Inventing and Sharing Stories

It was one of my favorite moments when my nieces started performing the Myth of the Wandering Princess. Everyone else in the family was familiar with this kind of event.

Downstairs the cousins had been concocting a SHOW. The time in *imagining* the "show," choosing the costumes, negotiating the characters, haranguing the adults til they came down to the performance space -- all exceeded the amount of time put into thinking about trivialities like plot and theme. The foolish audience member at some event may assume that the improvisational quality of the story may diminish it's value, and since I had, myself, been guilty of basement theatres, elaborate costumes, carefully negotiated roles and harangueing of the adults myself -- I too was tempted to "watch" the story half-heartedly.

But this particular day, I leaned into watching it as if it were a sacred text being revealed.

And to my awe and delight: the story was amazing.

The spoiled palace princess sees a bauble on a necklace while visiting the gypsy princess at the makeshift market at the edge of the city. The gypsy princess refuses to to sell it to her and finally as a joke meant to underline the point says that she'll sell the princess the necklace for the price of -- her baby. The Castle Princess is delighted. She finds the baby tiresome and couldn't be more exhuberant about her new jewelry.

The castle princess is of course diisappointed that everyone at the ball keeps asking about the BAAAby instead of her new necklace.

It's really a full week before she realizes that she actually misses the baby. She shouldn't have given her away.

She goes to the edge of the city and is shocked to find that the gypsy market and encampment are gone.

She goes into the woods to find the Gypsy princess and her daughter but the Gypsy Princess and her daughter are far far away.

At this point in the show we see many MANY entrances and exits of first the gypsy princess and the baby and then later the castle princess. An ironic perpetual wandering with no finding and without even perceiving a search. The baby is happy with her new mother and sometimes the Gypsy princess wonders if she should feel some guilt for her part in accepting the baby? But there is no question she is happy, and she was surrendered of her own will.

At this point in the production there were angry stage whispers. The loop of pursuit and wandering didn't seem to have a planned ending point, and some of the actors were growing weary.

The whispers which gave way to the entire production falling apart with someone crying to their parents that so and so was making hte show her way and...

I know the truth. These young women had been revealing an epic truth in the form of a new myth and the work of myth excavation is too heavy for a basement production. There was no choice but to let the production fall apart so that the story could continue.

Deep in those woods the princesses are still wandering. Searching. Fleeing. Growing. Wondering. Hoping. Dreading. Laughing. Cooking. Sleeping. Hiking.

All of our wanderings gradually become life. We can accomodate such pain and such bewilderment alongside of the everyday things that keep our time that the pain becomes just a bearable low note in the background and we just ... keep wandering.

And you'll be happy to know that I've procured consent from these original creators and am working THE MYTH OF WANDERING PRINCESS into a larger film project called FLOATING IN.

(Stay tuned for more information on that point.)

When you make a story, you are creating language to build a future world. The ending of the story is an escape hatch you're going to need when you least expect it. The point of view that you craft for your audience becomes a perch you can climb up to in order to understand your own life differently.

Making things up is actually making things up. Every story that you make up and tell to another person becomes a substantial way of being and seeing and knowing in the world you share with your audience.

The thing I'm valuing today is: Inventing and Sharing Stories.

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