We are a world of many worlds.

There are many ways of knowing our world and being in our world. Our cultures are as diverse as our places – as diverse as the unique ecologies, geologies and geographies from which they emerge.

And we hold many worlds within us. Many of us are the carriers of diverse lineages and intersecting and sometimes conflicting identities. We are of multiples.

I am the child of lines that include peasant folk, refugees of revolution, migrants and the middle class. Eastern European music stirs me, the Southern European sun soothes me, and the English treescape cradles me. When I listen, these stories run through me. There are, of course, parts of me that I do not know and do not understand. Those stories are whispered under the breath, heard but unheard, known but unknown, there but also not.

In many ways, I feel that some of my stories were not forgotten but stolen. The perpetrator is cloaked, their identity shrouded in shadow. They have devoured a wealth of stories over past millennia, getting hungrier in recent centuries, feeding on the loss and capitalising on the ruins. Though fat from feasting, the spectre still lurks, ever greedy for more, thieving further, cultivating a monoculture that makes us easier to farm until we are depleted of who we are and homogenised into one. Who is this spectre? Perhaps it goes by many names: modernity, imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, industrialisation, globalisation? 

Stories are invisible bonds that hold us in communion with all else. They are our compasses as we navigate the weird, wonderful and wicked. These compasses are passed down through the generations, scuffed up in the pockets of our ancestors, carrying marks that memorialise their journeys through time. Without our compasses, are we lost? Bereft of our stories, are many of us wandering souls?

…

I can only publish a section of this essay until it is published. Email me if you are interested in commissioning me for editorial writing and you’d like to read the rest of it, at hello@rachelmariataylor.com.