From Cathedrals to Podcasts
and everything in between...
For our recent Adventures Through a European Heat Wave, my boyfriend planned our first destination to be Vienna, Austria. After we landed and checked in to our hotel we still had a few hours to kill before we could crash from jet lag. So we went out for a walk and immediately discovered this beautiful building - St. Stephen’s Cathedral. It was stunning. We went inside to find out more.
We learned the original building took 43 years to construct, while the iconic south tower took another 65 years to build. And from the very beginning, the place itself was a political statement, because it was built to increase the status of Vienna within the church. It was an architectural power play. It seems European leaders have always been obsessed with churches and palaces. Before they could buy yachts, they built churches.
And churches used to offer the most popular live cultural experiences, with dramatic artwork, organ music, and live sermons. Churches used to compete with each other for who had the best entertainment.
I leaned over to my boyfriend and whispered, “This place was the Las Vegas Sphere of its time.” We’d just seen our first shows at the Las Vegas Sphere two months prior and I saw so many parallels. The Sphere took 5 years to build and cost $2.3 billion. It’s now one of the most immersive cultural experiences in America.
The next day we went to the Schönbrunn Palace, where we saw paintings of actual dinner events, and all the people who attended were tagged by name in the corner of the painting. Just like Facebook and Instagram enable people tagging today.
We saw a painting of one particularly famous event, where the artist inserted Mozart into the artwork because of his celebrity status, even though he couldn’t have been there because he was only two years old then. Which reminded me of Photoshop.
We saw ceiling frescos that told elaborate stories through distinctive visual scenes. They all looked very much like a graphic novel to me.
With every church, every palace, and every museum, I was reminded that humans have always been telling stories, regardless of the format. It used to be with ceiling frescos and oil paintings and church sermons. Now it’s with YouTube and Instagram and TikTok.
More importantly, I was reminded that storytelling has always been most successful when it immerses the audience into the experience. Humans have always responded to experiences that engage all their senses and enable them to participate.
The Sound of Music has been popular for 60 years because people can sing along. Fan fiction thrives because people can join in with the storytelling. Video games tell a story through simulated experiences.
Storytelling that is immersive, participatory, and communal will always resonate with audiences, regardless of the time and place. This got baked into our DNA many years ago, when we all sat around the campfire and leaned in to hear the stories that might help us survive.
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Lately there’s been a lot of concerns about how AI is changing our culture for the worse. A recent article in The Atlantic raised the alarm about how people aren’t reading books anymore. There’s been so much analyis about why people aren’t reading anymore.
Which caused me to remember something author Jason Reynolds said recently on a live webinar I attended. Jason is a very successful young adult author, having published 20+ titles and sold more than 7 million books. He said he first became a reader because of rap lyrics. All those young rappers and musicians lit him up and changed his life. And he didn’t read his first novel until he was 17 years old. Then he suggested perhaps the novel is not the only way to consume stories and maybe we should embrace all types of storytelling. Jason said he’s very pro literacy, but literacy is different from literature.
So true. I’m pro literacy and I’m pro critical thinking. And I’m not sure if we’re reading less or just reading differently. Case in point: audiobook sales have exploded and are increasing year over year.
What I know is this: I want to stay open to all the diverse ways we can tell stories today. Books and poetry and newsletters and videos- I want to engage with all of it. I want to do whatever works to connect with people through stories.
Which is why I’m very excited to share that my first ever podcast interview has now been released! I was interviewed and I got to talk all about my book and about the neurodiversity of sensitivity. I want to thank Lisa Hope Tilstra for hosting me. Her inspirational podcast is called “Make Life Less Difficult” and you can listen to our conversation here.
At its core, storytelling has always been about transmitting emotions from one person to another. That’s what I enjoy as a reader and that’s what I strive to do as a writer. I had so much fun talking with Lisa on her podcast and I hope you have fun listening.
Because that was so much fun, I want to do more of these. Starting now, I’m going to be talking about my book a whole lot more. I’m going to share about the hook and premise, the characters and the themes. I’ll share about the people who make cameo appearances and I’ll share backstories about how the whole book came together. I’ll share about all the things I’m passionate about that appear in the story. And I’m excited for you to follow along.
Thanks for being here and being part of my journey. May your week be full of beautiful stories and music and art.
