Storytelling as Ethos

October’s event was held at Sitio, at the new Fintech House location in Picoas. The skies may have been gloomy, but the city still looked stunning from our vantage point on the seventh floor.

As usual, the early start was aided by free coffee and breakfast. We were also lucky to have live music provided by Gui, an independent singer/songwriter based in Lisbon. Brought up in Mozambique with roots in Brazil and Portugal, his style draws influences from all over the world. His intuitive need to turn life experiences into narratives meant his music tied in perfectly with the theme.

The month’s global topic was Ethos, which our speaker Alex Couto interpreted through his knowledge of storytelling. A Lisboeta originally hailing from Setúbal, he came to writing by way of advertising, and now frequently combines both skills.

With an initial slide announcing that Alex would be our tour guide for the next twenty-ish minutes, he led us on a journey through the history of storytelling. Starting 33,000 years ago in France’s Chauvet Cave, he took us all the way up to the birth of social media and how we share stories today.

The talk covered a wide range of themes related to storytelling as ethos, from artistry to faith and interactivity. There was plenty of inspiration to be found in the artistic references, which encompassed The Twilight Zone, the films of David Lynch and the music of Childish Gambino. Alex also showed us the first ever photograph and discussed how the medium lent itself to creative expression and storytelling, exemplified later in the work of Joel Meyerowitz.

The Q&A was lively and brought to light a moving story about Alex’s grandfather and how he communicated education through stories. We also learned about our speaker’s extremely dedicated writing routine: “Get home, have dinner, write until I go to bed”.

Alex mentioned several books which helped him on his journey: Story by Robert McKee, On Writing by Stephen King and Story Engineering by Larry Brooks, as well as the website Masterclass.com. We were left with plenty of ideas and some sound creative advice: “If you have a project you’re not sure about, the only way to find out is to do it. And at the very least you’ll get a story out of it.”

Photos by Eglė Duleckytė

Text by Alexis Somerville