In preparation for an upcoming reading/storytelling session, I spent some time this week with two ancient stories, one available at an Imax theater near you, the other, Numbers 21, from the Hebrew Bible. [Fun Fact: “The Odyssey”was written at about the same time as the Book of Isaiah—which comes eighteen books after Numbers.] In order to encourage my listeners to tell their own stories at this reading, I parsed both tales for key and, literally, telling elements.
One such element is truly stand-out: both stories’ tension, their drama, is because both Odysseus and the Israelites, who have fled from bondage but who still wander, yearn for something. They’re in-between. Which agitates us! In-between-ness/waiting for the other shoe to drop, our protagonist (s) lost, confused, thwarted? We humans hate that! It makes us quite anxious. And why both stories are so compelling.
[Another Fun Fact: If you’re yearning to learn way more than you probably wanted to about this unresolvedness in music, this video about “The Tristan Chord” is exactly what you seek.]
And I’m left with a question: Now that I better recognize how potent such unresolvedness is/feels; now that I’ve isolated and named this particular and very human source of unease, will I feel less anxious, tense? (Pretty sure I know the answer.)