This year, like last year, I volunteered for the Sydney Writers Festival, although I did a lot less shifts due to increasing workload at uni and work. In a way, I was glad, because I had more time to visit festival events. This year's theme was 'Storytelling'. The opening address of the festival was delivered by Daniel Morden, a Welsh storyteller. Unfortunately, I didn't get to go to it, but I did end up voxpopping people who came out of the event for radio, and they all gushed about how amazing he was. So I made it to one of his free events, and I was absolutely captivated. He told two love stories, which involved the lovers being dragged from Hell and back (quite literally) and it was just him, the stage and his actions but I could picture the whole story in my head.
And later, to my joy, they had recorded the opening address and put it on the website. Having listened to it, I would have definitely paid every cent that it was worth to be there in the audience. I never heard of anything like it. He told story after story after story, but also interspersed with his insights and thoughts about storytelling and they had hit home for me. Here is the direct link to the podcast: soundcloud.com/sydney-writers-… or if you are time-short, here's an edited insight into that address: www.smh.com.au/comment/keeping…
Some of the awesome lines that jump out when listening:
"In the celtic countries there is a belief there is a belief that we can step from our world into another world. Perhaps we hear birdsong, we enter a cave. We move into our world into another. In another world, time is different."
"What is a story but a sequence of words that changes those who encounters it? We are always between two worlds, the world outside us and the world we make inside of ourselves. Stories are the bridges between those worlds."
In a way, this festival happened two years too late. Writing The World is Made Of Stories, I was figuring out what 'story' meant to me, but here Daniel Morden practically spelled out what it did mean for me. And in far better words than I can ever come up with.
Not since I was sixteen, when I first read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, was I so profoundly affected by the way I viewed words and storytelling and the act of writing itself. And although I now dedicate myself to journalism, I can't help but always feel that itch as he mentions it. That itch to tell a story, not just a news report or a colour story, but a creative story as well. 
It's time to start writing creatively again.
Meanwhile in real life...
Those who watch LiliWrites will probably know how (over)excited she is about coming to Australia to see me for my birthday. To be honest, it took at least a month for that news to sink in when she first mentioned it to me back in April. 
And now that she has bought tickets, it's really hitting me that 
she is coming. And I can't wait. 
And now that she has bought tickets, it's really hitting me that she is coming. And I can't wait. It makes me realise how very special this place is. I always carry a reminder of deviantART wherever I go, whether if it's taking my deviantART laptop bag I won from a contest here to uni, or wearing a deviantART T-shirt, or drinking from my 10th birthday deviantART cup. It makes me realise how very special this community is. My story of friendship is but one of many stories of friendships formed on this site, across cultural and geographical boundaries. For many of us, we do go on to meet each other in real life. I myself have done so, on at least three separate occasions. Lili coming over would be the first person I would meet on dA from another country entirely, so that takes it to a whole new level. I can only hope it'll be a stepping stone for me to start traveling and meeting all of you guys as well eventually. I've tentatively slated a visit to America in the second half of 2014 (conveniently after I turn 21, so I can actually go inside a bar without being thrown out for being underage in that country 
) and eventually I will make my way back to Europe.
) and eventually I will make my way back to Europe. And that's the beauty of international friendships. I may never have had an official penpal in my life, but the internet has truly opened up those boundaries beyond just penpals. We congregate here to share our love for literature and the visual arts. We spark conversations that challenge our preconceptions about the world. We laugh and cry and act as though there is never a text wall between us. The internet may expand our boundaries by allowing us more access than ever to more people, but it's never a complete representation of physical meet-up. It's this fundamental paradox of the internet that probably sits at the heart of every great community on the web.
Maybe one day the internet will somehow supplant that full representation of a physical meet-up but in all honesty, there will always be a desire to go beyond the screen. We haven't quite evolved to be complete digital natives just yet. We still crave the physical hug, the gentle punch to the shoulder, the kiss, the reciprocated smiles. Let's hope we stay that way.
The Last Word
Goes to Daniel Morden
"Achilles, give thanks to your heel. Without it, you would've been forgotten. Thank you Eve, thank you Pandora, we should give thanks to these transgressions, for they took us the long way home, over the glass mountain, through the dark forest and when we got home we had a tale worth telling, a proper story with doubts and loves and trials and crises. It's the knots in the thread, the twists in the pattern, that make it beautiful."
Skin made by fantasy-alive
