The Fairy Story Theme

Fairy stories or Wonder Tales as they are also called are about abiding existential issues–they come from an oral tradition of storytelling–& they talk about greed, problems in families, growing up, getting married, the job. They are magical & one way to look at this magicality is that it is the magic world of the child where people do things in strange and magical ways with no apparent reason. The world in which animals talk, a world where there are all sorts of manifestations of evil–witches & wise-men. The stories are peopled with medieval kings, princesses, princes, evil stepmothers, fathers who are fools, stone towers, small cottages at the edge of great mysterious woods, brothers & sisters, jealousy, ingratitude, no manners, foolishness,

& tricks, always the tricks, endless tricks
& these mostly about food
but also about who gets what
about pretending
about the inside & the outside looking different, acting different, being different
about long journeys
impossible tasks
animal friends
magical transformations
special oaths,
riddles
curses, omens,
& sudden changes in circumstance

The stories are about real down-to-earth social problems,
Money, the job, getting married, family dynamics, class, gender
But they are also about the interior life,
& they move with the quickness of thought
with the flash of poetry
& they move as often on the axis of metaphor
as they do on the axis of syntax or logical development.

Wonder tales & the news – what’s going on
A crow on the wire
A white pick-up passing in front of the 7/11
Tendrils of mist floating over the lake
half-way up elephant mountain

& what happens when we bring the wonder-tale into our time?
It changes. But how? The medieval symbology of these stories finds it’s echo in Jungian psychology & the archetype which plundered the same domain.
But this is only one approach.

The storyteller’s art.

The 3Poets work is improvisatory & collaborative. As such it is anti-authoritarian.

As Theme, Blake is extremely interested in the symbolism of the sacred and at the same time radically anti-authoritarian. If anything is sacred it should be the desire to be free & neither to wish to subjugate others or be subjugated to them. There are people with various degrees of knowledge but there is no special domain, sacred or political, that is outside the domain of rational enquiry.

Disappointment as theme.

Also the notion of spirituality as a desire to go backwards to a time of contentment & unity with the world – merging with mother & no separate identity & no understanding of death. This is opposite to the desire to learn, grow & understand & make connections within the world.

The establishment of an “otherworld” & the otherworldly stance that there is a better, more true, more real ideal world than this one & that justice will some day be done in that world creates a radical split in our understanding of our situation. It is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

So. Stories about that. Yes, ordinary tales of human predicaments & relations but also the overarching concern for a social structure that is rooted in daily life & in the human body & which is non-authoritarian.