Science in Storytelling: Interstellar and ’39

Both Queen and Christopher Nolan have used the theory of relativity as a foundation for storytelling in surprisingly similar ways. Their ventures show how science can be used to tell human stories.

I don’t think that everyone is aware of the song “39” by Queen. This underrated gem sounds like a folksy shanty with its lyrics about ships and seas, but it’s not what it seems.

“39” was penned by Brian May, who put his astrophysics studies on hold to pursue his career as lead guitarist of Queen (as one does). With that fact in mind, the song becomes very different from what its genre initially implies it to be.

2016-07-09-1468034932-262678-brianandpluto2b — Dr. Brian May eventually did finish his Ph.D in astrophysics thirty years after starting it! Photo: HuffPost

The song’s “ship” is a spaceship, and the “milky seas” refers to the Milky Way. The “world so newly born” is another planet that offers hope for an “old and grey” Earth. Some lyrics in the song are strange: the chorus mentions “the land that our grandchildren knew” and the narrator observes in the final verse that “so many years have gone though I’m older but a year.” He addresses someone mournfully, saying “your mother’s eyes from your eyes cry to me.”

May once explained “39” in an interview:

It’s a science fiction story. It’s the story about someone who goes away and leaves his family and because of the time dilation effect, when you go away, the people on earth have aged a lot more than he has when he comes home. He’s aged a year and they’ve aged 100 years so, instead of coming back to his wife, he comes back to his daughter and he can see his wife in his daughter, a strange story.

Essentially, “39” is about the human effects of the theory of relativity. I had too much of an arts education to explain relativity properly, but what’s important to this discussion is that time is relative; it will not pass at the same rate for all observers, and can be distorted. Some causes for extreme time dilation include black holes, which can distort the fabric of space-time itself, and light-speed travel (the closer something gets to the speed of light, the slower time will pass for it). For the traveller in “39,” only a year has gone by, but much more time has passed back on Earth, and the person who wrote him “letters in the sand” is no longer alive when he returns.

If you’ve seen Christopher Nolan’s 2014 film Interstellar, this might sound a little familiar.

4820494 — Matthew McConaughey as Joseph Cooper in *Interstellar.* Photo: FilmGrab

To sum up (and spoil) Interstellar: the film is set in a future where the Earth is a dying dust bowl and its population is at risk of extinction. NASA sends explorers into space to find a planet to serve as a new home. Protagonist Cooper is one reluctant explorer, leaving his children in hopes of giving them a future. Near the midpoint of the film, Cooper arrives on a planet where time is so dilated that while a few hours pass for him, 23 Earth years go by, as he discovers when he returns to the ship to find recorded messages left by his aging children. By the end of the film, his daughter Murphy is an old woman, and Cooper reunites with her on her deathbed.

When I saw Interstellar’s trailers, I wondered if it was connected to “39”, and after watching the film, I felt certain of it. As far as I’m aware, though, Nolan never confirmed if “39” inspired Interstellar. There are several key similarities. Both feature explorers leaving a failing Earth in a spaceship in search of a new world. Their quest is ultimately successful, but at huge personal – and temporal – cost to the explorers and their loved ones. Time acts as a destructive force that irrevocably disrupts the natural lifespans of those involved, but it is also a precious resource for the protagonist, who gets to see his daughter in her old age.

1220514 — Cooper saying goodbye to his daughter Murphy as he leaves for his mission. Photo: FilmGrab

These stories show that science fiction can be intimately human. Both “39” and Interstellar use physics to tell stories of love, loss, and hope. Cooper realizes that his and Murphy’s love for each other is “the key” to transmitting the data that will save humanity, and the narrator of “39” promises his partner he will return to Earth. Interstellar ends optimistically, but the narrator of “39” laments that “all your letters in the sand cannot heal me like your hand / for my life still ahead, pity me.” Scientific discoveries and saving Earth’s population is not enough to make up for what was lost on a personal scale, but love endures nonetheless.

Science fiction, though often maligned, offers unique opportunities to explore human relationships and emotions in technologically fantastic settings. These elements have been tied to the genre since its beginnings in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and have endured up through Star Trek and Carl Sagan’s Contact. We could use more marriages between science and storytelling. As Dr. Brian May himself says, “I think we all realize ourselves best by opening up both sides of our intellect… artistic and scientific.”

The Longest and Most Charming Love Letter in Literature

A love letter can be one of the most intimate ways to express love and affection to another. Thankfully for us, some of the greatest writers in English literature also wrote beautiful letters, which often take on new life after the deaths of their writers and recipients.

By Adriana Wiszniewska

In 1928, Virginia Woolf published Orlando, a novel about a poet who lives for centuries and changes from man to woman. The book was inspired by Vita Sackville-West, with whom Virginia had a decades-long romance and later friendship. Sackville-West’s son, Nigel Nicolson, famously described Orlando as “the longest and most charming love letter in literature.” The book is really an ode to Vita in all her complexities and contradictions and a testament to the power of language and story to express the most complicated human experiences. Fitting, too, that Nicolson likened Orlando to a love letter, since Vita and Virginia wrote letters to one another from their first encounter in 1922 until Virginia’s death in 1941.

virginia-woolf-vita-sackville-west — Vita Sackville-West (left) and Virginia Woolf (right). Photo: Time

In the age of Internet dating, it’s easier than ever to stay connected, but convenience has in some ways come at the expense of creativity. Somewhere along the way, sliding into your crush’s DMs became the primary mode of expressing romantic interest. Love letters, by comparison, seem like a dying art form.

There’s something strangely fascinating about reading another person’s intimate letters, like peering behind a curtain you’re not supposed to. Letters, after all, are meant to be private. Yet, our inclination to uncover the private lives of public figures persists.

Writers like John Keats, Franz Kafka, Emily Dickinson, and Woolf, among many others, were all exceptional diarists and letter-writers as well as poets and novelists. It’s a curious thing to read the most intimate writings of our favourite writers—like realizing your professors are human beings who have entire lives outside of the academy. The letters of writers continue to be published posthumously not only because they make for interesting historical documents, but also because they offer insight into the remarkable and mundane inner lives of often exalted figures.

The love letter, in particular, reflects exactly what makes the medium of letters so special. Call me a hopeless romantic, but reading the most intimate expressions of love and desire between two people is kind of swoon-worthy. The power of reading these love letters comes from the medium itself, which is at once private and public, immediate and remote, intimate and mundane, fleeting and permanent.

Orlando-vita-and-Virginia-012 — Vita and Virginia and dogs! Photo: Charleston

Vita and Virginia wrote letters to each other throughout the entirety of their complex and shifting relationship, and through those letters, we get a glimpse of just how much the two meant to each other, how much impact each left on the other’s life and art. Their letters to each other are a chronicle of human connection, captured across space and time.

In perhaps my favourite love letter of all time, Vita writes to Virginia:

I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your undumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn’t even feel it. And yet I believe you’ll be sensible of a little gap. But you’d clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it should lose a little of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is really just a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan’t make you love me any more by giving myself away like this — But oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defenses. And I don’t really resent it.

January 1926

That’s the beauty of a letter: it’s there and then it’s gone. Here, Vita puts her feelings in the starkest of terms: simple, honest, vulnerable. But the “little gap” she talks about is present also in the form of the letter. There is always a gap in what we can know from these missives. We get only a glimpse but are unable to fully grasp all that remains unspoken and what happens between the acts. But that’s also what makes reading these letters such a unique experience: we’re only getting a part of the story. Some of it will be forever unavailable to us. And maybe that’s exactly as it should be.

“Material Without Being Real”: How IMAX Immerses

Watching film favourites in IMAX offers viewers the chance to feel as close to a story as possible, going one step further with visual immersion to transport the viewer.

By Serena Ypelaar

“Life is much more successfully looked at through a single window,” said F. Scott Fitzgerald in his 1925 novel The Great Gatsby – and when it comes to film, I couldn’t agree more, the “single window” being the big screen. Despite the rise of home streaming services, the cinema still thrives as a public space for one reason: its ability to immerse. IMAX is an exceptional example, as I was reminded last night at the Cinesphere in Toronto.

I’ve seen two films at the Cinesphere in the last year, and both experiences were cinematic treats. I should also note that both are among my all-time favourite movies: The Sound of Music (1965) and The Great Gatsby (2013). Rewatching these films on the big(ger) screen was a phenomenal exercise in 1) spectacle and 2) film criticism.

In Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music (1965), IMAX drops us right amidst the Alps as we follow Maria’s adventures up close and personal. Photo: The Sound of Music

My family loves films. Throughout my life my parents have introduced me to a multitude of classic films, and we always revered IMAX as a special chance to see those classics larger than life. When my mother was in university, she got to meet with one of the creators of IMAX to learn about its inception. IMAX is actually a Canadian creation, distributed worldwide since the 1960s – and it has the power to transport viewers using large-scale visuals.

Take The Great Gatsby, for example. I saw it a couple of times (ahem, a few) in theatres, but that was six years ago now – and ever since then, I’ve only watched on television screens at home. Returning to the cinema to watch Gatsby last night was even more invigorating than I expected. Baz Luhrmann’s film is a highly visual, often dizzying romp through the 1920s and it takes some time to get into, but after the first half hour or so I was so absorbed that I didn’t even notice where I was or that I was actually watching a story from outside it. My friend and I delved so deep into discussion about the film and its execution of the titular 20th century literary novel that I’m still now recovering from the magnitude of such an intense viewing experience.

Being tossed headfirst into Jay Gatsby’s parties is one of the joys of watching films in an even larger, more immersive cinema. Photo: Collider

IMAX has the power to take you into the world it presents, through the mere sights and sounds of the experience but also in its creation itself. The IMAX projector allows films to be ten times larger than 35mm, with outstanding quality picture. Combine the sheer size of the screen with the sheer size of the Gatsby universe, and you’ve got yourself a winner. As viewers, we’re drawn deeply into the narrative through immersion, picking up details like never before: the nuances of each character’s expression, the ornate features of the sets, and cinematography as it pulls us further in.

Jordan Baker (Elizabeth Debicki) Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton), Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan) and Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) in The Great Gatsby (2013). The film in IMAX faithfully recreated the white curtain scene from Fitzgerald’s novel. Photo: IMDb

As the film drew to a close last night, the audience was mesmerized – it’s been ages since I could hear a pin drop in a theatre like that. The weightiest scenes were magnetic in the sense that I felt like I was there; I got absorbed in Jay Gatsby’s parties, his gardens, or roaring along in his large yellow car. Watching The Sound of Music in IMAX was just as enticing, with the rolling hills and mountains of the Austrian landscape spilling before the audience. In IMAX, we’re immune to commonplace distractions that might interrupt at home; we’re fully surrounded by the action.

The reality of the Valley of Ashes is jarringly brought to life in IMAX, where there is no hiding from the dirt and grime of industrial New York in the 1920s. Photo: Popsugar

Essentially, IMAX can elevate an average movie night to a sublime experience, one that shows cinema at its best: taking us out of ourselves and into another universe. These innovations in media offer top notch escapism without even leaving our seats, and personally, I’m more than grateful for the chance to get swallowed up into a good story.

Quotes used in this article are taken from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925).

Come for the Gorgeous Ladies, Stay for the Wrestling

With the release of season 3 of Netflix’s GLOW, we take a moment to reflect on professional wrestling, the art of storytelling, and empowered women.

By Adriana Wiszniewska

This may come as a surprise to some who know me, but I used to watch professional wrestling as a kid. Every Monday and Friday night, my brother and I would sit down in front of the TV to watch a rotating cast of burly men (and occasionally women! Trish Stratus FTW) fight each other inside the ring and out. For nine-year-old me, it was the height of entertainment. A Stone Cold Steve Austin action figure sat next to Barbie in my closet and when the show pulled off moments of magic—like the Undertaker rising from the dead in a glorious comeback—I was absolutely blown away, eyes glued to the screen.

johnoliverwrestling — John Oliver tells it like it is. Photo: Imgur

Somewhere along the way, however, my passion for WWE faded and I almost forgot that episode of my childhood. Then I watched GLOW on Netflix and remembered why I used to love wrestling so much. Set in the 80s, GLOW follows a group of oddball women who come together to form the first all-female wrestling show. Here was wrestling presented to me as I remembered it. Not as the butt of a joke. Not as “fake” fighting. Not as mere “soap opera for men.” In fact, GLOW’s particular iteration of wrestling includes very few men at all.

GLOW, which stands for Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, was an actual all-female wrestling show that originally ran from 1986 to 1990. It was ridiculous and over-the-top, with storylines about good and evil and walking stereotypes for characters. It had comic interludes and rapping and sketches. It was the modern day equivalent of vaudeville, entertaining millions with theatrics and a sense of humour.

595523912100003400fc4ac1 — The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. Photo: Huffpost

You might wonder why a show centred around people fighting each other would incorporate song and dance and tomfoolery. Well, while wrestling is now a billion-dollar industry, it actually began in side shows, carnivals, and vaudeville theatres. Wrestling is not just fighting dressed up with spandex and costumes but a form of performance art in its own right. Characters are larger than life, with designated “faces” (the heroes who garner our sympathy) and “heels” (the villains we love to hate) as well as storylines taking place inside and outside the ring to drive conflict. But while the wrestling is for show, that doesn’t make it any less impressive. It’s true that the outcomes are fixed and the moves are rehearsed. But the athleticism is real. It takes immense strength and ability to make wrestling look real, limit injuries, and throw your body around over and over, night after night.

The magic of GLOW is that it understands that wrestling is more than just play-acting fights. It’s also just plain fun. The real heart of wrestling, as GLOW proves, is its capacity for humour and creative storytelling. Although GLOW starts with a focus on Alison Brie’s Ruth Wilder, it quickly turns into an ensemble piece, showcasing a diverse cast of brilliant and funny women. And that’s what GLOW, both the original wrestling show and the Netflix show it inspired, is really about: a bunch of women empowering themselves and each other through wrestling.

In the penultimate episode of GLOW’s first season, the ladies attend a fancy gala, pretending to be recovering drug addicts in order to raise funds for their strange and struggling wrestling show. One by one, they make a show of speechifying to the rich crowd. But when it’s Ruth’s turn to take the stage, she breaks through to something real, admitting to a room full of strangers that she’s made mistakes, big ones, including sleeping with her best friend’s husband.

But then I found wrestling. And it saved me. Coming to the gym every day and seeing these women struggle to use their bodies and learn something new and . . . we did. And it’s a better feeling than drugs.

ruthspeech — Ruth (Alison Brie) describes the power of wrestling. Photo: Netflix

Like the best art, wrestling has the capacity to save. Not in the way a doctor might save a patient, but in the way that only art can—by showing us that we are not alone. GLOW is a TV show that embodies the spirit of pro wrestling. It has comedy and drama and characters you want to root for. And, of course, gorgeous ladies who come together, learn something new, and struggle to use their bodies in ways no one expected of them.

Operation Neptune: Remembering D-Day

75 years after the Normandy landings in 1944, this D-Day commemoration may be the final milestone at which World War II veterans are alive to tell the tale. How does remembrance change when we no longer have firsthand witnesses to uphold our historic memory?

By Serena Ypelaar

Historians, especially those working in public history, know that we have a responsibility to remember and learn from the past, lest past mistakes be repeated. This responsibility will loom larger in the forefront of our duties when the original veterans of World War II, the firsthand memory-keepers, are no longer with us.

Yesterday marked the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy. On the 6th of June, 1944, British, French, Canadian, and American troops carried out an amphibious assault on the coast of German-occupied France. Codenamed “Operation Neptune”, the Normandy landings constituted the largest seaborne invasion in history. D-Day therefore laid the foundations for Europe’s liberation and the end of the Second World War. Though there are veterans still living to recount their memories, soon that will no longer be the case.

The 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade disembarking onto Juno Beach at Normandy. Photo: Wikimedia

At the commemoration ceremonies at Normandy this past Thursday, Prince Charles referenced this sobering reality in his speech. It left me to ponder how quickly time is receding (as always) from our grasp – these changes will transform the historical memory of the Second World War. After all, we no longer have veterans of World War I (or earlier conflicts) to consult about their experiences. Historical interpretation of WWII will likewise rely on physically preserved records, which is going to change how we remember and reinterpret the conflict.

Remembrance in itself is an act – or series of acts – of interpretation. And those interpretations may change depending on contemporary international contexts. For instance, national leaders including outgoing British prime minister Theresa May, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, and French president Emmanuel Macron, came together at the D-Day ceremonies in France yesterday to memorialize those who fought the Nazis at Normandy. Notably absent was German Chancellor Angela Merkel. It’s unclear whether she was not invited or simply didn’t attend; she was present at the British ceremony in Portsmouth the day before. Of course, Germany’s role in World War II is the obvious point of contention in this kind of commemoration, and how the country engages with commemorations today sets the tone for reconciliation and reparation.

Britain was prominent among the Allied forces during World War II, and they likewise had a robust presence in the D-Day commemorations. With the mess that is Brexit, Britain’s current political situation places them at an interesting perspective. D-Day was a mobilization of Allied forces which relied upon the unity of major European nations like Britain and France. Now, however, Britain is stepping back from their long-term trade ties with France (as well as Germany) to leave the European Union. In a similar way, the United States was heavily involved in D-Day, yet diplomacy between the U.S. and European countries is particularly strained thanks to President Donald Trump. Having seen tension between certain political leaders, such as between Trump and Merkel, these commemoration events are like a strange family reunion: they reveal how relationships have changed over time.

“Into the Jaws of Death” by Chief Photographer’s Mate (CPHOM) Robert F. Sargent, U.S. Coast Guard.
Photo: Wikimedia

The main priority of preserving history is remembering and honouring the past. To this end, Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, read out the exact words of his great grandfather George VI, from his D-Day Broadcast:

“At this historic moment, surely not one of us is too busy, too young, or too old to play a part in a nationwide, worldwide vigil …”
King George VI, in a D-Day Broadcast aired 6 June 1944

King George VI of England’s D-Day Broadcast,
originally aired on the morning of 6 June 1944.

This touch was particularly notable because it acknowledges the importance of taking the past into account (something the British notoriously excel at!). One day, not only will the veterans be gone, but so will their children, grandchildren, and everyone who knew them. So what does this tell us about commemoration? We need to preserve the stories of those who lived through the experience, and we need to uphold their legacies as if they were our own while paying our respects to the great sacrifices they made for freedom.

“Only those who threw themselves against the walls of the fortress of Europe in Normandy know the full extent of what unfolded here 75 years ago. But it is the responsibility of all Canadians to ensure that their story and their sacrifice will never be forgotten.”
Justin Trudeau, in a speech at Juno Beach on 6 June 2019

Juno Beach is the site where Canadian forces landed during the D-Day invasion. Photo: Joe de Sousa

Nationalism of course comes into play at these commemorations, as it always does. But if we think of commemoration on a purely human level – irrespective of politics – we can preserve history with greater integrity. Sure, we can argue about international relations and the current state of affairs worldwide, but that’s not what commemoration is about. When loss of life is concerned, politicizing memorials trivializes and distracts from the sacrifices of human beings. As shown by the world’s diplomatic leaders, public memory is a collaborative form of historical interpretation. There are many things we may differ on as people and as countries, but the human cost of war is universally significant to us.

D-Day teaches us the importance of balancing past interpretations with present-day ones in order to remember responsibly. In the end, preserving historical memory isn’t the sole responsibility of those who lived through an event in history – it’s our responsibility, as the ones who will carry their stories forward in years to come.

To learn more about the 75th anniversary D-Day commemorations, click here.

So, Tell Me Something About Yourself

To celebrate The Mindful Rambler‘s 1st birthday, we examine storytelling as a way to get to know people.

By Serena Ypelaar

Think of the last funny story you told.

How did you make it compelling? Which parts did you include, and which parts did you omit? And what about timing? (It’s supposed to be everything, isn’t it?) I’m guessing you were definitely hoping for the best punchline and the best response to your story.

Storytelling is an inherently creative process. And I think that the reception of a story depends heavily on the storyteller. What perspective are they coming from? Who are they trying to reach? Audience – and knowing your audience – is just as integral to the success of a story.

Personal storytelling is something of a curatorial process, trying to synthesize one’s own experience and present it coherently to others so they can share in it.

For instance, I just got back from a month in Scotland, and I have a plethora of stories to tell my family and friends. Since there are so many, they’ll likely unravel slowly over time as I’m reminded of things I did or saw (or, let’s be honest, ate). Naturally I’ll be looking to impart the essence of my experience – how enlightening it was, how beautiful the landscapes were, how friendly people are … the list of stories it’s possible to share goes on.

Yours truly on a ramble through the woods. Photo: Serena Ypelaar

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about personal storytelling and what it means for us as humans. We’ve mostly been discussing public storytelling here on The Mindful Rambler, on a large scale; but as we’re today celebrating the blog’s 1st birthday, I want to reframe things a bit so we also consider storytelling on a more personal level.

What is the significance of our own stories? And how do literary masters, artists, and creators pour themselves into their own storytelling to share a piece of their lives – their struggles, their triumphs, their losses, their love? The art reflects the artist; not only can we learn something about the world when we consume and interpret stories, we also get to know another person, sometimes without ever having met them. Humanity needs stories.

We’ll be rambling more on these themes soon. Thank you all for reading The Mindful Rambler in its first year – I hope you’ve enjoyed it! My fellow ramblers and I – Adriana, Sadie, Lilia, Jenny, and Bretton – look forward to telling even more stories over the next year.

Long Story Short, You Can’t Control Everything

Though storytelling is highly personal, it thrives on human interaction and the sharing of experiences, making storytelling and interpretation inherently collaborative processes.

By Serena Ypelaar

“You can’t control what others think, but you can control what you put out there.”

This idea is something a lot of people carry around, and it has a special relevance when we think of how we’re surrounded by stories. As we enter a brand new year of The Mindful Rambler, I’d like to reframe the discussion on storytelling and interpretation – and the methods of both processes – which we’ve been examining here on the blog.

In telling a story, whether it’s for entertainment, healing, documentation, critical analysis, or otherwise, there’s always a lot of pressure around how it will be received. Will people like it? Will they get it? Will they take from it the information you’re hoping to impart?

Shakespeare definitely distilled some information down when he wrote his history plays, inciting a multitude of different interpretations.
Photo: Giphy

I experience that pressure whenever I write something. Anything I write can be interpreted, misinterpreted, and reinterpreted, and the truth is that my writing won’t exist entirely under my control once it’s out there. Every person who hears a story brings their own unique experience to it, creating something new. Two people who read the same book, for example, might see it in completely different ways, meaning that the result – the experience of storytelling – actually becomes a hybridization, a meeting place between the “teller” and the “listener”. Storytelling is the act of bringing one’s story, through words, images, sound, and other sensory outputs, into being outside of one’s self.

To avoid delving too far into the abstract, I’ll use an example. If someone is describing a place while telling a story, they’ll describe it as best they can noting features they feel are important to the story or of personal value to them. The person listening to the story will then construct their own interpretation of the event, incorporating their past experiences, feelings, biases, and assumptions. In short, the story is changed by the listener’s reception of it. Every single person hearing that story will have a different conceptualization of it, and a different understanding.

It’s the same with novel writing. Writers describe a character, for instance, and we, the readers, each construct a mental image of that person (and then get angry when the film casting doesn’t match that). I don’t know how many people I heard, back in middle school, ranting about how they definitely, totally did not picture Robert Pattinson when they dreamed up Twilight’s Edward Cullen in their heads. There are also race-based biases toward literary characters which often become clear when a person of colour is cast as a character many assumed would be white (like the vampire Laurent from the same franchise), racial prejudices becoming evident with readers’ indignation.

As demonstrated by their reaction to Edi Gathegi being cast as Laurent, *Twilight*‘s preteen fanbase did not want a diverse cast for the 2009 film adaptation… and, according to director Catherine Hardwicke, neither did the author (Stephenie Meyer) herself.

Irrespective of a story and its content, creators must become comfortable with the notion that each person who hears their story is going to see something different. There’s no way a storyteller can construct their tale in a way that guarantees uniform interpretation. Attempting to do so can result in over-describing something and alienating readers by unconsciously (or consciously) trying to harness control over their perceptions. It’s possible to use photographs to aid a visual picture, for instance, but these will still foster further imaginings on the part of the listener. Gaps in information will be filled independently – so the point is not to describe every single thing that is within you, but rather what is important to the story. That’s how we get such engaging stories, whether in literature, history, entertainment, art, memoir, or otherwise. Allow the listener to meet you halfway, and together you can share the experience while expressing trust in another person.

Maybe that’s why storytelling is so important to us – on an instinctual level, it allows us to connect with each other and find common ground.