Surrounded by noise but can’t call it energetic. And it certainly isn’t magnetic.
It is one thing to be in a public space and to be loud and obnoxious and boring, and another to be loud and perhaps initially obnoxious but not at all boring. The former is found everywhere, the latter almost nowhere.
The world is currently boring. Stale. Not at all magnetic. Headphones, earphones are everywhere. The boring and stale conversers probably wish they had theirs in as well.
Protests are loud and obnoxious and boring. Fake platitudes chanted in stale unison. The chanters are not all of like mind, because the spirit of protest has no actual mind; they are of like programming. Current society is one long protest. And it is fake.
Stories cannot be presented in protest form. The public space in which a story is not only presented but also painted must occur in certain intimate settings. Places where people go to chill, where they can visualize, think of the future.
But chill they cannot because that group over there won’t stop …and yet… I don’t actually want them to stop—they experience glimpses. Even though they won’t say so, they want a protest to stop.
Magnetic stories are currently suppressed. But what is suppressed today energizes, creates the future. Not through protest. Instead, through charm, sometimes even boisterous seduction. A picture that can’t be turned away from.
This is not a formal tactic, forcing in the interest of onlookers. And nor should it be entirely intentional. Because if there is forced intention, then a certain staleness threatens to linger and perhaps consume.
For a story to be magnetic, the tellers must live in a way in which the things they experience, or even conjure up, have to be told. In return, the teller must be listened to.
To what end?
In one sense, this should be self-explanatory: living. But magnetism is also a de-programming tool. Noise is everywhere. Reality has been manufactured through fake protest, thus devoid of creative energy. Only the story can overcome.