Story Dynamics – Stories

Much of what is hard for us as storytellers and artists stems from how important—and dangerous—arts can be.

For all the difficulties, we live in a great time to be a storyteller, not because rivers of money are flowing to us or because we are prominent in society, but because it’s a great time to become the storyteller you are capable of being – and therefore to help nudge society ever closer to what it, too, is capable of becoming.

Let’s start our new year with gratitude for storytelling. After all, storytelling makes so much of human life possible that it’s tempting to take storytelling for granted.

In this second half of “30 Reasons to Thank a Storyteller,” I’ll look at the big picture, from how storytelling helps our species survive to how it helps us live in communities and even whole societies. (Read Part I at http://www.storydynamics.com/thank1 )

Of all the books written about storytelling, can you think of a single one that opposes storytelling?

But now we have Christian Salmon’s “Storytelling: Bewitching the Modern Mind,” published in March, 2010.

Salmon doesn’t just hate storytelling. He thinks storytelling is dangerous and disruptive to modern civilization.

That’s the best news I’ve heard in our decades of trying to spread the word about storytelling. Our movement is finally big enough to be someone’s target.

Two years after their first Thanksgiving feast, the Pilgrims faced starvation, living for a time on a ration of five kernels of grain a day.

Gratitude is sweeter when we remember times of scarcity. And scarcity is sweeter when we season it with gratitude for what we do have.

Stories are, themselves, a form of wealth. And telling our stories – both of scarcity and especially of gratitude – is a form of wealth no one can take from us.

In a technological age, what is there for oral storytellers to be thankful for?

The Third Age of Storytelling is so new, we can hardly recognize it, much less be fully grateful for it. Let’s start by understanding the Ages that led up to it…