I’m captured by this idea of the messy, slow business of making soul. Maybe as a culture we are too obsessed with the great leaps and bounds of inspiration and enlightenment, the aha! moments, throwing away the tedium. I’m not so sure that’s the way it happens for most of us. As the old saying goes, “the soul isn’t convinced by much.” It normally takes a car accident, or a divorce, or an illness for the soul to pay attention. So the important question is, as the storyteller Martin Shaw ponders, “How do I stay in touch with the soul without setting fire to my own life?”