Driving home today I was flipping stations on the radio and stopped when I heard the Beatles, "Hey Jude". Beautiful song. Beautiful, simple melody, with lyrics that touch on universal themes. I can't help singing along. It never grows old.
That's what it takes to make a timeless song. A simple melody that carries you along and lyrics that touch your heart.
Take a sad song and make it better…
don’t be afraid…
let her into your heart…
begin to make it better.
A simple song about life.
The past couple of years I've seen soap operas resort to more and more stunts in order to grab the viewers attention and hope they'll stick around. Tornadoes, explosions, and train wrecks of the literal variety as opposed to the figurative kind where a show seems to be falling apart at the seams.
The latest trend seems to be to cast a well-known primetime or film actor for a limited story arc, which makes it difficult to truly invest in their character's story because the viewer knows they won't be sticking around for very long.
But all we want is a simple melody that touches the heart.
A simple story of
love
family
forgiveness
redemption
hope.
These are the elements of our everyday lives and we are pulled into the story as our favorite characters experience these things.
Consider the stories you remember as your favorites, the ones you're thinking of when you say "Why don't they write 'em like that anymore?".
A love lost ... forgiveness granted ...love regained. A family shattered by mistrust comes together in a time of crisis, forgives, and is restored. Despair slowly gives way to faith and hope and reaches out to grant it to another. Uncertainty and fear seek answers and explanations, discovering those who are always there to offer support whether those answers are ever found or not.
This is life. These things can be found at the root of every successful soap story and every memorable character. The rest is just window dressing.
I wish soaps would be more concerned with the stories and pay less attention to the drapes.
Showing posts with label story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label story. Show all posts
Sunday, August 08, 2010
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Touching History
Everybody has a story, whether it shows or not.
I've told a few of my stories here in this blog that I thought might interest my readers. Some are things very few people knew about me before. Granted, nothing world-changing (yet) but who would have guessed that this mild mannered housewife-turned-artist has opened the gates of the Panama Canal or met Martin Luther King, Jr.?
That's the way it is with most people, though. Someone who has accomplished incredible, history-changing feats may blend into the crowd and escape our view completely. They may appear to be as ordinary as you or I when something they did may have changed our lives forever.
A few years ago I worked on the staff of a television show and met some amazing people. It was part of my job to read books that publishers would send to us in hopes that their authors might be interviewed on our show. I would help prepare the show's hosts for these interviews and often escorted the authors to the studio on the day they were taped.
I confess I didn't always read every page of every book sent to us. But once I picked up In Love and War, by Jim and Sybil Stockdale I couldn't put it down. Jim had been a Navy fighter pilot, shot down and held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and the book told, in alternating chapters, both his story and hers. His leadership role among his fellow prisoners and her persistence back home were instrumental in changing the policies of the US government in regards to prisoners of war and helped lead to the creation of the The League of Wives of American Vietnam Prisoners, which later became known as the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia.
Having read their book and been fascinated by these two strong, courageous people, I wasn't sure what to expect when I met them. What I found we two pair of sparkling eyes, two big smiles and two people who looked like the grandparents in a Norman Rockwell painting. As I spent time with them that afternoon and listened to the interviews they taped for TV and radio, I was struck by the way he insisted that she was the hero not him.
I'm sure if I had passed them in the grocery store I wouldn't have given them a second thought.
Everybody has a story.
I don't have a job that puts me in the path of famous people anymore. I stay home, most days by myself, work on my art projects and my attempts to sell them online and this year I'm hoping to do more writing, too. But now and then my husband will tell me about someone he's met and bring a story home with him.
This week, for instance, he was at a committee meeting and discovered that one of the ladies serving on this committee with him was the woman who had taken the handwritten words of Martin Luther King, Jr. and typed up those Letters From a Birmingham Jail.
Everybody has a story.
I spend time on social networking sites and have formed friendships over common interests of art and soap operas. One day, in between discussions of the latest plot devices of daytime dramas I discovered that one of those friends works in genetics research, seeking a cure for cancer.
Everybody has a story.
What will yours be?
"The Movement" by InnerCity
View other poster designs at zazzle
I've told a few of my stories here in this blog that I thought might interest my readers. Some are things very few people knew about me before. Granted, nothing world-changing (yet) but who would have guessed that this mild mannered housewife-turned-artist has opened the gates of the Panama Canal or met Martin Luther King, Jr.?
That's the way it is with most people, though. Someone who has accomplished incredible, history-changing feats may blend into the crowd and escape our view completely. They may appear to be as ordinary as you or I when something they did may have changed our lives forever.
A few years ago I worked on the staff of a television show and met some amazing people. It was part of my job to read books that publishers would send to us in hopes that their authors might be interviewed on our show. I would help prepare the show's hosts for these interviews and often escorted the authors to the studio on the day they were taped.
I confess I didn't always read every page of every book sent to us. But once I picked up In Love and War, by Jim and Sybil Stockdale I couldn't put it down. Jim had been a Navy fighter pilot, shot down and held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and the book told, in alternating chapters, both his story and hers. His leadership role among his fellow prisoners and her persistence back home were instrumental in changing the policies of the US government in regards to prisoners of war and helped lead to the creation of the The League of Wives of American Vietnam Prisoners, which later became known as the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia.
Having read their book and been fascinated by these two strong, courageous people, I wasn't sure what to expect when I met them. What I found we two pair of sparkling eyes, two big smiles and two people who looked like the grandparents in a Norman Rockwell painting. As I spent time with them that afternoon and listened to the interviews they taped for TV and radio, I was struck by the way he insisted that she was the hero not him.
I'm sure if I had passed them in the grocery store I wouldn't have given them a second thought.
Everybody has a story.
I don't have a job that puts me in the path of famous people anymore. I stay home, most days by myself, work on my art projects and my attempts to sell them online and this year I'm hoping to do more writing, too. But now and then my husband will tell me about someone he's met and bring a story home with him.
This week, for instance, he was at a committee meeting and discovered that one of the ladies serving on this committee with him was the woman who had taken the handwritten words of Martin Luther King, Jr. and typed up those Letters From a Birmingham Jail.
Everybody has a story.
I spend time on social networking sites and have formed friendships over common interests of art and soap operas. One day, in between discussions of the latest plot devices of daytime dramas I discovered that one of those friends works in genetics research, seeking a cure for cancer.
Everybody has a story.
What will yours be?
"The Movement" by InnerCity
View other poster designs at zazzle
Special thanks for the use of this image goes to Al Stewart
www.coloredart.com
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