Seanchai

My fingers linger over the letters on the keyboard; I'm hoping inspiration comes to me.

It amazes and disgusts me that I have been so keen for so long on writing something spectacular, something that would bring people not just back to books, but back to the magic on the pages, and yet I feel I have nothing to show for it.

I read White Oleander recently. It was a great book. I tore through it. It will remain with me for many years. But it wasn't...magic. No, in contrast, it was rather tragic, from beginning to end, with an ending that left me feeling disillusioned.

I love stories that dazzle, mesmerize, hypnotize... A great fantastical epic adventure that will take me somewhere else. Don't get it twisted, I love my life. I have four children, so every day is an adventure to me. I like my reads to be the same. As a child, they fueled my imagination, the stories I made up as I ran through the woods in Maine. It was a completely different place and time and it breaks my heart that my children will not grow up in the same manner. It was sparkly, glittery...my childhood.

However, as with the poems I write, it seems everything I write inevitably turns dark, leaving the words staining the page in blood instead of ink, or so it feels.

I am not just taken by the stories, either: the writers fascinate me, their inevitable evolution from the travelling storytellers of yore.

In Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, he was referred to as a gleeman (my personal favorite). Well, entertainer is probably a more accurate description, but still. Travelling storyteller. Strolling minstrel. Gandalf. Oh, yes, Gandalf. Sure, his main part of the story was wizard, but he did travel the countryside entertaining the little masses, and therefore he can add gleeman to his resume. Bard. Silvertongue from the Inkheart trilogy (and if you were previously unaware that this was a trilogy and Hollywood eviscerated it with their film version, you're missing out). Edward Bloom from Big Fish by Daniel Wallace. Jongleur - which, truth be known, is a new word for me as I looked up "gleeman" on thesaurus.com. It's a French word for a minstrel in medieval France and Norman England. Griot - African. Seanchai - Irish. This word I love because it reminds me of the Seanchan people from The Wheel of Time.

Scheherazade from One Thousand and One Nights.

Vyasa from the epic Mahabharata. "If you listen carefully, you'll be someone else."

Troubadour.

I'm not snooty about it, either. I love the storytellers in the movies, too. Monte Wildhorn from the movie The Magic of Belle Isle (which I am sorely sore about not actually being a book). Izzy in The Fountain (yes, I consider her a storyteller and if you haven't seen the movie that's a tragedy). I loved Reading Rainbow, by the way, and Mr. Roger's neighborhood.

I'm sure my exhaustive references bore you, but to me, they're the real heroes of every story. Because what would a story be without its narrator?

Did you know, by the way, that there is a National Storytelling Festival? I am shocked and a little too excited. I looked at the website, and I see they have a list of entertainers who tell stories and do skits and standups.

Oh my gosh, my dream team of storytellers, let me tell you, is ridiculous, but here's a few just for your amusement:

Henry Rollins
Morgan Freeman
Neil Gaiman
Mark Z Danielewski
Erin Morgenstern
James Rollins
Helena Bonham Carter

The festival would be set up like The Night Circus, and everyone would have chocolate turtles and candy apples. There would be a constant ambient lullaby in the background, a Tan Dun composition, perhaps, or Lindsey Stirling. Maybe she'd even be flitting around telling her own stories with her violin. It would have a smoky atmosphere, people would be laughing, and later the memory would be a hazy one but most definitely a fond one.

And on that note, I suppose I will leave you to your own imaginations, dreaming of wagons hobbling down rocky roads, carrying old men in long robes carrying music and fireworks in their wagons, and stories in their hearts. I want to be the kind of storyteller that dazzles someone to the point they almost believe in magic again.