Posted: 26th January 2023

The magical work of narratives

By Alicia Ocon

… tell me once again fairy tales, of enchanted forests.

of infinite universes.

Make me dream again to narrate awake

a world full of magic.

We are the narratives that we tell ourselves, that we were told and believed, that we validate on a daily basis, and all together they are the ones that build our timelines, which include the future, our future.

However, we are more than that, we are also all the narratives that we do not narrate, those that we dream, those that we pursue with or without resignation, those that remain hidden in our world of secret longings that coexist with our everyday life along with that “day to day” that eats up our time and lives our lives.

I remember many narratives that have driven my life for a long time, and despite my going through them they still continue to trace my timelines. They continue to make my past or the past of my ancestors hurt, and they continue to transcend into my futures that I still conceive as uncertain.

I have anchored the pain, anger and deep sorrow of my grandmother because she told me about it, of her mother and of other women in my family that I did not get to know, but they told me their stories. I connected with their narratives because I recognized a common pain and a more than reasonable fear.

I remember every word of my grandfather’s story that he never told, but he narrated with his gaze, with his silence, with the shadow of pain and feelings of guilt he walked with.

Time is absolutely relative in memory and without time or space it disguises itself and appears in what we have become accustomed to call before, now and after.

I also remember many other narratives I believed in when I simply believed it was possible. I did believe faithfully in that magical, alien, mysterious world. Without believing in many tales…, I did believe in “fairies” because from a very young age I also knew that life was much more than what was being narrated or what we were being made to narrate.

Future Narrative has joined the magic, and helped me to reconnect and to be able to see the unicorns in herds and the pegasus in the sky again.
Past has been renamed to learning, also to felt, and future only to an “I decide now”.

Every action developed in the project, every action created, every word written in every publication, every story told, every concept explained, every contact with every group has restructured in me the space-time paradigm from which narratives are created, from which what is possible and what is not is created, from which one sees how many other alternatives are also waiting to be anchored.

So, after all the work and almost close to the end of this project phase I declare that I’m tired of it, that I have had enough and that I stop choosing:

• the archetypal “futuristic future”, where machines prevail and all kinds of robots, robotics and technological advances are reborn with more life than life itself, precooked, vacuum-packed and ready to consume more fast junk, where robots won’t eat insects, but humans will. Because I want my narrative to be linked to people, to the advances of reconnection with nature and with the natural magic of each human body, of each being.
• the archetypal “uncertainty future”, the archetypal “endless loop road or perpetual goal future” or the archetypal “safe road future”, because I have already passed through them and they are so well-structured and narrated fallacies that I have come to find them fully ridiculous to believe.
• the archetypal “romanticized future”, the one that smells of fresh flowers, the one with the perfect look, in that idyllic spot with its shining sun and its “all inclusive”, because by lasting longer than that instant it turns intention into its engine and its strength which are in any case what I will focus my time on, but above all my desire.
• and I absolutely discard the archetypal “dystopian future” in which we could find zombies in the street and be frightened, but not surprised, and this I choose not to tolerate. That which accustoms us to legitimize the collective majority misfortune (but not of everyone) sustained over time and with peaks of prevalence, because a dystopia can “build itself” but is maintained by everyone, and I decide not to participate.

I return to the magical world that I knew existed from a very young age because the “real that we have been told” does not now shape or narrate my reality, and my future, as I have been able to remember, I construct only with my own narratives in my own timeline.

I take back the magic of exploring again and again my present beyond what I can narrate to myself.

I take back the knowledge that my futures are waiting only for me to make up my mind.

Alicia Ocon Fdez.
European Project Manager
Andalucia Acoge