{"id":107,"date":"2015-08-30T02:08:02","date_gmt":"2015-08-30T06:08:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/?p=107"},"modified":"2015-08-30T02:15:52","modified_gmt":"2015-08-30T06:15:52","slug":"shelter-from-the-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/josephmurphy.name\/ds106\/ideas\/shelter-from-the-storm\/","title":{"rendered":"Shelter from the storm"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"open,<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s 10 years since Katrina and Rita and the levees broke. If you haven’t read Lolis Eric Elie’s magnificent piece “The Whys” on The Bitter Southerner<\/a> you really ought to. It resonates with my own meager experience rebuilding in New Orleans for a week<\/a>, in that every person I\u00a0met had a story to tell about their flood experience, about their rebuilding decisions.<\/p>\n

No, that’s not right – not just a story to tell. A story to share, a story to ask us to carry. An invitation to help them process, as they\u00a0made decisions about possessions, and places. Maybe a request to be remembered as an individual, not as a statistic in a historical episode.<\/p>\n

That is part of the point of storytelling, in any form. Memoir, fiction, nonfiction, mashup – we try to make a connection, form a bond, refute entropy<\/a>. We make stories, and make sense; in telling or listening, we expand ourselves.<\/p>\n

And maybe that’s the context which explains why I took a recent post by Alan Levine <\/a>to heart.<\/p>\n

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I really cannot tell much about you as a person from your long scroll stream of context-less reblogged media created by other people<\/p>\n

\u2014 Alan Levine (@cogdog) August 25, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n