![]() Stories are to humans as life is to death: there cannot be one without the other. Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel: Despite their very great strength and ability their flaws and foibles are all too human… The ancient Greeks left their mark on western culture with their vivid descriptions of how the world was created, of Titans and mythological gods and goddesses, usually behaving badly and abusing their power in the course of their wondrous deeds. Tales and poems told by bards, philosophers, sages, scribes, scholars and age-old greats like Hesiod, Homer, Ovid and Herodotus. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.” ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. ![]() Stories beget and shape whole religions and belief systems, (Adam and Eve squarely put the blame for everything on women), with numerous epic tales that have been told over the ages stories which are so deeply rooted and embedded in our collective unconscious that their effects will always be felt on some level. ![]() Stories, both real (historical) and fictional can leave an enduring legacy. illustration The Adventure of the Silver Blaze by Sidney Paget.Ī story is an escape rooted in reality that can come into existence and stay with us (in one form or another), through millennia and centuries. The likes of Sir Lancelot, Guinevere, King Arthur, Merlin, Hamlet, Robin Hood, Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit, Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy, Ebenezer Scrooge, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Sherlock Holmes, Scarlett O’Hara, Alice in Wonderland, The Great Gatsby, James Bond and Harry Potter to name just a few, have become stalwarts of our culture. Once notated onto paper or screen, outside the cranial cavity of the author, stories and characters can take on a life of their own. Travel in the imagination is instantaneous and immersive. Einstein grasped this concept when he asserted that imagination is more important than intelligence. There are no frontiers closed off to our imagination. Maybe stories and art hold such fascination and appeal because as human beings we are bound by flesh and blood, contained by our physical borders, but our imagination knows no such limits. The same could be said of music and art, of all creative, artistic endeavour. That spark, which is a memory or a thought, enables further sparks, which in combination coalesce into a form of expression through the lens and hand of a creator – a human being. Stories are nebulous in nature because they come from nothing but an electrical spark. That, for me, is a worthwhile endeavour and contribution. I dream of writing a book that will suck someone in and spit them out at the end forever altered. The transformation can be emotional, mental, physical and even spiritual. Stories are greater than the sum of their literary parts – for their effect is transformational. Stories are the rich imaginal tapestry upon which consciousness records itself. These ordered black marks on the page evoke pictures in our minds, each word itself perhaps unremarkable, yet together, they are a collection of something magical: a work of art. We are held rapt under their spell, either in awe or disgust, joy or sorrow, and every emotion in between – a voluntary prisoner to their unfolding. A body of words, strung together with a certain arrangement and architecture, style and voice sometimes poetical in nature, perhaps enchanting, beguiling, suspenseful, mysterious, erotic, brutal or shocking. There are many definitions for a collection of words that we deem to be a story. It’s such a profound subject I don’t think I could ever tire of it, but you my dear reader are entitled to feel differently! I know I have shared posts on this subject before, but if you’ll indulge me I’ll try and come at it from a fresh angle, so that any repetition can be forgiven.Ī Reading from Homer by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema Now comes the hard part, placing them into a cohesive structure that makes sense, but also captivates, much like a story… Maybe it was the artistry of the prose of the book I was reading, or the fact that both my daughters were away at the time, and the ensuing solitude and relief from the tumult of the last few weeks that allowed my muse to be heard. My hand scribbled as if on auto-pilot, struggling to keep up with the incoming thoughts, jumbled as they were, one leading to another in a febrile firing of unstoppable synapses. My circuits were almost on overload frantically trying to record the flood of questions and stream of consciousness that I could not have stemmed even if I wanted to. “Every man’s life is a fairy tale written by God’s fingers.” ~ Hans Christian AndersenĬalliope bestowed me with a mother lode on Sunday morning.
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