THE BUSTORY
The Bustory is a storytelling roadtrip. It is the story of five young Danish beginners, who set out to find, buy, rebuild and drive a bus from Vancouver, Canada, through the American continent. It is the stories of the people that encounter the bus and its passengers on its journey. It is a story of creating a story and not being able to control it. We are writing and telling it as we
go. We want the story to be driven forward by the people we meet. And we want to experiment on our way. The Bustory is made up of the wish to do two things. To ride a bus through the American continent and to write a story of people and stories. This document unfolds the thoughts behind the project designed to do exactly that. WRITING THE STORY
Sometimes you are lucky enough to have the mental and financial surplus to write your own story. To fill in the gaps that are not filled by fighting the boss, the hunger, the system. That luck is our luck - at least for the next six months. For a few chapters, we have the freedom to write our own story. We could have chosen to spend them on the beach, filling the pages with leisure time, but we think that is too easy. We want The Bustory to be a good story. In our own personal narratives, of course, but also a story to inspire on a bigger scale. To write a good story, or to at least aspire to being a good story, it has to be somehow difficult. There has to be a quest. THE QUESTS
Imagine that the little fish Nemo could have written Finding Nemo himself, so that there had been no divers to catch him and put him in a bowl. He would have played happily around in the big ocean. Finding him would have been a task just a little too easy and the story not really a story. To make sure that something interesting comes out of this story, The Bustory always seeks a quest. A princess to rescue. A dragon to slay. Something difficult. Something to reach out for. Something to get help with. Something to lead and inspire the actions of the heroes.
• Quest #1: Building the bus
Our first quest is already clear: We want to give the story wheels. And although we are university students with no obvious craftsman skills, we want to do it ourselves. By September 15th 2011 we want a fully equipped bus with living quarters, cooking facilities and an appealing appearance, ready to hit the road.
• Quest #2, 3, 4 … : Our next quest is unclear. And the next one after that. But that is all part of the plan. We will find it once we have accomplished the first. It will be something we believe can take us far. It will involve the bus. And when the time comes, we might need some help. RIDING THE BUS
The bus is the physical manifestation of what we are doing. It is our flag. It is our mode of transportation, our stallion on which we ride. It is going to be the starting point for the adventure and our home all along the way. We are going to use it to catch people’s attention and to get them talking. We can place it in the dark forest or in the crowded city and different things will happen. To make the most of our ride, however, The Bustory also has principles for how we want to ride. THE PRINCIPLES
Fulfilling the quests is ultimately our responsibility, but we want to do it in a way that forces us to explore new ways of setting out into the world. We want to get rid of business as usual, and to challenge basic assumptions. We do not want to read too many books and we do not want to make too many plans. On top of that we want to meet a lot of people. To make sure this happens, we have set up a few principles.
• We ask for help. And we really need it. We want to see what happens when you show up with a quest that is beyond what you can do by yourself. We think asking for people‘s help makes talking to them much more interesting. It reveals much about them. And about the person asking.
• We pursue coincidence. Coincidences happen to you because of a choice you made. A long walk you walked. A bus you wanted to build. An experiment gone wrong. We believe coincidences are not random events that make your life change all of a sudden when you were just busy sitting in you chair. And we think they become interesting only if you notice them and then pursue them.
