Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth
In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.
Stories Just Want to Get Better
As the unofficial chronicler of Paganistan, I often find myself telling stories that record the life of a people-in-the-making. Not infrequently, these are stories in which I myself played a part, or at least witnessed.
The majority of the events that these stories narrate have, for the most part, gone otherwise unrecorded. One hundred years from now, if any account of these events survives at all, it will be mine. Mine will be the voice of historic record.
This fact gives me a certain amount of power. And you know what they say about power.
Often, while framing a story, I ask myself: is this really what happened?
The answer to this question is generally: Yes. Well, mostly.
Here and there I may streamline. Every storyteller goes for effect. You leave out irrelevant details. (Why mention the five other people in the room if they have nothing to do with the point of the story?) You rearrange events so that the narrative builds. You tend to restructure so that things happen in threes, as in most jokes, in which the first two things that happen create a pattern, and the third breaks that pattern in some unforeseen way.
I give you my word: very little that I chronicle here is entirely fictional. That said, I'm a storyteller first, historian second.
No, better make that: storyteller first, educator second, historian third.
Stories just want to get better.
When next it falls to you to judge a truth, remember that.
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