Stories lull. Stories entice. Stories seduce. Stories mislead. But stories are inescapable. Parul Sehgal explains... stories
I was Russell Crowe's stooge. From 2006, a great read by a journalist who was recruited as a shill and then discarded by Russell Crowe. "I had been quite the sucker. It was the only truth that made sense."
‘It’s kind of crazy to shop at Aldi, watch Netflix, drive a Mazda, and still have a wife.’
Marriage falls into a specific category of things I don’t want to think about because their meaning swells the more you do. Personally, socially, historically. And yet, I am always interested in love stories: I listen to my friends talk about their love lives and when they apologise for dwelling on something – ‘is this boring?!’ – I answer, ‘love is the subject.’ I am interested in how we organise our lives by connection with other people, in how we live alongside others, in how love is a social construct and a form of relation. Love is the subject, by which I mean, love is something we want to narrate and discuss, because words make this inexplicable and incomprehensible thing – other people – feel less ambiguous, perhaps closer to certainty.
