Soar and Swoop

Choose with care the scenes you will detail

The Kite

The kite soared high above the plain. She rode the warm airs that rose off the rocks the sun baked. Back and forth she soared and watched the landscape far below. In a few moments her wings and eyes swept over miles of ground.

Then she spotted prey two miles away: a young antelope far from its herd, weak and stumbling. She turned her wings and started down. She dropped as fast as a stone. Her eyes saw nothing in the mad plunge, the land blurred as it leapt up to meet her. But she saw her prey and every hair upon the young antelope’s hide.

She struck and she killed with the sudden snap of a thunderbolt. The neck of the young antelope was broken. It had died before it lay upon the Earth.

Now the kite perched on the carcass. She stooped and tore the hide and flesh with her sharp beak. She gobbled down strips and hunks of meat. The meat settled in her craw, was crushed, slid into her guts. It was good. The flesh was tender bloody and sweet. It filled the kite’s belly.

Other kites and hunters gathered and watched but they dared not challenge her. Only the flies swarmed in beneath her, but flies were small things and the kite paid them no heed. She perched on the bloody carcass and preened. This was not a need but it pleased her to linger and flaunt her kill, her prize, before the other hunters who were helpless to feed till she was good and done.

The kite spread her great wings wide, shook them, pushed off. She flapped low across the ground until her speed lofted her up through the lower airs into the middle.

She soared to a high perch in the wind and settled there till night should fall or need rise up once more.

Heart and Sinew

As the kite soars to take in the plains of her hunt, and swoops to seize and feast upon her prey, so I judge the wise talesman should take the matter of his tale in hand, hold it at arm’s length, count which parts are best to taste and savor, and slip swiftly over the rest.

Every tale has a few scenes that make up its heart for its hearers. These are the scenes we want to hear in the fullness of telling, our every sense played upon and pleased.

There are then those other scenes that like sinew or bone hold the tasty heart-scenes in order and give the tale its overall shape. These are the scenes whose only aim is to bring us to the heart-scenes, to make sense out of the play among heart-scenes, to prepare us for the heart-scenes, and to hold us back from a headlong rush from one heart-scene to the next. So we can take stock, get back our breath, and look forward to what lies ahead, and in this forward gaze boost the fun we’ll have when we reach the next heart-scene.

In dreams the sinew-scenes drop out, for the talesman of our dreams is as well their audience, and the audience is greedy, always, like a small child that wants to eat and suck and play all the time. In dreams we leap from heart-scene to heart-scene without let or (seeming) reason.

The great joy of the audience lies in giving over the reins of the telling to the talesman. We give our dreams into his hands and we let him steer us were he will, at at what speed he will. He knows how to lash us on as well as how to rein us in, to hold us to a walk, to goad us to a gallop. Our joy lies in these two gifts the talesman holds,

1. First to imagine what we dare not
2. Second to pace the telling out in soaring sweeps of narrative and swooping scenes of full-bodied detail.

The talesman’s joy lies in these two things as well, first in daring to imagine, and second in mastering the tale and the audience at once.

The Overseer

The good talesman surveys the matter of his tale before he tells it. He holds it out and judges first what parts are best, what fair, what might be lacking, what might not be needed. He sees which scenes are heart-scenes and which are sinew-scenes. He knows he must let his audience feast upon the heart-scenes to their utmost greed. He knows the sinew-scenes need but be sketched to their smallest reach, given only these terms are met:

• that the sinew-scenes make sense in how the hero passes from one heart-scene to the next
• that the sinew-scenes prepare the ground for the next heart-scene so as to leave out all explanation from the telling of the heart-scenes
• that the sinew-scenes should last just long enough so that the audience should feel their pulse abate, their nerves ease, and their tongue take back the edge of hunger.

Overlooking the matter of his tale, the talesman goes on to oversee its telling and in this he must play Overseer both to the spinning of the tale and to the tastes of his audience. In the end it is the heart and head of the audience with which the talesman works.

Heart-Scenes

Which scenes then should the talesman choose as the heart-scenes of his tale? They are of two broad kinds:

1. Those scenes that most draw the talesman’s own eye
2. Those scenes that mark the great turns of the tale

The scenes that most draw the talesman are those he will tell best for his own delight in them. These scenes mark one talesman from another not in the craft but in the soul. And the soul of the talesman is the root of his style and what we in the audience best recall.

The scenes that mark the turns of the tale come close to universal in the Sea of Story, and deserve their own place to speak of them at length. These though in brief are the scenes that tale itself most wants to tell, that draw the tale’s own eye. And they mark one tale from another in their soul.

But I must note here the gape that may lie between the scenes the talesman best loves to tell, and those the tale most wants to be told. Where the two are yoked as one, the tale will best win the audience that loves that kind of tale. But where the two fall wide apart, the tale will lurch and limp at best, and it will be plain to the audience that the talesman is an ill match to this kind of tale, and he were best to tell another kind of tale more to his own taste.

(Composed with pen on paper Saturday 16 February 2008)