Wanted - A Good Bard

Lately I've been exposed to some interesting music videos from the late 80's and early 90's. One captivating example is the Billy Joel video The Downeaster Alexa. It tells the powerful, evocative story of fishermen struggling to make a living and provide for their families against the backdrop of the depletion of their fisheries by overuse and environmental damage. It's a very good video from a technical standpoint, and The Downeaster Alexa is a strong song, a good story well-told. Its lyrics were pounding in my head last Saturday as I rode my bike along the Columbia River in the early afternoon, pushing against a hard wind while yellow leaves fluttered and went airborne and gunmetal-colored clouds scudded overhead.

That song and its story have got me thinking. Christianity is also a strong, rich, multilayered story, and its bards should be just as skilled, just as excellent as artists like Billy Joel, if not more so. Yet the last time I checked out a “Christian” bookstore, all I found was commercialist cheese. My blog, TH in SoC, was in part a protest against the commercialism which has taken over Christian culture in recent decades. Hearing The Downeaster Alexa has aroused a hunger in me. I need a good story. Good stories, skillfully told, instruct and inspire pilgrims on their journey and help to keep them oriented toward their goal. But I don't know where to look for a good story. I am wary of going to the usual places to find stories, fearful that I will be charged lots of money for mediocre work.

I've started wanting again to be an artist. Not to (starve while trying to) make a living at it, mind you. Being an engineer is a reliable gig and it gets the bills paid. But I want to be an artist, not as a way of making money, but as a way of learning to tell the best and most edifying of stories. As Aaron Tate once wrote, “So I write a book of life/using the best words I can find/for some struggler to snuggle up/when the world becomes unkind.” I want to learn to tell good stories as a freewill offering. But this means two things: first, learning the craft of good storytelling, whether poetry, visual art or music; and secondly, being a living, breathing example of what I preach. It's the second part that's the hardest, since often I am tempted (and sometimes I yield to the temptation) to act in a way that denies the truths I profess. Anyway, I've been itching to start practicing guitar regularly again.

But that alone won't satisfy my hunger for a good story. I want especially the sort of stories that can be packed into short, pithy poems. I can take these with me and remember them when going to work or when stuck behind my computer doing a project. Maybe I should search other people's blogs, since I have recently been learning many though-provoking things from the blogosphere. And blogs are freewill expressions; most bloggers don't ever dream of making money from their writing, so the commercial motive is not present to corrupt what they say. Are there any blogs by skilled bards out there? Does anyone have any suggestions?