- The Princess and The Frog
In a world where people seem to be separated by time, experience and culture, it seems as though stories are one of the few ways we feel connected. There are true stories on the news, told in a variety of languages, mediums, and fashions. There are stories of history behind festivals, holidays and traditions, but there are also the stories that teach us something without us even realizing, the ones we remember. The particular stories that are at the front of my mind are fairytales. No matter the adaptation, almost every person has heard the same fairytale: a princess is saved by a beast, two children escape a wicked witch, or a trapped prince escapes life as an amphibian by true love’s kiss. While reality cannot be completely ignored and the truth cannot be entirely jaded by our imaginations, a journalist can tell us stories about our own lives in a way that will teach us something, in a way that we will remember. When Joan Didion tells us, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” there are those moments in life we can all remember when we needed a tale of triumph, a story of failure or an anecdote of love in order to make sense of our own lives, remember we are human and to keep on living. For Didion, the experience of the loss of both her daughter and her husband manifested itself into a book titled The Year of Magical Thinking. The stories she shares are not fairytales, there are no happy endings, but there is magic in the way she tells the truth about life, the way she teaches her readers about loss and the fact that she reminds people in the world that they are not alone.
I recall a moment in Joan Didion’s “White Album” when she tells of the items she packed on her reporting trips from booze to outfit changes to writing materials. One of the more seemingly obvious tools she had failed to bring with her was a watch to tell time. Didion remarks in “White Album”, “This may be a parable, either of my life as a reporter during this period or of the period itself.” I believe this to be one of the greatest things that could have happened to Didion as a reporter. By removing strict time to life itself and the events that occur to us, things become more universal, more humanistic. Recording time periods and recalling the political and social climate of a certain span of years is indeed highly important as the 60s were for Didion while living in Los Angeles. Yet, in the moments we are observing life itself, time should not be of the utmost importance. The details of the time, place and climate can all be added later on, but the magic of the story, the value of the lesson in the event right in front of us, that’s where the fairytale exists to be told years and years beyond its time.
