is in the active act of receiving and caring for another’s story. It is radical empathy. These story exchanges build a mutual trust that strips away cynicism and despair and creates space for hope. New communities are formed and new narratives are created: a narrative for immigration, a narrative for the environment, a narrative for religion, a narrative for peace…

You are in many parts of the world, have you made an attempt to bring it to Italy? And if so, what difficulties have you found?

We have … and I will leave it to Lee Keylock to let you know a little more about Italy.

Next 23 August, Colum Mc Cann will be at the Rimini Meeting with the two protagonists of his novel Apeirogon, the Israeli Rami Elhanan, father of Smadar, killed in a suicide bombing, and the Palestinian Bassan Aramin, father of Abir, killed by an Israeli soldier on her way to school.