Once upon a time.....

when there was no television and no books, and there were no hobbies and no light, groups of people - those of kin, or captured by war or need - sat round a fire and told tales. Sometimes these were new, never before told stories, but often they were old tales whose edges were expanded. Tales were embedded within others, or just meandered on, with characters being subtly left behind in favour of fresh ones. But it's as true now as then: that a story at its best has one voice and many hungry ears. But maybe I lie. It seems to me, that the modern world has inverted this arrangement for its opposite: many hungry voices and one strained ear. We seem happy with the situation, only, it would be nice to go back and experience that narrative intimacy. To be scooped up and transported into incredible realms by one with the skill to encompass the spread of hungry ears, from the very young to the very old. And to do it so that those with hungry ears no longer have hungry souls but contented hearts.