Writing at the edge of magic.

So I’m a writer. Yep, I write! That’s what I’ve been doing for the better part of a year now.
Let me qualify the previous statement. Most of my life, I’ve been a storyteller. Only recently have fate, circumstances and a wonderfully beautiful woman conspired to enable me to write, as opposed to merely yak with smallish groups. Now my campfire tales, my epic sagas, my woven tapestries of heroic struggles between good and evil, are indelibly etched into/onto some medium. This is both good and bad in my opinion.

There was a sloppy, vaudeville charm to the Storyteller. He’d enter stage right, all top-hat and swirling long-coat, muttering incantations and gesticulating maniacally. An arched eyebrow and ominous tone were all it took to carry the day. That and an extroverted charisma the size of Texas. The Telling fed the Storyteller. The participation from those he told, drove the Story on to new heights. This birthing of a group idea, bound those participants in a unique way. Those Stories held a certain flavor that was both immediate and temporary. They burst on your tongue, sharply and strongly. Like smoke, when the tale was done there was nothing left but the echo of the memory of it, in the Teller as well as in the Told. Even a tale told twice, was never quite the same. Like an experience captured by the mind, a tale would morph and bend in the particular looking glass that was the witness. The Storyteller co-creates.

The Writer gives an air of permanent timelessness to the tale. Words strung into phrases, sentences, paragraphs then ultimately manuscripts, form a solid cage of structure. The Story flows, grows and unfolds within this framework. Once writ, it can be edited or bled of all originality. It can be refined or perfected for optimal niche-market consumption. The Writer exchanges the Story’s potential meme-like growth in the minds of humanity for static immortality. While the Story’s continued existence in some form is assured, there is no guarantee of participation from the Told. They do not ‘feed’ the Writer, with their gasps of wide-eyed wonder during the Telling. The Writer does not know if the Told will become Tellers. The Writer does not know if the Told will even remember his telling. The Writer writes.

Just writing that last paragraph depressed me. Let me be clear. I can see the obvious pros of writing. I might not have Tolkien’s world, certainly not the way it was written. I might be denied the powerful and thought provoking words of Jack Kerouac, J.D. Salinger or any number of wonderful Storytellers and poets who lived before my time. Isn’t writing and the ability to leave behind some sort of culture a measure of a society’s sophistication? I recognize all of this and willingly admit that I may be in love with the ‘romance’ of storytelling. I’m afraid that in this year of scribbling, the writer’s albatross of solitude has hung heavily ’round my neck.

I leave you with this question and invite any responses:

Can a Writer really be a Storyteller?

1 comment on “Writing at the edge of magic.”

Brian May 18, 2010

As both the Told and also as a Re-Teller, I can provide only my answer to your question: No. A Writer commits one version of a story, a narrative if you will, onto a medium to be consumed by others. As you’ve said, You, the Storyteller Co-Creates with the sometimes unwitting participation of Your audience..

I have seen it in your eyes as you’ve woven tales of wonder of far away lands and wondrous things and have seen my own countenance reflected back to me through your eye as the story was Created by all present. In my Re-Telling, I, too, have been captivated by my audience when reciting tales I’ve heard, or in Telling ones of my own creation. I know that, as the Storyteller weaves his web among his listeners, he is caught within the Telling, and so the Storyteller becomes part of the Story, his energies blended with those of his audience. None of this is possible as you commit your story to an immutable medium. It is carved into stone. Cast in iron. To be changed the original must be destroyed and retold on another stage in another theater devoid of any audience.

Your stories and those told by We Who Listened are truly magical and everlasting. Only you can decide what version to commit to history for others to read and, perhaps be captured by the web as it was originally woven. Maybe, just maybe, they will have the spark within them ignited to become Storytellers in their own right..

The risk is yours and the decision is yours alone. There are few Storytellers who can truly Tell a story, revealing to and within your audience something perhaps previously unknown to them. You, my friend, are a Storyteller who is burdened with a curse: You must decide what NOT to write….

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