Inspiration for Home-Spun Tales

If you will allow me to wax retrospectively-philosophical, I want to talk about what makes me tick personally.  I write on a lot of things - religion, politics, other stuff - but the one thing many people seem to connect with is when I write about childhood memories and such.  I won't be doing a lot of those here on this blog, because most of that is on my Facebook page that you can read when you get the chance.  What I do want to talk about now is how things inspire me to write what I write.

Today, that subject hit me as I was listening to one of my favorite "classical" works, Sibelius' Finlandia.  There is just something about listening to stuff like that which fires the imagination, but listening to that type of music has to be done when I am in the right attitude and frame of mind.   My classical music collection is not really large, in comparison to the big band stuff I talked about, but over the years some things have really caught my attention and have captivated me.  Sibelius is one of those, but I am equally inspired by Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring (probably because I get homesick listening to it), Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto (also known as the pop standard "Full Moon and Empty Arms"), most everything Stravinsky has ever written (he is my favorite composer!), and the beautiful Strauss waltzes (I really love those).   Good serious music like that - much of which also has a strong Judeo-Christian root as well - is the music you create by, and it also stirs the imagination.  God has given some people the ability to create and arrange sounds to powerful results, and pieces like these above-listed exemplify that well.  Great music like that takes us back to a time when honor, grace, and class were things to be valued, and as a result there is a noble quality to great compositions like those and some others I could mention.  For one thing, it makes me sometimes wish I was born in Europe the way it used to be - before all the secularism and socialism emasculated it - when the monarchy was a symbol of respect and Christianity was the foundation of the law of the land.  And, being I have the blood of Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, Prince Vladimir of Novgorod, and other great monarchs in my veins (I am a direct descendant of all that on my father's side of the family) I feel as if that great music personifies something in me that I personally connect with.  It is hard to describe in great detail, but you get the picture. 

I am also captivated by great stories, as well as not-so-big folktales and legends.  When I was just a baby, Mom got me this set of story books called My Book House which were first published in the 1920's by a Chicago educator by the name of Olive Beaupre Miller.  The books represent a very good cross-section of the great literary heritage of Western civilization - ethnic folk tales, ancient mythology, Bible stories, early American folklore, and classic literary works.  These were the books that first exposed me to some of the stories I still enjoy today, such as William Makepeace Thackaray's The Rose and the Ring, and several years back I actually bought a new set of those which I have now in my library (the original set Mom got me is long gone).  As I grew and matured, those books led me to read other literature, which as a kid included stuff such as Robert Newton Peck's Soup books, William Saroyan's My Name is Aram, and other literary classics.  It was through reading stuff like these works that I began to develop a writing style all my own - it is a folksy style that bases a lot of my own life experience into story form, but at the same time it is detailed, epic in scope, and has some overlap.  So far, except for a couple of things, most of my stuff has been non-fiction, and is more in the tradition of the storyteller - being a member of Toastmasters and the National Storytelling Association has helped develop that more for me too.   In time, I want to capture the essence of my life in book form, bind it in a volume, and have it available for others to see.  It will be lengthy, as I love trying to catch every detail as my life story is sort of a way to reach back in time and touch some things I have forgotten or missed. As a result, I can get wordy, so want to apologize to you all beforehand, because you are in for a LONG read with my stuff!

    This is what my original set of My Book House looked like.  This

   edition is from 1965.

Places also stimulate me - that is a West Virginia/Appalachian thing though, as the "sense of place" is a strong connection.   And, I am not just talking about places I grew up or have lived, but also those places where, if you are traveling on the road, just stick out at you.  The look of a certain house, the architecture of a country church, an old gas station or eatery...these things catch my attention easily.  I am a fairly decent graphite artist, and have tried to re-create them in drawings, but it isn't the same.  I will also be posting some drawings later as well soon as the scanner gets back in operation again. 

This is one of those places that inspires me but I have never been to - yet!

It is Lake Bled in the Slovenian Alps, and I love the view of this.

Well, that is all to say for tonight, but will have some good stuff up for you to see soon.  Take care.