Friday, March 27, 2015

Thoughts On Word Trails & No Longer Seeing the Forests for the Trees

I saw a wonderful scene this week. Bear with me as I share it and hopefully I'll explain what I believe it has to do with fairy tales:

The scene was from the show The Americans*. While I'd be hard pressed to relate this show to fairy tales generally, it makes interesting observations about the human condition, love, despair and choices. The following scene is of the main male character, Philip, with his KGB handler, playing scrabble. Philip, at this point in his journey, is questioning the wisdom of orders given to him and his wife, feeling that it is compromising him as a basic human being - as a father and husband:
[Scene: Philip and his Handler playing scrabble.] 
H: Stuck between a geode and a hard place. (shuffles tiles) "Amatory" -(counts points)  24 yes, - 24 -loving , devoted,adoring. 
Philip: Where do you come up with this stuff? 
H: I love words. They leave a trail. For example, amatory is from the Latin word for 'love'. While wedlock - the condition of being married - is Norse, Norwegian: wed, lock. Which means perpetual battle. 
Philip: Your point being? 
H: Love and marriage in many ways are antithetical: one is a bolt of lightning, an epiphany, and the other is planting, tilling, tending. It's hard work. 
Philip: (glares at H) I'm trying to concentrate here. 
H: Oh sorry. 
Philip: (puts down scrabble letters)  
H: (reads) "sphinx" - excellent. 59 - bravo.**
Such a great exchange.

He's right. Words leave a trail.

At Myth & Moor yesterday (Terri Windling's wonderfully mythic and inspirational blog) Terri talked about the sense that our stories are disappearing, like many of the world's forests. She was quoting the book Tales Of Faerie and I have started discussing (From the Forest by Sara Maitland) and began by referencing a passage that caught my attention too - about the frustration parents have with the lack of response when they ask their children what happened in their day, ie. "Nothing." My reaction when reading this was so strong I went and grabbed a pencil, underlined it and bookmarked it to read to my husband later.

It finishes by explaining: "... but the 'nothing' is a cover for "I don't know how to tell a good story about it, how to impose a story shape on the events.' "

by Banksy (one of my favorites!)
Using words to tell stories is hard now. We're not only out of the habit, most people don't grow up with this; it's not as common a developmental skill as it used to be. For many, there just isn't time. At least, not to tell stories in that form. For others the gap between everyday expression and "word "smithing is just overwhelming and intimidating. Since oral stories (and general yarns and tale telling) have fallen out of everyday use, being able to tell tales is no longer a common-man thing to do. Whether or not it is true, to many it feels like telling stories are the territory of "true writers" only, so people just... don't. (Using myself as an example, Myth & Moor is full of beautiful, inspirational and thought provoking writing - I highly recommend it - and the comments on Terri's posts range from articulate to poetic - so much so, I often feel unable to comment, certain that I have nothing to add, even though I've always been made welcome there. And this is from someone who does write every day, adores words and has a rudimentary understanding of Latin and other base languages.) As a result, the people who understand those trails of history and stories within the words seem to be fewer and fewer every day. When it comes to tales, people not only get tongue-tied, the stories they stumbling-ly tell, lack vitality, the tales become muddied and, in some ways, they start to die.


The Grimms were motivated to write down fairy tales because they felt their language and tales were disappearing rapidly in the cultural clime. And they were right. Their work in stopping this from happening altogether is often underestimated but we owe them much.

Today we have the same sense, that stories and tales are disappearing, along with our language. Forget correct grammar, people don't even use full sentences anymore. (See? Just like that.) We resort to catch phrases, memes and emojis to communicate and express sentiments. We summarize in infographics. It's alarming in many ways but the lack of words doesn't mean language and stories are disappearing. It means they're changing shape.

In an age of the internet, in which we need to navigate the constant press of information overload, we've turned the bulk of the words off altogether and begun processing everything the fastest way possible - visually. And it works. After all, visuals are processed 60 000 times faster in the brain than text. We now live in a visual culture and there's no escaping it.

What tends to happen as a result though, is that WE DO LOSE STORIES through the gaps. And tales, and those word shapes with their trails. So what do we do?
"Knock Knock" by Hilary Leung
This is something I've been looking at seriously for a good couple of years now - the impact of visual communication and visual consumerism on storytelling. In many ways, this new form of language has opened up new forms of stories to people who weren't interested in telling tales before (for whatever reason). People who always responded with "Nothing" now fill their Tumblr accounts and Pinterest boards with fan-made images and quotes, blending ideas and sentiments, suggesting avenues of thought and inspiring conversation.


by Raquel Aparicio
"The hyper-visualisation age is now upon us, where any visual media object can act as a portal to other media." (source)

A truly interesting thing (and hidden treasure) is this: the best forms of these new "stories" (however fractured and incomplete they are) lead to words. And more words. The image shorthand is being used like a filtering system in an age of information overload. And the best, most useful "filter caught" images, usually use words too.

Sometimes trying to find what you want is like opening a Matroyshka doll - layers within layers within layers... and sometimes it seems more like hunting Koschei's soul which was hidden inside of a needle, inside of an egg, inside of a duck, inside of a hare, inside of an iron chest,buried under an oak tree, on a island, in the middle of the ocean... but ultimately, the words - and the tales - they're in there.


(There are hundreds of articles explaining to business people and marketers just how important the use of images with the right phrase is.) But it can't be just any words. They specifically use 'the right ones', the succinct ones, the ones that, in conjunction with the image, tell a spare story with a lot of resonance; very much like fairy tales always have.

People are drawn to the life in words (and trees), to the history in them but it's hard to know, when there is so much in front of us demanding our attention, what we should pay attention to. (Why should we care about this tree here when there are so many more?) 

Images help filter. Not too surprisingly, when you figure out it's not really 'words' people don't like, it's the tidal wave of text that feels impossible to process, people can start to sort out just what it is they want to pay attention to - and they go word hunting. Time Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor and many other publications still do exceptionally well publishing multiple page essays. Novels are devoured in print and ebook form alike - perhaps more than ever. People want to read. They want words, and stories and forests and tales. They just want to choose their path so they don't feel so lost.

But how do we get people to the start of these paths and tales so they choose to walk them, themselves and, in doing so, keep them alive?

More specifically, what is a writer to do? How do we preserve our beloved fairy tales from becoming distant memories, footnotes in essays or forgotten tales in out of print books? 

The answer is simple. We have to find new ways to tell them. 

That also feels exceptionally difficult to figure out how to do. 

(The reason this post has taken as long to get up as it has is due to my search for appropriate visuals to include - and I'll be the first to admit, this whole post would have been better received had I been able to present it in a much more visual manner. I wish I had the skills to pull together reaction gifs and create "visual poems" to capture the essence of what I'm trying to communicate but I didn't grow up that way and don't have those skills... yet.)

Interestingly, dealing with this exact issue in their own times is, I believe, exactly why the Grimms, Andersen, Perrault and Wilde are still known today. (I have a post on this coming on this shortly - how these fairy tale writers made their tales truly live.)

We know, in principle, that fairy tales are very much a living thing. It's ironic that writing them down to preserve them serves to help them stagnate, almost as if they "solidify" in their written form. Often, it requires these coma-like story forms to get a jolt, usually from another media source, to wake up these 'sleeping beauties' and have people notice and love them again. And perhaps some savvy use of available tools in this "visual era" can help.

I know. It sounds exhausting and I'm right there with you. Can't we just sit in our corners and write our words and have them there ready for when people want them? I wish we could. But if we want to be part of making sure tales stay alive we need to be active as they're being redefined and retold. We need to be part of the 'telling'. The best historians don't just dig into the dusty past and tell us what happened, they explain why things happened the way they did and show us the direct connection to ourselves, how we can learn from history to learn about the world as it is now and to make a better future. Otherwise why bother with history at all?

Eventually, when the noise of the world is sorted and people know what they want to focus on, words become even more precious than before. It's then that they ask for more words, more tales. 

People will continue to come back to words. The trick is to keep the trail visible.
____________________________________________________________________

For those looking to learn more about this 'visual era', here's a short list (really!) to get you started, The ones with the orange stars are super quick, informative skims. The purple stars are recommended reads over the rest if you're short on time:

The Guardian: The New (Visual) Culture: how to produce quality in a world of quantity
*WallBlog: Turning advertising into a service: brands must embrace the hyper-visual landscape
*Social Media Examiner: 4 Businesses Leveraging Storytelling With Images
* Business 2 Community: Why Image Trumps Everything in Today's Visual Age
FastCompany: The Rise of Visual Social Media
Marketing Magazine: Brands Should Take the Visual Web Seriously, says Facebook's EMEA Boss
* Cyber Alert: Visual Storytelling Campaigns That Inspire, Motivate and Generate Action
MindFire Communications: It's A Visual World. Show Your Story
* LinkedIn: Market Researchers: Do you Speak Visual?
* MDG Advertising: It's All About the Images (Infographic)
* Wishpond Advanced Lead Generation Marketing Blog: 10 Reasons Visual Content Will Dominate 2014
SteamFeed: Why Visual Content Will Rule Digital Marketing in 2014
NeonTommy: Visual Poetry Collection 'Kern' Meshes Literature And Art
* It's one of the few shows I think is brilliantly done in every aspect and which I do my best to keep up with, even if I can only see 10 minutes of a show at a time. It's very brutal at times but I love the juxtaposition of a couple working on their relationship and raising an American family against the background of being KGB spies in America.
**  I thought the riddle response was a great touch too.

Reader Spotlight: Tale Spinner Steve Shilstone


Editor's Note: Steve Shilstone is a long time writer and shares his lovely fairy tale flash fiction for free on his blog Fiddleeebod. This gentleman tells delightful tales and when I asked if he could share a personal story about his love for fairy tales, the story he sent me was no exception. Enjoy! (I've included links to his website, which also showcases his available books, below.)
_________________________________________________________________________________
A Yellow Fairy Book Tale
by Steve Shilstone

There it is, offered for sale on ebay, a bargain at $400, an 1894 first edition copy of Andrew Lang’s Yellow Fairy Book. It is a much healthier twin to the battered and tattered volume I discovered on a shelf of my mother’s bookcase around 1954.

If memory serves (sometimes it does), I was 10 years old and searching for something to read. Down a row of books I went, pulling, examining, rejecting, putting back, until I came to a volume so worn and tired (used and loved) that the printing on the spine was unreadable. The cover, however, though faded, beckoned. Well, have a look at it. Enticing, no? And so, like Dorothy opening the door of her house after it landed on a witch in Oz, I opened the Yellow Fairy Book and proceeded to lose myself in tales of dragons, witch-maidens, a glass mountain, and the occasional nixy.

Plucking the book, long lost now, from that shelf remains among the clearest of my memory shards. How did it come to be there on that shelf? What was its story? I don’t know, but I can take a pretty good guess.

Once upon a time, in 1894 to be exact, a newspaperman brought home the newest Fairy Book from Andrew Lang to read to his daughters. The two girls were delighted, enchanted, and pretty much over the moon about it. The fact that their father had interviewed Sitting Bull was okay, but it rated low compared to the new fairy story book. Years passed, and the book found its way from Evanston, Illinois to Los Angeles, California and later to the Ojai ranch home of the older daughter when she married. Four children and a lot of use later, the book was the beloved property of my mother, the youngest of those four children. Oh, the places it went (a bow to the good Dr. Seuss) – Colorado, Kentucky, Colorado again, the state of Washington (where I plucked it from the shelf), and back to California. And then what happened to it? Lost in the shuffle of many a move? I suppose so.

I do own this:
And all the rest:
C:\Users\Steve Shilstone\Dropbox\Camera Uploads\2015-03-21 12.05.21.jpg
But it’s not quite the same, is it?
_________________________________________________________________________________
I will admit to having serious book envy right now! The Lang Folio books are on my imaginary gift registry for my personal fairy tale anniversaries... Thank you for sharing Steve!

Steve's series, Bekka of Thorns (eight books in the chronicles to date), are available through Wild Child Publishing HERE and should you have need of a tale spinner, Steve can be contacted at: steve AT bekkaofthorns DOT com.

Steve Shilstone is an elderly fellow living on a mountain in California. He has distributed mail, coached baseball, painted pointilist pictures, worked in department store stockrooms, graduated with a degree in Anthropology from UCLA, and written many a tale. His fantasy blog, featuring several flash fairy tales, is HERE.

Bibbidi Bobbidi Basketball Jerseys

1. THE PLEASURE ISLAND MONSTROS

A Whale of a Team

The man-eating beast lurking around the shores of Pleasure Island has inspired this team’s monstrous stats. Watch out for their end game (and their toothier front, as well)!

Fairy tales and sports: it's one of those combinations I have to weed through daily to find the 'real' fairy tale news, but this time the two have been combined wonderfully by the talented graphic design team at shirts.com.

These guys looked like they had a lot of fun making these! 

4. THE FORBIDDEN MOUNTAIN THORN BUSHES

A Thorny Lineup

You’ve got to watch out for these players! They have infamous elbow jabs and they know how to use them. If they’re behind at the half, they become real fire-breathing hot heads.

15. THE SNUGGLY DUCKLING DREAMERS

Breakin' Femurs

The only team in the league that can somehow play with hook hands. They’ve got big dreams to win the whole thing and nothing is going to stop them except, perhaps, a spontaneous frying pan duel. 
Very clever!

Here's their introduction (and I like their notes about the teams too):

16. THE ARENDELLE ICE HEARTS

It Takes Heart

Beware the frozen heart!
They’ve got icy resolve to win at any cost.
They keep their home games as cold as an eternal winter,
 the cold never bothered their biggest fans, anyway.
It’s that time of year again: the sneakers are squeaking, the balls are bouncing, and you’ve finally spotted your first referee of the season. It can only mean one thing -- March Madness is here! 
While we’re all basketball mad around the office with our brackets all stacked with care, we noticed that we have a year-round-madness that is much more magical than even the hottest NCAA game. We’re speaking, of course, about Disney magic! So, we thought it would be a wonderful idea to take our two passions and mash them up. 
If the Disney universe held its own basketball tournament, these are the jerseys all the fans would be proudly sporting to every game.
I have to say, if these were real products, I'd be pulling out my wallet to order a couple of them right now.

14. THE XIAN LUCKY CRICKETS

Lucky Shot

If your team can deal with the incessant cricket noises throughout the game, we think they’ll have no problem winning the match. Either way, fans love the fireworks show at the end buzzer!

(I like the cricket one because it makes me think of lots of different folktales too, not just the movie source.)

You can go see them all, full size, HERE - and guess which jersey belongs to which team (movie).

Now we just wish they were real.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Monthly Discussion: "From the Forest" with Tales Of Faerie - March (Story)

Kristin & Gypsy discuss
12 MONTHS - 12 FORESTS - 12 TALES
UK Title: “Gossip from the Forest: The Tangled Roots of Our Forests and Fairytales”

MARCH: Airyolland Wood & a retelling of Thumbling
(see the 1st part of the discussion at Tales Of Faerie HERE)
************************************
Note: Welcome to a new monthly feature we're beginning, in cooperation with Tales Of Faerie! Kristin and I are both reading one chapter of this book each month, discussing our thoughts on both the chapter portion and the story/retelling at the end, then sharing that on our blogs. Each month we will swap discussion parts. This month Kristin started things off by posting the main discussion of the chapter (Part 1) and this is our chat about the story (Part 2). We will alternate who posts Part 1 and Part 2 each month and link to each other's posts so you can follow along. This is the first time for both of us reading this book, so you're getting our thoughts right out of the oven! Enjoy. (I'm putting the jacket summary below for this first round, only, to help you orient yourself. The story discussion is below.)

Jacket summary: Forests are among our most ancient primal landscapes, and fairy tales some of our earliest and most vital cultural forms. In this fascinating and illuminating  book, Maitland argues that the two are intimately connected: the mysterious secrets and silences, gifts and perils of the forests were the background and source of fairytales. The links between the two are buried in the imagination ad in our childhoods.

Maitland journeys in forests through a full year, from the exquisite green  of a beechwood in spring to the muffled stillness of a snowy pine forest in winter, explaining their complex history and teasing out their connections with the tales.

There are secrets in the tales, hidden identities, cunning disguises, just as there are surprises behind every tree in a forest; there are rhythms of change in the tales like the changes of the seasons; there are characters , both human and animal, whose assistance can be earned or spurned and there is over and over again - the journey or quest, which leads to self-knowledge and success. The forest is the place of trial in fairy stories, both dangerous and exciting. Coming to terms with the forest, surviving its terrors, using its gifts and gaining its help, is the way to “happy ever after.”

As a fiction writer, Maitland has frequently retold fairy stories, and she ends each chapter with an enchanting tale, related imaginatively, to the experience of being in that specific forest.

Richly layered, full of surprising connections, and sparkling with mischief, From the Forest is a magical and unique blend of nature writing, history and imaginative fiction.

On “Thumbling


SOURCE: Grimm’s Household Tales
SOURCE TALE SUMMARY: Childless couple have teeny miracle child; never grows bigger than mother’s thumb. Growing up is a hazard & still, he wants to see the world. Tricks & fast thinking help him escape disaster, death & circuses, to return home, no bigger but much wiser.
FROM THE FOREST THUMBLING SUMMARY: The classic fairy tale is retold from the mother’s perspective. After longing for a child, she gives birth to and raises a tiny son. As he grows, he begins to long for adventure and love. His parents agree that they need to let him go and experience life on his own, and despite their worry he returns home safe and happy, and the family continues on as before.
*******************
Thumbling by Kiri Østergaard Leonard
GYPSY: It wasn't... as absorbing to me as I expected when it started, because I was completely touched by the beginning. The story was told almost entirely from the mother’s point of view, which makes sense when you remember it came out of the author talking with her own son in the forest to start with (and telling him a tale).  It even fits as a “Mother’s Tale” choice in this instance,with Thumbling being so very small and the mother feeling like she has to be an “UberMother” - someone who has to do more than usual to care for and protect her child. I’m sure the situation in the forest, camping, feeling the weight of the forest in both actuality and metaphor at the same time, amplified that feeling for Sara, the author, so Thumbling was a natural choice of story.

The problem for me, is that I was ultimately left dissatisfied.

Initially, I loved hearing about Thumbling growing, the challenges of caring for him, how he was protected, how the village reacted and the couple grew together as people and as a family (and as a community too) during this time. But then, after a certain point, specifically when Thumbling went “adventuring”, it felt that there was no point to the story anymore, because all three main characters returned to a previous point in their lives/understanding/comfort zone and nothing really changed. They lived their lives afterward exactly the same way as they did before. Actually, no, not exactly the same way, with less “life” than before.

Artist unknown
Did the mother not learn anything about letting go? Or about anything at all after a certain point? What about the need to encourage her son into the forest? How does that fit with the beginning of the story in which she was at first over protective and then realized she had to let him go? When he comes back, she’s.. what? - relieved she doesn’t have to deal with reality? It felt odd. Didn't the mother find her own stories/freedom/adventure, just like she was talking about having done in the process of learning tales and exploring the woods? It seemed to me during the main portion of the chapter that this is the very thing the author was explaining to her son, Adam, and that she was pleasantly surprised to find that, not only was she helping her son, but he was able to add to her learning and journey (specifically with the fungi story) as well. While reading the main chapter I was most interested in this aspect of their conversation, and how his input ultimately informed hers. To the author’s surprise, she had a moment of realization that her son had matured enough to be teaching her as well as her teaching him. It’s like evidence that you’ve done your job as a parent, that your child can do this.

I guess I expected that to be reflected more in the story but instead it seemed like the opposite is what happened: keep him in the pretend forest forever and ever more. I know the Thumbling story was supposed to be partly about coming back home but I felt it started well and developed well then it just ended up being sentimental, without a good reason for coming home except to escape reality. The impression I’m left with is that he’ll be cared for and coddled the rest of his life now and never be encouraged (let alone forced) to experience the world as a mature person, and build his own future, add to the world and his village etc. (At least, until his parents die and he’s left with having to deal with that. Then what will he do? Yikes.)  I should state this is my immediate impression only. I wrote my initial notes straight away specifically as I felt it resonated while the words were still in front of me. I have a feeling there is more to my disquiet with the resolution (or lack of from my perspective) with the story but it would need some more read throughs and more reflective time to nut that out.

What were your impressions Kristin?
Illustration and text taken from "The History of Tom Thumb" from the Mary Bell's Series published by Peter G. Thomson of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Tom went with his mother to see a dun cow : The leaf of a thistle he took for a bough ; He sat down upon it, but, shocking to tell, The cow seized the thistle, and Tom Thumb as well. To the cow's upper jaw Tom manfully clung ; He kicked her front teeth, and he tickled her tongue. The cow could not ask him what he was about, So she opened her mouth and she let him out.
KRISTIN: I thought it was a sweet story (for most of it), I liked the theme of the importance of communicating well within a marriage and underlined a couple of quotes there. Then I liked the mother’s sacrifice in letting her son go and experience freedom, which I thought reflected the sacrifice every mother has to go through-but like you I was surprised by the ending, it seemed sudden and unrealistic that Thumbling would never again yearn for a normal life, or as an adult have increased conflicts with being dependent on his parents.  It missed the fact that letting go is an essential part of being a successful parent, in most cases, although it did remind me of many of the families I interact with who have children with disabilities (although this didn’t apply to the author…) because for them, their children grow up physically but never quite become independent. In a way it can be comforting because the parents know they don’t have to worry about their children rebelling and getting into sex/drugs/etc., but that ideal happy family life doesn’t stay that way forever. Even with people with disabilities, eventually their parents are going to get too old to take care of them but those individuals have to keep on living, so letting go and moving on is even part of parenting for those cases.
The Birth of Tom Thumb, illustration from Our Nurses Picture Book,
engraved by Kronheim and Co., 1869, a painting by Horace Petherick.
GYPSY: I think you nailed it: that fact about letting go is an essential part of being a parent. Especially with this being almost completely from the mother’s POV, it didn’t matter as much what Thumbling’s journey and arc was as hers, but her maturity as a parent didn’t happen. She didn’t fail either. She just… continued.
I like the parallel with disabilities. I never thought of Thumbling as having disabilities before! I can totally see that being a great metaphor, but even when children can’t become fully independent there is usually an effort to help them be as independent as they can manage and to live as vital a life as possible, including giving back to the community if they can. (That’s my experience anyway.) I would have like to see that type of development - or “shift” in thinking - toward a sustainable future for Thumbling beyond the natural life of his parents. Or the opposite - a complete “fail” in which the failure to encourage thriving becomes apparent. (But I’d prefer the happy ending please because that’s just me!)

KRISTIN: Absolutely, a healthy goal for people with disabilities is to point them towards as much independence as they are capable of (worked at a group home briefly)-in household tasks, getting jobs, etc. The ending of the story almost seemed like a creepy version of a mother’s desire to keep her kids innocent and childlike and with her forever, which was weird especially since she’s there telling it to her adult son. It almost seemed like we’re not supposed to take it seriously because it’s so obvious that any lessons learned were completely undone? The ending contradicts everything else in the story, maybe it was just a convenient way to wrap up and end it?
Different Toms: From Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No.1, An Illustrated Magazine (artist unknown); The National Nursery Book (unknown); The Beacon Second Reader (Edna T. Hart)
Come back next month to see Kristin & Gypsy discuss “April - Saltridge Wood” and Sara Maitland’s retelling of “The White Snake”.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Wanted: The Right Shoe (Literally)

I got a little note from eBay UK last week, letting me know the "Cinderella status" of their website.

While I wasn't surprised to hear just how many products were tagged "Cinderella" (over 66,800 - "from tutu-style dresses to blonde wigs") and how many Prince Charming costumes they had sold in the past three months alone (over 1,000) or that somehow over 550 glass slippers have sold in the same time period (no reports on whether they actually fit or not), I was surprised to hear this:

eBay is drowning in shoes, specifically right shoes. They have over 4,100 right shoes available for sale but only 260 left shoes available*, and yep, you guessed it - they don't match.

What the...??

I have visions of people scrolling and clicking through hundreds of eBay pages looking for just the right shoe, or just the right size... and a lot of bare right feet on the part of the customers.


Is that a scientifically provable thing? That you're more likely to lose a right shoe than a left one? And what are people thinking in putting up single shoes for sale? Is there a market for this? (And what are people doing that they have all these right shoes to sell in the first place?!**)

And if you put in the search parameters "just the right shoe" you end up with a host of very fancy right shoe collectibles and displays. Who knew this was a thing?

It also makes you wonder about where a Fairy Godmother might "borrow her magic" from these days. eBay UK thinks she might be going incognito online, or people are being too impatient to wait for her to show up and taking matters into their own hands. This was the publicist's introduction:
As Cinderella hits the silver screen it appears that those who can’t find a Fairy Godmother of their own are flocking to online marketplace eBay.co.uk instead.
It's a different take on Cinderella I never considered, but clearly it's a more common "modern variant" than I could ever have imagined.

Someone is going to have to do a study of some sort - and soon.

My brain goes right from this to the whole concept of shoes being meant for individuals and reflecting their owners. This is actually something they've forensically proven. Shoes worn over time come to take the 'imprint" of the wearer and become unique as a result. It's even possible to identify which shoes belonged to which individual by way of looking at the wear, how the sole and heel were worn down, what the internal shape of the shoe ended up being, even in shoes that were fairly solid.

Shoe manufacturers and designers have known for centuries that shoes tell stories (and some evidence points to over 5,000 years of this). Shoes have something to say, both about where and why they were made, but, more interestingly to me, about the individual wearer and owner.

(If this subject fascinates you, take a look at this article HERE about vintage shoes found concealed in a wall and the history of such a practice. It wasn't the article I was looking for to reference but it will start you on a treasure hunt if you as so inclined!)

Shoes in fairy tales are fascinating too and there are many, many examples that immediately come to mind: The Twelve Dancing Princesses, The Red Shoes, The Cobbler and the Elves, Puss In Boots, The Seven League Boots, The Girl In The Iron Shoes, just to start, and there are whole books on that subject as well.

Take a look at this journal entry from a gifted writer who passed too early:
"Suum Cuique," said Cicero, translating as "To Each His Own." And that is the way with this shoe, designed by his countrywoman Miuccia Prada.
To me this object is as astonishing as anything in nature, so clever in its mixing of color and so sensually pleasing in its juxtaposition of materials, and all pulled together in a mind bogglingly inventive way.
Look at the sleek wet scarlet slick of the top and the ancient Grinling Gibbons curls on the heel. All that gilt and heft on the bottom decorated with tender vines carved with the “loose and airy lightness of flowers.” And then buckled up on top with the little belt that kept Red Riding Hood’s picnic basket with grandma’s gift of wine inside closed up safe and snug.
After I first saw this fashion photo in Vogue magazine I couldn’t get it out of my head for a month. Then I encountered the same image on a smart, stylish woman’s blog, where the shoe was being completely dismissed and utterly ridiculed. The cost! The height! The vulgarity!
One can think of what a shoe will set you back, I suppose, but I prefer to think of all the places one can take you, as Eugene Field did in his nursery rhyme:
“Wynken, Blynken and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe -
Sailed on a river of crystal light,
Into a sea of dew… “
So now you see as I do. Or not. Suum cuique, then, but you know I’ll have an excellent view of any standing-room rock and roll stage come fall.
Theresa Duncan, Wit of the Staircase, July 10, 2006 
What we've done to the Cinderella story in the West (in particular) by changing her shoe to glass has changed the emphasis of the story overall, something which I was interested to see explored to some extent in the new Cinderella movie, by the way (more on this with my eventual review).

But if the Prince had figured out who Cinderella was from the individual imprint of her shoe (which would have had to have been worn more than once, and likely not been made of glass), he would have learned a lot about his bride-to-be while searching for her. In that case, if he still insisted on finding her after learning all these details about her and believed more than ever that she was "the one", that would make for a very different story!

It also makes you wonder what you could do if you just had the "right" shoe.

*Note from Ebay Publicist: *Data taken from the past three months (10.12.14 to 09.03.15)
** I probably shouldn't write posts like this after watching shows like Criminal Minds... my imagination just scared me.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Tin Can Forest's "Bremen Musicians" Is Coming

Tin Can Forest is working with more fairy tales! 

Sing Fire Like Dragons (print available)
I love Tin Can Forest's work. It's perhaps not for everyone, but there's no denying it's mythic and folkloric-full.

Just look at how at home in the forest their artwork is! (see right)

This time it looks like they're retelling a whole tale in a book, so I can't wait to see their take on it (and I do love this story with the old animals triumphing over the baddies!)

From the press release:
"We Are Going To Bremen To Be Musicians" by Geoff Berner and Tin Can Forest - Book Launch 
Thursday May 7th, 2015
Book Launch at 7pm, Geoff Berner Performance at 9pm
@ The Pilot, 22 Cumberland St., Toronto
Free Event
 
Come celebrate the TCAF book launch of We are Going to Bremen to Be Musicians by Tin Can Forest and Geoff Berner at the Pilot , 22 Cumberland St, Thursday May 7th. 
Internationally acclaimed graphic novelist Nina Bunjevac (Fatherland, Heartless) will interview Geoff and Tin Can Forest about the making of the book, followed by a live performance by fearless klezmer punk accordionist and self-proclaimed "whisky rabbi” Geoff Berner. 
Come drink and dance with us!
About We Are Going To Bremen To Be Musicians:
Accordionist and novelist Geoff Berner together with folk-surrealists Tin Can Forest, re-tell this dark, strange German folk tale about four animals running away from their masters to become town musicians in the city of Bremen.