a mouse and a pyrotechnic dragon.

One of my very favorite pieces of performance art in the world is Disney’s Fantasmic. It’s a light show featuring many of Disney’s Renaissance hits. (You can find a recording here.) It’s about the power of imagination, and it brings me to tears every time I listen to it.

The show takes you through a montage of different Disney films, because, obvi, Disney; you get to see Peter Pan, some Beauty and the Beast action, a weird drunk elephant scene, you know. Fun. The connecting storyline is that Mickey Mouse is having a nice little dream about all of the properties the company generated circa the '90s; your Pocahontas, your Lion King, your Aladdin. 

After a bit, the dream turns into a nightmare, and we get a villain montage - Ursula for a bit, as I recall; and then Maleficent. There’s maybe a dragon. (I’m underselling this. Go watch it!) Mickey’s completely terrified, the music is incredibly grim, and it seems like we’re spiraling into orchestral terror. (I think the horrifying demonic whatever from one of the Fantasias shows up, too? It’s actually quite scary.) 

At that moment, at the precise instant when everything seems lost and bad and dark, Mickey realizes that, if this is his dream, he can take control and win the fight.

In a triumphant swell of the orchestra - much trumpet, very fanfare! - he magics away the dragon, and all is happy and wonderful, and the cast comes out in gleaming finale attire, dancing on an actual Mark-Twain steamboat. (The show takes place on an island surrounded by a moat; the steamboat’s a surprise. Sorry!) At the end, with a world of smiling princesses and glittering princes whirling around him post-dragon, the music stops - the spotlight tightens on Mickey - and he winks at the audience, gestures to everything, and says, quietly, ’Some imagination, huh?’

And then the music comes back and SLAMS you and you look at all the brilliance and you’re like - all of this came from one man’s (e.g., Disney’s) brain (sort of)! The size of it all! - and, more to the storytelling, this one tiny mouse was able to defeat a dragon because he dreamed it so - and, okay, I’m probably losing people, but - this is what I mean. 

A good story completely decks me, and I know there has to be a reason for that.

Okay, so, here’s the thing. I’m obsessed with fairytales. But, like, not just the Disney movies. I seek out the original myths. I read the OG texts. I trace stories like Cinderella back through time to see which civilization came up with the glass slipper story first. 

BUT I REALIZE that not everyone in the world is like, super into where Scheherazade got the inspo for her thousand-and-one stories, or why the Brothers Grimm wrote stories for kids so bleak that their name spawned an adjective which literally means ‘scary and sad and bad’. S’fine. To each their own. 

Here’s why I think they’re important. 

#1. For a common bank of time-tested story outlines. 

We’ll start with a practical one before I start rambling again. 

They say there are only about thirteen different storylines out there. There’s nothing new under the sun. We all know that The Lion King is Hamlet. Look closely and you’ll find these basic storylines everywhere: I swear the last five domestic thrillers I read were all just variations on Bluebeard. 

It’s easy for that to feel restricting or depressing. 

I like to see it as an opportunity. If you’re a writer, get familiar with myths and legends and lore. Mix familiar storylines with a little bit of modern creativity, and that might literally be all you need to swing a first draft out of the park. As it turns out, audiences like a tale as old as time because we enjoy that cozy, hello-old-friend sense of familiarity from revisiting a classic. 

Just something to think about. New novelists don’t always have to reinvent the wheel - and I think we often believe we must in order to succeed.

#2. For connecting to other people, regardless of when or where or why or how.

Stories represent a way of mind-reading, of transferring thoughts from one brain to another, and that can happen across oceans and through centuries. Everyone knows approx what we’re talking about when we reference a magic lamp, and that’s a powerful thing. 

These types of stories represent perfectly-preserved snapshots of generations of cultural wisdom, world-views, and written/oral traditions. They’re insights into human hopes across millennia. They help us see how people across time have thought and dreamed.

There’s as much to be gleaned from stories as there are from sarcophagi and skeletons. 

They’re living, breathing clues. Think about it: The stories consistently shared tend to tell a lot about a people. 

American stories often reflect a culture of rebelliousness, rags-to-riches potential, and hope. French children’s stories, on the other hand, tend to be a bit more blasé and depressing and have fewer happy endings. Today’s fairytales are termed ‘urban myths’ (or legends) and they’re often completely horrifying, because have you read the news recently? Our current shared rhetoric/resources are not particularly uplifting. 

Each culture sculpts the stories it tells - but each culture’s also informed by their fables, y’know? I find that mobius-strip of circular influence fascinating. 

These types of stories also present invitations to connect to other ways of thinking. I know that I need to learn way, way more about the ways that people have thought across other countries/cultures/times. 

As it turns out, finding stories from different worlds and listening with an open mind is an excellent way to start. 

#3. For helping us suss out our stories. 

All the world’s a stage, apparently. But let’s go with that for a sec: If ya religious, you might believe that there is an Author up there writing our storylines, ones that make up the greatest story ever told; or, perhaps, a pantheon of divine-adjacent directors messing around with human lives (I’m thinking Greek gods, here). 

Religious beliefs aside, if you take a sec to think of your own life as a storyline, one in which you’re the protagonist, you might wonder which type of character you are - and which hero’s journey you’re gonna take. 

Having the themes of the stories we chewed on as children baked into our bones helps us understand who we are. Some days, we’re the rags-to-riches comeback kid, and that mental picture subconsciously inspires us to hustle, hard. Other times, you might see yourself in a Scrooge or a Grinch - I certainly did, this past Christmas, when revisiting those holiday flicks - and you might wonder, as Alfred did in the Muppet’s Christmas Carol when he saw his name on that unmourned tombstone: Does this story have to end up this way? Can I change where this is going? 

Whether you ‘want much more than this provincial life’ or you keep waking up wondering where one of your impractical shoes went, it’s at the very least an interesting thought experiment: Is there a reason certain stories stick with you?

Duh, life isn’t a fairytale. I simply believe these types of stories might help us build mental frameworks or maps or resources that help us interpret what life throws our way. 

#4. For hope. 

I believe that - in a way - the Brothers-Grimm and Charles-Perrault and other various magical stories and mythologies, no matter how made-up they are, really happened. 

Not in a boring-actual-happenstance-way, of course.

I think these stories happened in a really-real way, in an important, noteworthy, Albus-Dumbledore, ‘of course this is happening in your head, Harry,’ kind of way. 

I don’t believe a girl named Cinderella dropped her improbable shoe on a stair-step with impeccable timing. I do believe that Charles Perrault was trying to get a message across, to his daughters and then to the rest of us - and I believe that generations of women through time have heard the Cinderella story, felt it do something within them, and then gone out and made magic happen in their everyday lives.

Fairytales are important for a wide world of reasons. They impart a sense of Good Vs. Evil morality in us from a young age; they promote imagination and literacy and creativity, and they’re easy ways to take a break from real life when we need a distraction. 

I think they’re more than that. I think they have a place and purpose in reality. 

(Or, perhaps, less transparently: Ted and I are infertile AF. Maybe we just need to believe, every once in a while, that magic exists and miracles happen.)

We don’t all have fire-breathing dragons in our paths to fight; nevertheless, in a metaphorical way, there be dragons. We need to believe that there is light in the world, and that it can win. More importantly, we need to believe that we can create that light - be a part of that magic - fight our own thrilling or mundane battles - pull the sword from the stone and rise, victorious. 

Or not. You do you obvi. But - when given the choice - it’s certainly more fun to think this way, isn’t it?