I have written often and in detail about the human experience and our evolution out of the paleolithic (Stone Age) past. I did not hatch the idea but who could disagree, StoryTellers and their Stories have been instruments and vehicles for knowledge and understanding. Language is still the best if not only way people pass meaning on from one generation to the next; we listen and learn vicariously. Storytelling (what happened & what it means) has evolved along with technology. Watching Neil Armstrong again and again, first step on the moon without story (language) it makes no sense. For StoryTellers everywhere, I say thank you; all 8 billion of you.
I did not hatch this idea either but I am a devoted disciple. Maybe the best StoryTellers of all time are songwriters. Some of them, the really good ones, they can take a complex story of human emotions and behavior that would take Toni Morrison or Mark Twain 300 pages to relate and reduce it to 2 verses, a bridge and a chorus. Then they put it to music and tell it in 3 minutes. They leave a few holes in the lyrics so the listener can participate, fill in the blank space, merging the writer’s intention into their own experience. I listen and feel a common link with the writer as if they had read my mind and are telling my story. One that just hangs on and on is Kristofferson’s; “Never knowing if believing is a blessing or a curse or if the goin’ up was worth the coming down.”
Christmas stories put to music range from Jesus to the Grinch and most of us listen without really listening. They can lift you up or let you down, depending on how you feel to begin with. I’ve never celebrated Silent Night in a one horse open sleigh but I have been towed on the end of a rope behind a car through the snow, in the same spirit. I learned the chords to Silver Bells, played guitar and sang it with my grandkids a few years back but I am probably the only one who remembers.
I did not hatch this idea either but I am a devoted disciple. Maybe the best StoryTellers of all time are songwriters. Some of them, the really good ones, they can take a complex story of human emotions and behavior that would take Toni Morrison or Mark Twain 300 pages to relate and reduce it to 2 verses, a bridge and a chorus. Then they put it to music and tell it in 3 minutes. They leave a few holes in the lyrics so the listener can participate, fill in the blank space, merging the writer’s intention into their own experience. I listen and feel a common link with the writer as if they had read my mind and are telling my story. One that just hangs on and on is Kristofferson’s; “Never knowing if believing is a blessing or a curse or if the goin’ up was worth the coming down.”
Christmas stories put to music range from Jesus to the Grinch and most of us listen without really listening. They can lift you up or let you down, depending on how you feel to begin with. I’ve never celebrated Silent Night in a one horse open sleigh but I have been towed on the end of a rope behind a car through the snow, in the same spirit. I learned the chords to Silver Bells, played guitar and sang it with my grandkids a few years back but I am probably the only one who remembers.
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