David Weaver
gone but not forgotten
‘What is a Storyteller?’
David K Weaver ã
When friends read my stories they invariably ask, ‘Where is Mullockgoolie, are you the narrator of the stories; and are those who live there real people?’
I have to think carefully before answering for I don’t wish to hurt anyone’s feelings, without good reason, or end up in a cell for some minor slander at the expense of you, the Australian taxpayer.
Firstly let me state categorically that all my stories are works of fiction, other than those which are true, for it’s a fine line we tread between fact and a writer’s creative imagination.
Where do I get my characters from, you may well ask? Just look around you are surrounded by them. But again a likeness to any living person is purely coincidental, and if it happens to be a member of your family I will strenuously deny it. I do not make the same claim for the dead, for they cannot discuss anything of importance, or take me to task over their long hidden secret I’ve shared with the world.
As for the Australian town of Mullockgoolie, everyone I have met in my travels around the world live there. A vast unsuspecting migration plucked from far away places, relocated by a chewed down pencil and a sheet of crumpled paper.
But why are we storytellers? The answer to that question was written thousands of years ago. Every child sitting on its mother’s knee has listened to one; a father telling of the time when he was a boy catching fish from the river also qualifies. As the years pass, the fish get bigger, the river wilder, and the yarn-spinner more contented with his inflated memories. After all if a story is told often enough, even with embellishments, you start to believe it yourself.
Grandparents are the best storytellers of all, for they have no illusions about their audience and can lie through their teeth, if they have any, without the slightest twinge of conscience. As long as their grandchildren sit open mouthed with wonder, they will weave, for hours, their wondrous spells of pure deceit.
Who hasn’t heard an old man say, ‘I knew as soon as I clapped my eyes on the misses, she was the girl for me.’ All lies of course, but you wouldn’t know it if you looked at the little old lady holding his hand, smiling her possessive smile. Only they know the real story, for her mother and father are long gone. The same father who marched the reluctant groom to the church at the end of a double-barrelled shot gun. A good story to be remembered and cherished, sometimes told by us writers for future generations to smile over, but generally not for we may be the result of that disastrous night of passion so long ago.
Try sitting with an old soldier and let him talk for a while. There are dozens of unwritten books that will vanish into the grave with him, when he sets off on his last great reconnaissance to join his long lost mates from the trenches.
I see my ‘Storytellers’ as I walk amongst you, but there are many others. They are the dark shadows amongst the trees where lovers kiss, invisible to all, their whispering pens, like the wind, writing silently towards the end of the page.
They stand unseen at the side of their main character, unable to guide them when they are lost, helpless when they are in trouble. Following them obediently without challenge, on whichever road they are taken. Sometimes that journey is one they reluctantly travel, whilst others they would gladly walk twice, such is the pleasure of it. The ‘Storyteller’ has no choice in these matters, for we are only the wandering spirits through the ghostly alleyways of life, watching and recording the lives of others.
I urge you, no I beg you, to keep writing your stories down, for even old men like me need to share the dreams that come from other writer’s loneliness.
David K Weaver ã
When friends read my stories they invariably ask, ‘Where is Mullockgoolie, are you the narrator of the stories; and are those who live there real people?’
I have to think carefully before answering for I don’t wish to hurt anyone’s feelings, without good reason, or end up in a cell for some minor slander at the expense of you, the Australian taxpayer.
Firstly let me state categorically that all my stories are works of fiction, other than those which are true, for it’s a fine line we tread between fact and a writer’s creative imagination.
Where do I get my characters from, you may well ask? Just look around you are surrounded by them. But again a likeness to any living person is purely coincidental, and if it happens to be a member of your family I will strenuously deny it. I do not make the same claim for the dead, for they cannot discuss anything of importance, or take me to task over their long hidden secret I’ve shared with the world.
As for the Australian town of Mullockgoolie, everyone I have met in my travels around the world live there. A vast unsuspecting migration plucked from far away places, relocated by a chewed down pencil and a sheet of crumpled paper.
But why are we storytellers? The answer to that question was written thousands of years ago. Every child sitting on its mother’s knee has listened to one; a father telling of the time when he was a boy catching fish from the river also qualifies. As the years pass, the fish get bigger, the river wilder, and the yarn-spinner more contented with his inflated memories. After all if a story is told often enough, even with embellishments, you start to believe it yourself.
Grandparents are the best storytellers of all, for they have no illusions about their audience and can lie through their teeth, if they have any, without the slightest twinge of conscience. As long as their grandchildren sit open mouthed with wonder, they will weave, for hours, their wondrous spells of pure deceit.
Who hasn’t heard an old man say, ‘I knew as soon as I clapped my eyes on the misses, she was the girl for me.’ All lies of course, but you wouldn’t know it if you looked at the little old lady holding his hand, smiling her possessive smile. Only they know the real story, for her mother and father are long gone. The same father who marched the reluctant groom to the church at the end of a double-barrelled shot gun. A good story to be remembered and cherished, sometimes told by us writers for future generations to smile over, but generally not for we may be the result of that disastrous night of passion so long ago.
Try sitting with an old soldier and let him talk for a while. There are dozens of unwritten books that will vanish into the grave with him, when he sets off on his last great reconnaissance to join his long lost mates from the trenches.
I see my ‘Storytellers’ as I walk amongst you, but there are many others. They are the dark shadows amongst the trees where lovers kiss, invisible to all, their whispering pens, like the wind, writing silently towards the end of the page.
They stand unseen at the side of their main character, unable to guide them when they are lost, helpless when they are in trouble. Following them obediently without challenge, on whichever road they are taken. Sometimes that journey is one they reluctantly travel, whilst others they would gladly walk twice, such is the pleasure of it. The ‘Storyteller’ has no choice in these matters, for we are only the wandering spirits through the ghostly alleyways of life, watching and recording the lives of others.
I urge you, no I beg you, to keep writing your stories down, for even old men like me need to share the dreams that come from other writer’s loneliness.
End.
