She talked about fantasy storytelling being a comforting touchstone in our rapidly changing electronic world. She also made mention of marketing and how that influences writing.
Marketing seems so cold blooded, so jaded. It seems it has the power to suck the life force out of all things artistic, and reduces them to the scaffolding, the formula of art, while the real art gets lost somewhere. When WAS the first time money changed hands for a story? Maybe so long ago that it IS part of the process and that’s the way it is supposed to be. I’m not sure.
When I think of all the thousands and thousands….millions really, of stories that have been told throughout the history of man, one truly wonders if one has anything unique to say. Oh how we have categorized everything! And somehow that very categorization seems to steal some of the power of a tale.
The Hero’s Quest, The Lowly, Obscure Savior of the Universe, The battle between Good and Evil, The Pilgrim’s Quest, The rise and fall of Kingdoms, The Apocalyptic Tale. These “genres” somehow seem to trivialize and commercialize a very important aspect of the human condition.
Storytelling is the way we try to understand ourselves and how we try to teach the next generation, and yes to warn them too. But I’m also open to the possibility that one shouldn’t take it all so seriously. That after all a Bard can add a line or two of his own to put his mark on a “sacred” tale.
Maybe the trick is to always tell a story and hear one too with tongue in cheek.
But the thing that nags at the back of my mind is this question: Is there a KIND of story that has never been told? (Solomon said that there is nothing new under the sun…) Sometimes I have this silly feeling that if I hold my head just so, and stand in a certain place just so, at a certain time of the day or year, and clear my cacophonous mind just so, this story will come to me.
And to complicate an already hopelessly muddled puddle of speculation, I have to deal with my own personality quirk of the horror of redundancy. The most awful thing I could do to a reader would be to bore them or insult their intelligence. Like re-telling say, The Prince and the Pauper, would just be redundancy of the first water, you know? And what makes matters worse is, I don’t even know if any of this stuff makes sense !!!
Maybe I should just stick to poetry.
Wherein my lines of obscurity,
I can hide my insecurity.
With metaphor and similitude,
I conceal the fact that my brain is stewed.
(It might work . . .it just might work ! )