I don't like to tell stories. I like to tell people. Personally, I believe anyone can tell a story - be it a good or a bad one. Stories are simple. What makes a story alive, however, are the people in it: they make it come alive, they make it pulsate, and breathe, they become the story itself, with its bumps, with its ups and downs, its hills and mountains and oceans. Its veins, its lungs, its heart, its brain. Even the most simplistic, uncomplicated, dull story can turn into a blossoming flower, alive with the passion and hatred of the people in it. I like to tell people. The human soul, stripped to its bare backbone. The human soul violated, mutilated. The human soul in all its earnestness. I like to dissect human emotions, to trace back ambition, desire, fear, eagerness, disgust. To take all that makes us human and to carefully twist and bend it to my tastes and preferences. I do not care for the story. I care for bravery and cowardice, I care for cunningness and lust, glutony and barrenness. I care for the living, flowing blood of a story: namely, its people. You tell a crime. I tell the criminal. I tell her deepest desires, her greatest fears, I tell her insecurities, her pride, I tell the way she takes her coffee, I tell what she dreams of at night. You tell a love story. I tell the story of love itself. I tell the way a heart beats against a rib-cage, the way it flutters like a bird trapped; I tell the way palms sweat, throats dry. I tell the way dopamine and serotonine pump through the veins and make pupils dilate. I tell emotions. I tell humanity. The story matters little. The story is a shell, a mere curtain dropped before the real show has even begun. What interests me, what fascinates me, what makes my brain moan with pleasure, is the fate of the human soul, bared of all pretence. So tell your stories all you like. Tell your petty complicated mysteries and your unrequited loves. I take the soul and bare it, and eat it raw. The soul of the story itself: its people.
