Story Hunter introduction how it all started. 


This podcast is a series about storytelling. Storytelling is an ancient shamanic art. And a person who can tell a story is gifted with the ability to help people understand and feel.


From the time I was young, around campfires, I watched the magic of the oral tradition in action. And storytelling has always been a fascination. A story told around the fire is an act of beauty to me. It's vibratory resonance, it's telepathy. A truly brilliant storyteller is conveying audio wavelengths of feelings, he is structuring awareness. This is why storytelling is magic. It falls to me uniquely, like tracking chemistry, singing and dancing into the quiver of the shaman. And I'm always interested in that. 


In these next episodes, I'm hoping that we can explore the art form together. Storyhunter is stories about stories. Its thoughts on what brings a story to life. And it's also an attempt and a desire to at times capture stories. Storyhunt is something I need to do. I need to write. I need to have stories. It's how I make sense of the world. Especially when I'm changing. Like I'm changing now. In a few months, I'm going to turn 40. I don't know how that happened. I'm standing at some threshold. I can't see it. But I can sense I’m in that change of life. 


So much of how I have been living suddenly seems to have stopped working. Have you ever had that moment? Something needs to be shed, so a new way can come to me. And I will tell you that it's unsettling and exciting. I like being a season. I like sensing when it's time to change. But there's a grieving to it, to let go of a way of life that I've spent so much time building, and sit in something unknown so a new way can come. It makes me think of something my teacher Martha Beck once said to me. And it's funny how a single sentence can stick in you. This was one of those. I remember the exact moment when Martha said it. We were driving through the streets of Phoenix, Arizona, in her white Mercedes. At that time in my life, I was so burnt out and fried that at age 25 I felt like I was 70. “Creative people bounce,  she said. “Creative people bounce.” My God, when I heard that, a glimmer of hope. Creative people bounce. 


There's a resiliency to someone who has art, songs, oils, strings or ink, but it doesn't even need to be art school art. No really anything that would put you into the spirit of a presence or to presence itself. An awareness that something other can come through. Something that is both entirely you and not you at all is art. Your co creation with the universe. 


If you can find a way to express yourself, you have catharsis. if you have catharsis, you have emptiness. If you have emptiness, you have a vacuum. And if you have a vacuum, lifeforce, nature, will naturally fill it. If you can learn to be leveled intentionally, there is always a chance for resurrection. 


Creative people bounce. And this is me bouncing. This is me coming back to life. To a new life. This is how I shed a skin. And this is how the storyhunter was born. 


After three years of almost endless travel, I felt a deep desire to ground myself back into wild places. I wanted to disappear for a while, I wanted to be off the radar and off my phone and vacant from email. I like the idea of artists disappearing periodically. In fact, I've come to think of anonymity as one of life's deepest gifts. There is a purity to art forms that occur in unseen places nowadays. And so I went back to Africa to disappear for a while into the wild. And then, almost instinctively, after a period of time, I found myself chasing and attuning to stories again. 


And this is the series that emerged out of that time, because I must put my spirit somewhere. I must put my life somewhere. I must put my art somewhere and this is how I make meaning. But it's more than that. I've come to think that the world needs oral storytellers, oral traditions. I feel I'm keeping some old way alive. And not that anyone has asked me to. It's a very personal compulsion. But storytellers have always been the meaning makers of the time they were in. And we need meaning makers in this time. We need meaning like we need air. We need context and a narrative. I say we, but maybe it's just I. It just makes it more meaningful when the quest is bigger than me. See how each word matters.


And so, I find myself going back to the wild with journalistic intent, and a propensity for creative licence. I travelled to campfires everywhere to meet those who have lived close to the wild, particularly the First Nation people, the Bushmen. I found myself on Pioneer towns and driving along rutted roads. My journey specifically took me to the wild places of Botswana, and always the bush felt of eastern South Africa. I like being around those who speak the language of the wild, those who embody a different level of understanding of what it means to be like wild. I was particular about who I sought out. I've never really been interested in the science of the natural world. Rather, I'm always looking for something deeper and more intuitive. I want to talk to those who can help me deepen my understanding of how wilderness is a doorway to soul.  Humans on narrative creatures, and in each story, I began to find answers. In the end, each story was a thread of medicine, in my own journey, and in the web of my own life. 


I suggest that this podcast should be listened to like an album. It's a journey of both life stories and breakdowns on the archetypal characteristics of storytelling. It's stories and thoughts about those stories. And I hope that listening to this will help you become a better storyteller. I'm looking for the old ways, old stories, campfire cool. And in some ways, this is where a part of my broken heart goes. This is where my fascination with living goes. This is my gratitude to live. I turned back to my art and the art of storytelling to help me write a new story. A new story for a new iteration of my life. This is how I became the storyhunter.