A Story About A Song About Stories
Alternatively, a childhood song becomes a lifelong aspiration
What happens when you leave a child with a collection of Disney DVDs? Well in my house, it was Beauty and The Beast: The Enchanted Christmas that got the incessant repeats.
And while this direct-to-video Disney film was quite poorly-received by critics, it consumed my daily ritual for one reason: the song.
Okay, maybe the reason would more accurately be the theme of how stories can be a source of hope and strength. But that is basically the song, Stories by Paige O’Hara:
When I get to know him
We’ll find more things to say
One day I will reach him
There has to be a wayEveryone needs someone
He must need someone, too
When I get to know him better
Here’s what I will do
The premise of the movie is Belle trying to revive Christmas spirit in the Beast’s castle, as he has forbidden the celebration ever since he became the Beast. And for bookworm Belle, the perfect Christmas gift for him would be a book! She writes one by herself, as she sang this song.
I’ll read him stories
From picture books
All filled with wonder
Magic worlds where
The impossible
Becomes the everydayWe’ll find a mountaintop
And some moonbeams
To sit under
I’ll lead because I know the way
I know now that I was a lonely child — but I did not know it then. I thought it was natural for a child to be left to their own devices for most of the day, and it was normal to have fictional characters as companions.
So how incredibly enticing Belle’s song was to me: I loved those magical worlds, and she knew the way there!
So much to discover
I do it all the time
I could live inside bright pages
Where the words all rhymeWe will slay the dragons
That still follow him around
And he’ll smile, yes he’ll smile
As his dreams leave the ground
I did live inside the pages of all my childhood reading, and I got through them fairly quickly. My parents would take my brother and I to the public library on Sunday, and when no one else wanted to borrow a book, I would use their cards to go home with 8 books. All finished within the first few days, to be reread at leisure while I waited impatiently for Sunday to come round again.
Stories and stories
‘Bout mermaids, kings
And sunken treasure
Magic worlds where the impossible
Becomes the everydayI know a tiny place
Just a dot, too small to measure
I’ll take him there
I know the way
I packed my luggage in a pillowcase to dorm with the students at Mallory Towers and St Clare’s. I made toasted cheese sandwiches to snack on while I solved mysteries with the Famous Five, Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys.
I tried churning butter like the little girls on the prairie, experienced the Yorkshire Dales with James Herriot, and was thoroughly amused by the antics of Aziraphale and Crowley.
I did not have a wardrobe stuffed with fur coats, but I travelled to Narnia anyway. Even in my dreams, the Valar were rebuilding their homes at Aman.
Stories ‘bout heroes
Who overcame their deepest sorrow
They’ll put hope into his heart again
He’ll cherish every dayHe’ll find a better world
And the strength to face tomorrow
I’m sure that when he knows the way
He’ll want to stay
I think this song sets the tone for the type of writer I aspire to be: stories about heroes — however ordinary — who overcome all of life’s trials and tribulations, and go on to live each day with hope.
From a child who lived in those stories, I then aspired to be the storyteller.
To my memory, I wrote my first complete story at 10, about a stained glass windowmaker whose unappreciated creativity was eventually saved by someone who saw it as more than colourful glass. Pretty sure Aesop’s fables and Hans Christian Anderson had a big influence there.
Of course with increasing age and expanding vocabulary, I did explore other genres, going from fantasy and adventure to all the usual suspects from bildungsromane to dystopian novels; braving Ayn Rand’s philosophy and Marcel Proust’s lack of punctuation.
But it is still the themes from my childhood stories that stick with me, and it will be my lifelong aspiration to tell magical stories where my readers will want to stay.
See how this song also inspired a poem of mine:
