Stuart Campbell's Blog
Tusitala and his cave
Tusitala and his Cave
Tusitala, the story teller. The title bestowed on Stevenson by the Samoan islanders whose main appreciation of literature was as an oral tradition which celebrated the heroes and legends of the past. Who tells stories these days? As an English teacher I spent enough years trying to coax stories from generations of reluctant adolescents not to harbour illusions about the scale of the challenge. Media students juggle wordless story boards. Up and down the country old folk are pursued by young folk with tape recorders as part of numerous oral history projects. Ancient Mariner look-alikes sway in smoker’s knots outside pubs eager to stop one in three passers by, and the Story Telling Centre in Edinburgh is probably a worthy enterprise. But who tells stories for real?
The highlight of three days last week spent training a cohort of Scotlands Mental Health First Aid instructors at Dunblane Hydro was the contribution of the two participants who did just that and told their own recovery stories For several years now The Scottish Recovery Network has been publishing on line and in book form individual stories of recovery from mental ill health. The acknowledgement that service users are experts in their own illness is long overdue.
I listened as a young, witty and massively articulate young woman described her journey form the time when she first received a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder, the ‘dustbin diagnosis’ to her current involvement in a government funded research initiative.
I listened as a parent graphically described the challenges of living with a son with a diagnosis of psychosis. Both narratives had a structure based on low points, turning points, break throughs and the sets back that are part and parcel of recovery. The stories were told for the purposes of nurturing hope and dispelling myths. At their respective climaxes the atmosphere was utterly electric as words shaped difficult but ultimately celebratory experiences. The art of story telling.
With the narratives still ringing in my head I escaped at the end of the day to find ‘Stevenson’s Cave’ in the countryside between Dunblane and the Bridge of Alan. Idyllic to the point of being clichéd, the path meandered beside the river, round the edges of meadows and down stony tracks. Deer and rabbits kept shooting out of the undergrowth as if choreographed by Walt Disney. The page downloaded from the internet told me that Stevenson referred to ‘a cavern by the side of a wide meadow which has been part of me these last twelve years or so’. The meadow surrounded by its Constable trees and swaying tall grass seemed very like the impossibly beautiful arcadia which he frequently conjured in his unhappier poems of unrequited love. Apart from the glimpse it afforded of the river, it was difficult to see why the cave itself would hold a special place in his affection. The ceiling was very low, the hollowed out space was dripping wet with a floor churned ominously by hoof prints which on calm reflection were more likely to belong to goats than Auld Nick. There again, perhaps RLS enjoyed the odd encounter with the devil. Most likely he eat his sandwiches there when it pished outside.