I'm back from a series of travels and adventures, and have many things to tell you about...but first I must catch up on all that I missed at home and work while I was away, and reassure my anxious Hound that I'm not heading off again anytime soon. As I unpack my bags, sweep the dust from the studio, and prepare to dive back into my manuscript-in-process, I've been re-reading these bracing words from Ben Okri's The Mystery Feast:

"In ancient Africa, in the Celtic lands, storytellers were magicians," he says. "They were initiates. They understood the underlying nature of reality, its hidden forces. The old Celtic bards could bring out welts on the body with a string of syllables. They could heal sickness with a tale. They could breathe life into a dying civilization with the magic of a story.

"The historian deals with the past, but the true storyteller works with the future. You can tell the strength of an age by the imaginative truth-grasping vigour of its storytellers. Stories are matrices of thought. They are patterns formed in the mind. They weave their effect on the future. To be a storyteller is to work with, to weave with, the material of time itself."

Okri then challenges us to be these kinds of storytellers today:

"Storytellers, reclaim the fire and sorcery of your estate. Take an interest in everything. You cannot be a magician in stories if you are not a magician in life. Go forward into the future, but also return to the secret gnosis of the bards.

"As the world gets more confused, storytellers should become more centered. What we need in our age are not more specialists and spin-doctors. What we need are people deeply rooted in the traditions of their art, but who are also at ease in the contemporary world.

"Storytellers are the singing conscious of the land, the unacknowledged guides. Reclaim your power to help our age become wise again."

That's a difficult challege, admittedly; but these are difficult times. And we all have our part to play, no matter how small, no matter how quiet the stories we tell.

Drawing by E.M. Taylor (1909-1999)