"The Storyteller" Dogstar telling tales. |
“Everything is a story. What is there but stories? Stories are the only truth . . . we had power over our own stories. We shaped our world as we wished it to be. It was our glory.”
-“Gian Hen Gian” from Christopher Moore’s Practical Demonkeeping.
A bit over a month ago I heard a story presentation by someone I had not heard before. Dogstar was billed in SL Events at “The Storyteller” which drew me right away. In the air breathing world you will hear it said that the art of storytelling is dying, and I doubt you will find places outside of children’s sections of libraries and some upper crust bookstores where literature (stories in perpetua) are read aloud to an audience. Dogstar was performing to a standing-room-only crowd of nearly twenty avatars: adult human, kid avis, furries. His vocal presentation was strong and dynamic. He used affects discretely to enhance his story: when he told of gruel overflowing a pot it did so, spilling in amongst the audience; when he told a story involving goblins and a puppy which had a repeating sequence as many traditional tales do, illustrated images appeared to support the action. As I looked around I wondered, where all these people had come from? I thought of them sitting in homes at or near computer screens, with headsets or speakers on. I wondered what had brought them to this?