Many years ago my friend Stephanie and I saw a stand of swords for sale at Carnival Supply. They were all metal, all highly decorative, and all the size of cocktail toothpicks. Neither of us had enough money to buy the stand, so we pooled our money so that we could co-own it.
Every year we exchange the swords. One person gets the stand with all the swords save one. The other person keeps that one sword. Then the next year we switch.
Over the years we (mostly I) have lost swords and replaced the metal ones with plastic ones that are gold-painted. And then last year our friend Ali gave me a stand of swords she found at an antique shop somewhere. It's not exactly the same as the original, but it provided a nice set of "backup" swords.
We exchange the swords at New Day, which is the New Year's celebration of the countries-we-made-up, Krohn and Ravenay. And each year one of us writes a story, a legend explaining why these two countries, who have always been at peace, make presents to each other of these symbols of warfare.
Your challenge is to write such a fantasy legend.
Some hopefully helpful bits of background:
The king of Krohn is currently a lion named Kahn. In the past a unicorn has been ruler, and one will be so again.
The queen of Ravenay is a unicorn named Iris. In the past there have been human rulers of this country.
Animals talk in both countries. There are magical creatures like unicorns, dragons, mermaids, dryads, centaurs, etc. but also the common sort of woodland creatures like deer, foxes, wolves, hawks etc. The story could involve humans or animals or both, magic or nonmagical creatures or both.
The enemy of both countries is Daymya, a land to the east (Ravenay is north of Krohn and Daymya touches both borders). Daymya has not threatened Krohn in a long time, but has engaged in many border skirmishes with Ravenay.
There are no magical creatures of any sort in Daymya and the animals do not talk. The people there are taught there's no such thing as magic, and only those who fight on their enemy's territory know otherwise.
Krohn and Ravenay have always been at peace, but of course there are always going to be people who want to stir up trouble for their own profit.
Ravenayan names tend to sound vaguely Welsh or Latin ("Adellen," "Benor"). Krohnian names will only use these letters and letter combinations:
b d f g h k l m n p r s t v y
ah ay eh ee oh oo
e.g. Sahnah, Lahrohn
But don't worry. You won't be judged for accuracy--just how good a legend you can make to account for a set of swords traded between the countries every New Day.
This article is a product of the media. Media: Latin for "middle," something standing between -- in this case, I'm standing in between you and Bill Carter. I read his new memoir Fools Rush In, watched his documentary Miss Sarajevo, then conducted a phone interview with him, and now I am sharing what I learned with you. If I do my job well, everyone benefits -- you find out interesting things without having to do too much research, and Bill Carter gets to do something besides field questions all day.
We take the media for granted sometimes. We think it is the only way to interact with the world. When a war goes on, for example, we expect the BBC, CNN and Time magazine will all send reporters to get the story from the front. We tend to forget that what they give us is mediated: they decide what pictures to show, what questions to ask, what portions of answers to report to us.
All this is necessary if you want to understand why what happened for thirteen nights in 1993 was unprecedented. Each night, one or two or three citizens in besieged Sarajevo spoke to an audience of 50,000, 60,000, or 100,000 people. They spoke for a few minutes about whatever they wanted to talk about. What they said was live and unedited. They did not speak to a reporter who then explained to a news anchor what it all meant -- they spoke to a rock crowd. The audiences were there for U2's Zooropa tour. The guy whose idea it was to link Sarajevo to these concerts, and who found Sarajevans willing to go in front of the cameras every night, was Bill Carter.
Full story at @U2.
Join me, won’t you, in singing this place. It doesn’t exist—not yet. Yes, the concrete of St. Louis is here, and it’s on the road maps, but in other ways there is barely a trace of this city.
Close your eyes and you can picture New York, even if you’ve never seen it. You can do the same with New Orleans or San Francisco. You know their street names through novels, rock lyrics, movies. Now ask yourself: how many outside our city can close their eyes and picture St. Louis?
That is what we can sing (or write, or paint, or sculpt) into existence—an art of the city, an art native to the city, an art expressing the soul of this place. We’ll get it wrong if we try to make our songs/stories/movies look like the art born elsewhere. We should be ourselves while there is still a chance, before homogeneity engulfs us all.
What is unique to a city reveals its soul. Be inspired by our native textures—the muddy river, the terracotta of our buildings. Investigate our native face—the amalgam of North and South, our French roots, our Bosnian and Vietnamese influx. Be honest in your creations about what in our civil society works and what doesn’t. Dare to love it enough to criticize it; dare to keep running back to it even if it dismisses you.
Most importantly, don’t wait for an infrastructure to form that will “support the artistic community.” The infrastructure arrives after the artists claim the territory. Think of Dublin, where plaques are hung at every location mentioned by James Joyce in Ulysses. The plaques are hung afterward; the book was written first. And now, tourists flock to Dublin, lured by the desire to see the city firsthand after a novel formed an image of it in their minds. Your grand ambition, and mine, could make such a thing happen here.
One easy way to begin: be specific when you write poems or songs or do whatever you do to create. Which is more evocative in a lyric: “the main drag” or “Grand Boulevard?” You may have a cult audience now or someday, so give them something to puzzle over. Give your true believers reason to make annotated versions of your work.
Never be content with a fan base here. Make something that upsets or confuses them, if you must. Be the prophet without honor in your home if it will give you a voice outside. But even in your travels away, find a way back. Get your record deal, publishing contract, or whatever out of town if you must, but keep a home in St. Louis. Our soil is clay; everything growing has to fight for its life here, but the fight makes it tougher, stronger. Staying here (or coming back) will strengthen you in ways a transplanting never will.
Originally published in Playback.