Folklore

The tags that certify that you have done all these things that you claim that you have done are now stories. These stories do not have an author because these stories have been around for ever. There is no time when these stories emerged, they have been forever embedded in our psyche. These stories can be considered to be myths and the stories that are not confirmed as myths can at least be considered folklore. Folklore is that ambiguous narrative matter that stands between the shaky ground of being weeded out at any moment as a lie and being suddenly discovered as a symbol of universal truth. Standing on this shaky ground, folklore has to be admired for having the courage not to disappear, for having the courage to linger on even in a climate where it is treated with equal measures of ridicule and apathy.

Folklore is effectively a unique dimension in the construction of reality. When you look at a person and think of the numerous things that you know about that person which neither can be confirmed nor denied, you are already thinking about how folklore affect social reputations. Like a lamp which burns bright continuously by receiving fuel remotely and magically in a wireless fashion, reputations get enhanced by mysterious elements of folklore that stick to personas like eraser dust sticks to oily fingers. This enhancement cannot be predicted or premeditated and is left to the devices of how coincidence producing machines work. Likewise, one day you are unknown and random as far as your public recall and identification is concerned, and the next day you are a figure that inspires curiosity and interest. Your personality then seems to exude limitless charm and charisma. It is this mystery that we are meaning to unravel.

When reputations are germinal, fledgling things they have open wounds from all the years of wandering. These wounds put out a smell that helps the fame particles embedded deep within the air come to the surface and like young hunters make up their minds if the scent in their nostrils is new game. If the fame germs find the scent attractive it says something about the appropriateness of the germs and their new friendship. When the bonding has happened a little bit, stories rise up from the newly blossomed friendship to shroud it in the ambiguity of frost glass. This leads the world around to make conclusions about the origin of the fame, the stories only talk about deep and dark adventures which went in this and that way. The stories weave poetry with the scent in the air and the presence of the fame germs - riddled with assumptions, with oblique references and obscure connections that make them impossible objects for analysis. These stories are called folklore by the early analysts who attempt to do anything with them than casual interpretation.

Folklore is the key catalyst in the formation and seeding of reputations. Folklore is also a key element that offers ammunition for the dismantling of the analyst lens that makes perception into a secondary sense held in subservience. We dismantle analysis and only replace it with a kind of shamanic analysis that has no clear set of references and that finds it impossible to offer an apprenticeship. This new force is able to use the vocabulary and theoretical frameworks already set by the previous analytical system but when it hits any folklore element it doesn't get deflected and dizzy with disappointment. But instead goes into a mode that is equally poetic and magical and in the equilibrium that emerges it makes a fair reading of the folklore that was opaque and befuddling a few moments back.

This reading then offers therapy or it becomes another resource for trauma. That depends on what the situation is and how dark the heart of the shaman is.