How Stories Begin
Imprints of Memories - The Process of Remembering and Re-imagining
Last month, I said the tentative title for this month’s issue would be “Burnout and Cute Things”. Lucky for me, there isn’t enough burnout content to write about this month :)
So instead, I want to talk about where stories begin for me. Everything I do - animation, playwriting, filmmaking - are just different ways that I tell stories. Storytelling is the heart of my art, so I have thought a lot of time thinking about what draws me to the stories I tell. And at the core of my stories is always a memory.
I hold memories for a long time. Even when I don’t remember the exact details of a memory, I remember what I felt. Although I will refer to this emotional memory as a ‘feeling’, I don’t know if ‘feeling’ is the correct word for it. The word feels too temporary. For me, it feels much more physical - something with a weight, a temperature, a texture that my body remembers. Sometimes, it is warm and has a soft imprint like a sleeping child. Sometimes, it’s like a rusty blade and the imprint is jagged and loud. Sometimes, it’s so razor sharp that I don’t remember when it cut me, but the chill stays and stays, echoing within my body.
I have a very strong urge to express these pulsing emotional memories exactly how I experienced them. When I feel that I have done this successfully, there is nothing that could feel more magical to me.
My process for recalling these memories begins with pulling a fragment of the memory into reality by recording it. The fragment might be a dialogue, an image, a sound, a texture, or anything else that feels meaningful.
From there, different branches weave out. Sometimes it drifts into a completely different story from the initial memory that inspired it - a world full of people and sounds and images that do not exist. But as long as there is a root of the story that I know, that my body knows, the story feels personal, and I know I can tell it.
I want to share with you an old memory that I wrote down this month.
***
I was ten when my grandmother ran her thumb across the fingerprint-shaped birthmark on my thigh
She told me that her mother had a birthmark that was just the same and whispered
“My mother came back”
She laughed but her eyes were glistening
I had never seen her cry
I was confused how I could be my grandmother’s mother
But a feeling came over me and I wanted to gather her into my arms and stroke her hair like how my mother strokes mine
Yet I was a child so all I did was watch her tears
Wondering what she looked like when she was my age
and if before she sleeps she wishes she could lay her head on her mother’s lap and feel her cool fingers on her forehead
The thought broke my ten-year-old heart
*
I thought about how someday I would be an old woman and my family will have gone
Nobody would see that I long for my mother’s soft hands in my hair and
I wondered if it might only be in the brief imagination of another little girl with a birthmark like mine that I would be seen again
Maybe it was her mother that I felt inside me when I wanted to pull my grandmother into my arms and kiss her forehead
***
I have been thinking a lot about generational memory and my relationship with the older women in my family. I want to write a story about the concept of reincarnation, not necessarily in a religious sense, but about how the role of childhood and motherhood circles. I think this memory can be the beginnings of this story.
If by chance you’re stuck creatively or have been wanting to try something new, I have an exercise that I use to recall and reimagine memories:
Think about a conversation you had with a loved one in which you didn’t say everything you wanted to. Write that conversation. Let the dialogue walk places it didn’t go. Maybe you’ll say it this time. Maybe you won’t. Let the conversation find new ground.
If you try this exercise and want to share your writing, please do!! I’m also very curious about where your stories begin. Where do you find the seeds of your creativity? Please share in the comments, let’s have a conversation!
Until next time <3
Hyungjin