Stories

I like stories, I crave them. Everything that resonates with me, that I remember involves a good story.  My life, my early experiences, my travels, my friends, places and events are all remembered as stories.  I may not get the names right, and I may forget details about the setting, but I'm going to have the plot and the theme down. 

That brings me to an explanation of the things I like.  I like stories and never really figured that out until now.  It seems so natural and you might be thinking, “Doesn't everyone?”  But for me it goes a bit deeper than just liking some stories. 

Remember M*A*S*H?  I loved that show and really didn't like much else that was on television back then. M*A*S*H did something that not many television shows did until recently.  It told a story over the course of eleven seasons: the story of a war and how the most skilled and humane participants of that war dealt with horror and inhumanity without going insane. That's the theme in a nutshell.  It was brilliant to use humor as a tool to cope with a deep political message.  It was Catch-22 brought to the small screen.

Have you noticed that all the good television shows are doing that now?  My favorites: Battlestar Galactica, The Shield, Prison Break, and Deadwood are developing characters, solving subplots and moving toward climaxes in multi-season long stories.  They are telling the complexity of novel-length tales in television format.

Movies that I like are movies with theme and good plotting, but are character driven stories.  I rewatched Forest Gump the other night.  Making fun of the magnificent acting job Tom Hanks did is a side-business in this country, but watching the show reminded me that it's theme was significant.  It followed the story of a nation and how that nation tore itself apart and then healed, but with the tragedy of scars and lost citizens strewn in its wake.  It was the story of how the country changed, told from the voice of a simple man in love with a troubled woman. It was Jenny's story and Jenny is all of us in this country searching for our souls and hoping to find them before we die.  It's a great movie.

Movies and Great Television (who'd have thought I'd ever say that – not anyone who hung around me a decade and a half ago when I didn't even have a television) tell stories and can change our perceptions of life, interpreting the world as effectively as great novelists do.

Music is a story telling venture for me also.  I've found that I can't really hear tone in music.  I know when the chords are changing and I know when the music pitch rises and falls, but I'm a bit lost when it comes to picking out what is the beat and what is just note changing paced and timed.  I listen to music because it resonates with me in a different way – it tells me a story.  I've always liked  ballads.  I want a poem with beginning, middle and end told to me by a musician and lyricist.  I've learned to like Johnny Cash because he could tell a story.  I like Bob Dylan because his poetry is beautiful and powerful: he tells stories and I like them.  I love rock anthems from the seventies and eighties because they did what?  They Told Stories.

So, I tell stories.  Want to read one?

- rick in self-analysis

Comments

[Success Warrior]

Tia and I have been watching Heroes and enjoying it.

[Cherise]

I always want to read one of your stories :)

[Success Warrior]

I'm looking forward to reading your book, oh great ninja writer.

I'm going to read it while blind folded with headsets on to get a feeling for how you wrote it.

[CV Rick]

LOL . . . that's the most perfect way to read my writing.

[Success Warrior]

I'm certain that I will enjoy it.

I'll write up a great review on Amazon for you and everything.