Dear Friends,
Many thanks to those of you who supported and participated in Story Euphoria. Your contributions to the project made it worthwhile.
Unfortunately, it's now my regrettable duty to put the Story Euphoria project on hold. Due to demands from the most dominating commitments in my life (i.e., school, work, etc.) I don't have the time required to keep Story Euphoria alive--for the present time. There are still so many stories and storytelling topics I wanted to share with you--many suggested by friends of Story Euphoria. We'll see what we can do to bring those to light this summer, when I hope to resume work on Story Euphoria.
In the meantime, thanks again to all who encouraged this project, and also to those who may just now be discovering Story Euphoria for the first time: I hope the foundations here laid will stir in your mind and your heart a greater appreciation for the power and art of stories.
Regards from Story Euphoria,
Amanda Haldy
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Story Euphoria 14: Prufrock
It’s easy to focus on the literary forms most conventionally associated with storytelling, like novels and short stories, but poetry has its own brand of storytelling power. This week’s podcast features The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. This poem was first introduced to me many years ago by my English teacher, Mr. Stewart of Monticello, and over the years I have delighted in discovering something new every time I revisit it. In a mere 131 lines of delicious, rolling verse, Eliot manages to coax from scattered images and half-formed arguments the entirety of the title character’s life. Download and listen.
If you would like to read this and other poems by T.S. Eliot, you can follow along with the text I used at Project Gutenberg, check out a volume from your local library, or buy a copy for your home library:
Production Notes:
Creator: Amanda Haldy
Theme Music: Nye Nate by Roger Leighton
Incidental Music: Material for a Dream by Josep Anton Garcia Rami.
and Better Than Me by Celeste Astara.
Song and Story
There is nothing like a song for cutting straight to the heart, for establishing mood without any ado and igniting the senses. Of all the art forms, music is perhaps the least reliant on intellectual processing—unlike stories, which are expressed through a layer of language that the brain must interpret and whose interpretation must be learned.
The very first installment of Story Euphoria explored the idea of story as a mighty unifier, a channel causing readers and listeners to identify with others. Song, too, is something we identify with, become one with as it transports us. And, being written in a universal language that all who hear can understand, a song we listen to together causes us to identify together, building a bridge of identity. People bond while listening to music.
Interestingly, from what clues we have today, it appears that the oldest stories—like the myths discussed last week—were also songs. Inanna’s Descent, for example, was likely chanted during religious rites. Modern songs also tell us stories, sometimes using nothing more than shifts in pitch and rhythm or the choice of instrumentation (as in Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf). Other musical stories can be more obviously interpreted in lyrics that fit snugly with the melody.
A poem is a little like lyrics without music. But poems also create their own music using melodies of assonance and alliteration; rhythms of syllables and punctuation. More than that, poems are like sheet music for the imagination, and when we read a poem we create images instead of sounds. The effect is immediate, distilled. A poem is to prose like a shot of Turkish coffee is to a cup of decaf. I think Archibald MacLeish said it well in his 1926 poem, Ars Poetica, as he begins:
It seems ridiculous to try to imagine a wordless poem, and yet such a feat is ultimately what everyone who transmutes life into language strives to achieve: the experience and sentiment of the story-moment is what we really care about. The words are ancillary.
And poems and songs tend to be very good with moments, focusing on a certain mood or epiphany. While there are ballads that indulge in more lengthy stories, such as L’Morte de Arthur, or The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, among countless other examples, even these tales-in-verse rely more on moments of metaphor and sudden imagery than on novelistic elements like character development—are more akin to the stories your dreams make from the mishmash of nighttime visions than to what you would write about the dream in your diary next morning. So perhaps poems and songs imitate life more closely than prose, as life is made up of these bright moments and is equally without the helpful framework of exposition. As Archibald MacLeish concludes:
The very first installment of Story Euphoria explored the idea of story as a mighty unifier, a channel causing readers and listeners to identify with others. Song, too, is something we identify with, become one with as it transports us. And, being written in a universal language that all who hear can understand, a song we listen to together causes us to identify together, building a bridge of identity. People bond while listening to music.
Interestingly, from what clues we have today, it appears that the oldest stories—like the myths discussed last week—were also songs. Inanna’s Descent, for example, was likely chanted during religious rites. Modern songs also tell us stories, sometimes using nothing more than shifts in pitch and rhythm or the choice of instrumentation (as in Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf). Other musical stories can be more obviously interpreted in lyrics that fit snugly with the melody.
A poem is a little like lyrics without music. But poems also create their own music using melodies of assonance and alliteration; rhythms of syllables and punctuation. More than that, poems are like sheet music for the imagination, and when we read a poem we create images instead of sounds. The effect is immediate, distilled. A poem is to prose like a shot of Turkish coffee is to a cup of decaf. I think Archibald MacLeish said it well in his 1926 poem, Ars Poetica, as he begins:
A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,
Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown --
A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.
It seems ridiculous to try to imagine a wordless poem, and yet such a feat is ultimately what everyone who transmutes life into language strives to achieve: the experience and sentiment of the story-moment is what we really care about. The words are ancillary.
And poems and songs tend to be very good with moments, focusing on a certain mood or epiphany. While there are ballads that indulge in more lengthy stories, such as L’Morte de Arthur, or The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, among countless other examples, even these tales-in-verse rely more on moments of metaphor and sudden imagery than on novelistic elements like character development—are more akin to the stories your dreams make from the mishmash of nighttime visions than to what you would write about the dream in your diary next morning. So perhaps poems and songs imitate life more closely than prose, as life is made up of these bright moments and is equally without the helpful framework of exposition. As Archibald MacLeish concludes:
A poem should not mean
But be.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Story Euphoria 13: Myths of Odin
This week, Story Euphoria presents two myths about Odin, the All-Father of the Norse pantheon, as retold by Padraic Colum in The Children of Odin: The Book of Northern Myths. Download and listen!
You can follow along or read more myths at Project Gutenberg. You can also check your local library or get this book for your personal collection:
Production Notes:
Creator: Amanda Haldy
Theme Music: Nye Nate by Roger Leighton
Incidental Music: Transgenesis and Mountain by Megaplasma Factory Recordings
Suspense by Stephen Gashler
and One Good Eye by Doug Tapper.
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