“Andersen’s life was a tragic one in many ways; and yet, like a character from one of his own tales, he had the gift of turning straw into gold: transforming the sorrows and joys of his life’s journey into stories we still love…”
From Terri Windling, “Hans Christian Andersen, Father of the Modern Fairytale.”
Art – Hans Christian Andersen’s Dreams by Anne and Janet Grahame Johnstone
“Storytelling has always been a big deal for companies.
But forget business for a minute. Stories are much bigger than that, they’re central to our human existence.” – gapinvoid
Stories are about people, not about business, not about products. Behind every successful business, there is a person whose heart trembled with fear, apprehension and disappointment. Behind any product there is a set of questions one bluntly asks in desperation and determination. We don’t really have all the answers to all questions but if we weave them into a story, maybe we can touch the answers with some words.
We write stories to survive and sur-thrive.
“Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.”
– Roland Barthes, “Talking,” in A Lover’s Discourse, 1977
But with such setting, what is there to write about?
… The perfection of a stolen moment far from the madding crowd:
credit @james_mcdonald_photography
• Harry’s Bar London
Iulia Halatz
She says: “Be the one who cares, make words so disruptive that they create new worlds, hopes and dreams. Even if we are unhappy dinosaurs and find shelter in an Iron Tale or ruminate about feeling too much, whilst declaring colorless apparel, we should take power and strength from our stories.”
Her published poems can be found in The Sudden Denouement Anthology Volume I.
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
― Helen Keller
Art by James Tissot.
“Poets are the dreams of gods, and in each and every age someone hath sung unknowingly the message and the promise from the lotus-gardens beyond the sunset.”
– H.P. Lovecraft, Poetry and the Gods
I am no lotus eater, just a word eater. I gulp them ethereally and stubbornly, and innocently agree with their meanings. They tremble and describe another day in the garden beyond the sunset.
Art by Thomas Edwin Mostyn.
A rather late and overrated question… Following in the “footwords” of one wise wizard (Gandalf), I do things precisely when I mean to, not when they are supposed to happen, neither late nor early.
Write down all the things that make you so goddamn glad you’re alive. It can be simple things like: watering plants, the sunlight that seeps on your bed at 10:00 a.m., dancing in the rain or playing in the snow, watching the sunrise or sunset, decorating your room with fairy lights, googling for surrealistic paintings, lighting too many candles in mid-days, eating pizza while watching your favorite show, searching for how many people have the same name as you in the world—how wonderful is that? What do you want more than these?
More ways and words to say: “I love you”…
Armors for moments when I feel depleted and drenched of kindness. I dissolve this by writing. This is my predicament, situations, and people that make me forget who I am, how kind I am, and who make my heart turn to stone, but who never, ever were permitted to steal the real me.
“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.” – Kurt Vonnegut
Building is King but maintenance is King Kong (inspired by Seth Godin’s words, “Content is king”, but distribution is King Kong)….
Maybe Happiness is in the building… One event creates the architecture of everything falling in the right place with light and joy and windows and mirrors as walls transparently maintaining the gift of the gab.
Art by Andrew Wyeth.
Having a soft heart in a cruel world is courage not weakness.
— Katherine Henson
Art by Rafal Olbiński.
Basilike Pappa lives in Greece. She likes her coffee black, her walls painted green and blue, her books old or new. She despises yellow curtains and red tape. She can’t live without chocolate, flowers and her dog. Places she can be found are: kitchen, office, living room. If she’s not at home, I don’t know where she is. You can find Basilike up late with a notebook in the Silent Hour.
Title: Anthology Volume I – Writings from the Sudden Denouement Literary Collective
Where it can be purchased: Amazon
Title: Composition of a Woman
Author: Christine Ray
Where it can be purchased: Amazon
Title: For You, Rowena
Author: Kindra Marie Austin
Where it can be purchased: Amazon
Title: Leonard the Liar
Author: Nicholas Gagnier
Where it can be purchased: Amazon
https://indieblu.net/2019/01/02/basilike-pappa-shares-her-favorite-indie-books-of-2018/
I am delighted that five of my poems were included in the Sudden Denouement Anthology Volume I. The anthology is now available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
We tell each other stories in order to survive and sur-thrive.
Storytelling is a magic realm. We are lucky to spend here a large chunk of our time.
What kind of letters do we write from the land of storytelling?
Life stories strangled in magnanimous stanzas build on love, fear, equanimity, and on the wizardry of sundowns and sunups.
Cover letters that tell stories of passion, dedication, failure and success, web content and presentations about a world of our own choosing built around something that we ourselves have created.
“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the treasure of our lives.” – Toni Morrison
Art by Franz von Stuck.
What if some day or night a demon were to steal into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live and have lived it you will have to live once again and innumerable times again; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unspeakably small or great in your life must return to you, all in the same succession and sequence — even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself…”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
A yet lived life comes with new trousseau of thought and feeling. At times we have to give in to treading softly and happily as if we have to relive it all over again…and there are never too many moonlit paths, nor enough spiders.
That is why we write, to feel in the mouth the sky of the life already-lived.
Write down all the things that make you so goddamn glad you’re alive. Simple things like: watering plants, the sunlight that seeps on your bed at 10:00 A.M, smelling the crispy autumn air, dancing in the rain or playing in the snow, watching the sunrise or sunset, decorating your room with fairy lights, googling for surrealistic paintings, lighting too many candles in mid-days, eating pizza while watching your favorite show, searching how many people have the same name as you in the world…
Write down more ways and words to say: “I love you”… Armors for moments when you feel depleted and drenched of kindness. Dissolve this by writing.
This is my predicament, situations and people that make me forget who I am, how kind I am, who make my heart turn to stone, but who never, ever, were permitted to steal the real Me.
Léon Frédéric – Flemish Lace Maker
