Kevin J. Mackey's Week - Guest Post: Why I Write

Understand why the fuss, HERE.
Picture credits on this post.

I have another special knight-post for you. Kevin didn't want a story written about him or a character of his. Instead, he preferred to talk to you directly, which is great! 



Please welcome Kevin J. Mackey and read his reasons of why he writes. Also, if you want to learn more about him, you can read his interview here, and later this week there'll be a review of his book. 

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I listened to the world's oldest surviving story, Gilgamesh, on the first iPod I bought. I attended a performance of the oldest complete play in the Western canon, The Persians by Aeschylus, at a theater in Berkeley.

These stories, dating from millennia ago, are still alive today, still speak to us today. Parables, plays, allegory, action rendered in narrative. The ways we humans try to explain who we are, why we do what we do and what is the meaning of what happens to us. 

The storyteller, the "old talker" in my native language — gaelic, the holder and recounter of the tribe's history, is a central figure. And has held this central position from the earliest times in human societies.

Stories remain central to societies today. Lines, blocks long, awaiting the latest Harry Potter or Twilight installment attest to this. We watch morality plays on television, or in movie theaters, couched in the guise of science-fiction, westerns or romantic comedies. Entertainment, yes. But, at the heart of it is the use of story to communicate, to explain, to connect.

Humans view the world, and who we are, through the prism of language, symbol, story.

My siblings, in their working lives, feed the hungry, nurse the sick, build shelter for others. My own working life has been spent tending the machines that run much of our world. Not without value, certainly. But for me — insufficient.

I write to uncover, to connect, to delight. To immerse myself in the swirl of language, of symbol, of striving to understand who we are. That striving that began long before Gilgamesh and will continue long after I am no more.

I write, because storytelling matters.

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Kevin J Mackey is native Irish but now lives in the far drier climate of the San Francisco Bay Area. He reads widely - "whatever may be found between book covers" - but has a particular fondness for science fiction and poetry. He has had both flash and short fiction published in 2010 and 2011.

He also published "Haiku - Through a Lens", a collection of haiku and photographs on the themes of Light, Darkness, Travel and Seasons. He says he "follows in his father's ink-splotches".