Story Tellers Telling Stories

Using ideas that can be easily comprehended is inherent for any story teller.

The best stories have always conveyed meanings beyond the simple scope of the character descriptions and the interactivity of story elements.

Story telling is one of the more effective means of teaching ever devised by man.

Stories can act as a bridge between people and ideas, carrying the listener as quickly as possible to the mental image or situation being described, while calling a minimum amount of attention to itself. 

On the flip side, a story that demands to be acknowledged, retold, often discussed with arguments about the true meanings and requiring support as a belief system with "is it true or just a myth" questions, will excite the audience into exploring the boundries.

Story telling is one of our oldest artforms.

As story tellers, if we can awaken the audience with a jolt of reference that has significance, that carries deep empathy with the personal idealizations of the audience's own characterization of the elements of the story, then our efforts have been realized and we are truly using the "vehicle" of creative expression as it should be used. 

The conceptualization of precise images and easily understood messages is not always the quickest or most insightful way to a set of ideas however.

That is, metaphors and analogies can have strong actions on the audience as well. Being taken on a journey in order to understand the meaning of the story, is certainly a viable method.

The audience must be provided with context, background and substance in order to understand the meaning.

If that context provides a link between the mind of the creator of the story and the audience, simulating and (if possible) replacing the everyday world, within the words, images, sounds etc. as created or presented by the author, then there is no translation or interpretation needed to understand the intention of the story's messages. 

This needs to be done specifically, with extact attention to details. The more complex the ideas are or more meaningful the message being transmitted is, the more necessary it is the that the author allow descriptions to fill in the blanks and allow personal references to surface and populate the story with more details. 

A good story works like a musical composition.

An idea is presented, elaborated, debated and perhaps defeated, and finally, presented to the audience in a modified, more mature form that embodies the path that was travelled in order to reach that idea. By taking the audience on a journey, we, to a certain extent, can recreate in their experience the thought processes and emotions of the characters in the story. This should be done with compassion, humor and generosity.

But again (as with music), we can provide a pattern, a symmetry and closure that the audience seldom encounters in life. That is why experiencing entertaining, thought provoking and inspiring creative expression is pleasurable and fulfilling. That is why listening to good music can produce ecstasy. 

Storytelling is a necessary part of the human condition.

We must tell stories. It is what makes us who we are. Linguists and neurologists strongly suspect that the act of learning language physically shapes the organization of our brains.

Without language, we are incapable of the full range of human interaction and reasoning.

By telling stories to our children, we give them language, and so a passport into the condition of human mortality. But also, a window onto the immortal, for stories will outlive all of us. 

I have chosen (or have been chosen by) a specific set of ideas on which to concentrate my creativity, and will turn all of my creative efforts towards conveying these ideas in the most accessible and memorable ways possible. I want these ideas to go out and re-form and repeat and recreate themselves in as many ways as possible. Their source might be forgotten, or misremembered. That is all right with me, because I think the ideas are more important than I am as an individual. 

I want my creative works to insinuate themselves into the subconscious of the people of the Southwest, and the world in general, so that we might remember who we were and who we will be, since so little time is spent in the present. I feel as strongly about this as any fanatic. This is my vocation, my calling and my obsession. 

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Story Tellers Telling Stories

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  • Paul Alan Bley

    The Creative Passport
    Digital Identity Artist Persona #1

  • PABlo Bley

    The Creative Passport
    Digital Identity Artist Persona #2

  • Phoenixbird

    The Creative Passport
    Digital Identity Artist Persona #3

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