This week on YouTube I did a deep dive into the shapeshifting cats of Old Japan. I mean, I did a lot of research into Japanese folklore for the Yamada Monogatari series and I couldn’t use all of it at the time. Waste Not, Want Not!
I was working on an essay about a character from Irish/Scottish/Manx myth, the “Leanan-sidhe,” translated as “Fairy Mistress,” “Fairy Lover,” and sometimes “Fairy Wife.” It wasn’t just academic to me because I’ve written stories from both sides of the issue, which was: “Did she really exist (in folklore) or did William Butler Yeats” make her up? I think I know the correct answer now, though research is ongoing. Regardless, I thought the script would make a decent YouTube video, so that’s where I went with it.
Here’s the opening.
“There’s a line between folklore and simply making things up. William Butler Yates likely crossed it.”
For anyone interested the title is, as above, “The Deadliest Muse,” the link is here.
I’ve been pretty scarce here, so an update is in order. As I mentioned before, I started a YouTube channel. Totally new thing for me. And one of the reasons I did this was I’d been working in a (for me) completely new storytelling form.
Soon after I moved to New York State I joined a local writer’s group that specialized in flash fiction. To be honest, I had never played much with flash before then. I think the shortest story I’d ever written previously came in at about 1200 words. Here, the max was 500 words. It was a new discipline, almost like attempting poetry. Get in, get out, and no word retained that isn’t pulling its weight. Shifting gears between my usual mode and this form was a stretch, but a good one.
Anyway, this left me with a bunch of flash stories and no good idea what to do with them. I did publish a few in a couple of small collections, but the form seemed suitable for something else. Thus, the YouTube channel. It lets me play with video and animation, something I’d never touched before. Flash stories play out to about three minutes of video, and I’m learning to adapt my own work. No idea how its going to play out, but right now I’m making all the mistakes and having fun. Every now and then we all need to try something new.
Which brings me to the title above, “Ugly Puppies.” It’s a meditation on the nature of secrets. If you want to try it out, here’s the link.
Richard Parks 