susana tornero

In December I use to reread the two volumes of The Circle of Liars, the collection of philosophical short stories from all over the world from Jean-Claude Carrière, searching for a new story to welcome the New Year. It has become a fascinating ritual, since although the books don’t change, every year I discover in them a story that had got unnoticed until then and suddenly becomes meaningful to me according to my last experiences. As it happened right now with this story, which Carrière attributes to Charles Peguy, but possibly has a more ancient origin, as seems to indicate the Japanese variant The Stone-cutter (ATU 555) gathered by Andrew Lang in his Crimson Fairy Book, a version I adapted in 2018 for a touring storytelling session that I used to tell in Barcelona’s old town, in pre-Covid times. Although both stories used to talk to me about human dissatisfaction, nowadays they make me think about the inner serenity achieved when you suddenly discover that your life makes sense. Because books don’t change, that’s true, but the eyes which read the stories can keep intact their learning capacity until the end of their lives.

They say that one day, a pilgrim met a stone-cutter working near the road and he asked him:

—What are you doing, good man?

And the stone-cutter answered:

—You don’t see that? I am struggling for life, cutting stones exposed to the cold, the rain, the sun, and all these for a misery. There is not a worst destiny than mine!

The pilgrim went on his way, until he found another stone-cutter, and he asked:

—Hard job, isn’t it?

And the man answered:

—Well, it’s not all bad: at least I can feed my family, there is always work, and besides, working outdoors allows you to see people… There are jobs worst than that.

Finally, a bit further, the pilgrim found a third stone-cutter, and after asking him, the man, looking deeply in his eyes, answered:

—I am building a cathedral.

Good year and good stories.

Llegeix-me en Català
Léeme en Castellano

Sometimes we do things without thinking why. For instance, to knock on wood for good luck. Rereading Tony Allan’s The Mythic Bestiary I discovered that this gesture comes from a German woodcutter’s habit: they used tap gently the trunk of a venerable tree, as if they knocked on the door, asking permission before beginning their task. It was a way of paying their respects to the Waldgeist, which literary means «spirit of the forest».

In many mythologies of the world appear similar characters, a sort of forest keepers, in charge of reminding us the need of protecting nature. Curiously, the cultures where these kind of myths are still alive are the ones which are fearing the most the climate change. Occidental culture, on the contrary, seems to have almost deleted them from their imaginary in order to exploit nature without regrets.

Fortunately, not everyone turn their backs on nature. There is people fighting for a new life model, with nature and for nature, like Fundació Emys, and I like to think that they are, in some way, the new forest keepers.

Next Saturday 27th April, Fundació Emys celebrates the second Festinat, an environmental meeting for learning to protect and enjoy nature in a respectful way. I will be there doing what I like the most: to tell stories from around the world. Maybe some of these stories will help us to see nature with other eyes, or at least, to think before doing things. I knock on wood for the success of the meeting, with the spirits of the forest’s permission.

Saturday 27th April at 11:30 h
Festinat, the nature meeting point
Folktales about nature (in Catalan)
Can Moragues – Riudarenes (La Selva, Girona)
Information and tickets: festinat.cat

Llegeix-me en Català
Léeme en Castellano

Life has many twists and turns: when I released The Night of Spider’s legs I was a storyteller based in Barcelona trying to reconnect with my Empordà roots through the poems of Carles Fages de Climent. Five years later, while rehearsing stories, poems and pieces of music which I was forced to keep in a box due to pandemics and family issues, I can see from my window the Verdera mountains, and if not for electricity, which has covered with light the whole mountain, maybe I might be able to locate the famous enchanted light mentioned at the book The Witches of Llers, which was the trigger of the whole performance, what led me, so to speak, to a «creative mode».

Now I am rather in «travel mode»: I am invited to take part in the Storytelling Week for Adult Audience in Valencia, organized by the Teatro Círculo from Benimaclet, and although it is true that at the beginning I felt a bit lazy about, as it probably is the most challenging of my performances, combining storytelling, poetry and music, I have to recognize that it fits perfectly to claim the art of storytelling for an adult audience. I remember how I specially chose the first verse from the poem Ballad of the enchanted light as a sort of declaration of intent, like a dissuasive measure for the audience with very little children, an audience which has taken up almost all storytelling programmes in libraries and cultural centres, leaving all young and adult audiences orphans of stories. I understood it as a way of claiming that many stories are for being told specifically when little children are already in bed: stories that would be a pity that would remain untold, as they need the ears of an adult, or at least, of a teenager. The strategy, of course, failed to reverse the situation, but it gave me the secret hope that after listening my stories, some youngsters from my region might look their landscape from different eyes.

If you want to listen these stories, and also others from other storytellers: Susagna Navó, Jose Luis Mellado and Eugenia Manzanera, I recommend you to go from the 8th to the 11th February to the Teatre Círculo from Benimaclet and let yourself be seduced by the power of storytelling.

Saturday 10th February at 20h
Teatre Círculo Benimaclet
C/ Prudenci Alcón i Mateu, 3, ground floor left
46020 València (Benimaclet District)
 
The Night of spider’s legs
Storytelling performance in Catalan with poems and music for adult audience
Tickets: 11 €