“It’s a dark and challenging time out there. What you have to do is be real. Tell a story that feels authentic, even if it is fantasy.” —T.A. Barron
Preview: Episode 74 T.A. Barron on
“What difference can one person’s life make?” That’s something author T.A. Barron explores in all his books, including the bestselling The Merlin Saga. In this powerful, heart-opening episode full of gratefulness and fabulous storytelling, we explore how to create beauty, goodness and positivity in a world that can be highly negative and cynical. Barron’s own story is full of funny, heart-wrenching, inspiring ways to meet rejection and turn our own story around. Is there room for magic in the world? As Barron says, “I have always felt magic is real. When we open our eyes and all our senses to it, there is magic in the wonder of nature, in love between people—what is that but a kind of magic?— magic in stories that lift us and in stories well-told.” It’s an episode that celebrates story and indomitable spirit.
T. A. Barron grew up in Colorado ranch country. After a successful business career in New York, he moved back to Colorado to pursue his dream to be a writer, outdoorsman, and conservationist. He is the award-winning author of more than 30 highly-acclaimed books, including the international bestselling series The Merlin Saga, which is now being developed into a feature film by Disney. T. A. Barron is an advocate for public-spirited kids, and is founder of the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes, a national award that each year honors 25 young people who help their communities or the environment. In addition to writing and speaking, T. A. Barron serves on many environmental and educational boards, including Princeton University, where he helped to create the High Meadows Environmental Institute, and The Wilderness Society. He has also launched his own podcast, Magic and Mountains, on creative process, the magic of Merlin, and more.
What We’re Reading and Listening to:
Rosemerry:
I was so lucky to attend a listening/christening event for Kim Rosen’s (guest on episode 71) newest CD, A Feast of Losses, a collaborative project with cellist Jami Sieber. The swirling of music and poetry is absolutely transporting, it’s soul medicine. To listen is to be held in a deep cocoon of possibility, to be held in the most intimate, vulnerable, heart-opening way so that our own griefs and hopes and aches and gratefulnesses can rise up and be felt, be met. Focusing on themes of aging, mortality, and waking up to the moment, it features poems from Langston Hughes, Ellen Bass, Mary Oliver, Mark Nepo, Yehuda Amichai, and more. I can’t say enough wonderful words about this gorgeous testament to the gift of humanness. Such a gift.
Speaking of transported—I love Laura Tohe’s newest book of poetry. Paired with images from Stephen Strom, Tséyí: Deep in the Rock: Reflections on Canyon de Chelly, the Navajo Nation Poet Laureate Emerita has written beautiful poems about this beautiful place. The poems draw on history, culture, personal experience and keen observation. The result: something deeply intimate and utterly universal. A gorgeous collaboration.
Christie:
After loving The Book of Form and Emptiness, I was eager to read another Ruth Ozeki novel. A Tale for the Time Being did not disappoint. The novel weaves together the stories of Nao, a teenager in Tokyo, and Ruth, a novelist in British Columbia who finds Nao’s diary washed up on shore. It’s a beautiful exploration of war, memory, time, family narratives, and the relationship between reader and writer.
The Last White Man by Hamid Mohsin is a short novel that I continue to think about, weeks after I finished reading. The book is reminiscent of two others I’ve loved — The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, and Blindness, by José Saramago. The book begins as the protagonist, Anders, wakes up to discover that his skin has turned dark. Nothing else about him has changed, and yet this small development changes everything. It’s not just Anders — people all around town are suddenly turning dark and the novel explores how people react to this turn of events and what that says about us.
Maratus, a 30-minute documentary about a garbage collector in Australia who inadvertently discovers a new species of spider, made me fall in love with jumping spiders, and (trust me!) you will too if you watch this lovely film about nature’s beauty and the pull of citizen science.
Two Peaks at the Magical Worlds of T.A. Barron
From The Merlin Saga, book 3, where the young Merlin learns all his greatest lessons from nature. His elemental magic comes from listening to the trees, flowing with the river, flying as a hawk, and running with the deer. Through this deep immersion, he learns about life and death, loss and renewal, courage and compassion, grief and hope. Here is how he describes what it feels like when he transforms into a running deer:
“Somehow, in a mysterious way, I found myself listening not just to sounds, but to the land itself. I could hear, not with my ears but with my bones, the tensing and flexing of the earth under my hooves, the changing flow of the wind, the secret connections among all the creatures who shared these meadows—whether they crawled, slithered, flew, or ran. Not only did I hear them; I celebrated them. For we were bound together as securely as as a blade of grass is bound to the soil.”
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From The Ancient One, the story of a brave young girl who tries to save a great redwood tree from getting logged. It turns out that the tree is also a time tunnel … and she is transported back in time to a lost Native American tribe who had vanished mysteriously centuries before. She learns a lot from those people—and from the tree itself, whose every breath is a revelation.
“As she listened … she heard a rushing, coursing sound, like the surging of several rivers. She realized that it must be the sound of resins moving through the trunk and limbs of the tree. And, strangely, through her own self, as well. Back and forth, in and out, always changing, always the same. This was the sound, she realized at last, of the tree itself breathing. The sound of life being exchanged for life, breath for breath.”
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This week, we converse with T. A. Barron about gratefulness, the importance of simple discipline, starting with what you love, the relationship between real life and fantasy, and how (and why) he created the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes–sharing stories of exceptional kids doing exceptional things for the world. If you are not yet a paid subscriber, you can go now to our website, EmergingForm.substack.com or by clicking the button below. Thank you!
Two Questions:
(share your answers with us here on Substack or in our FB group)
How did you turn around a rejection of your work into something positive?
What is the role of love in your work?
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Even as a child and teenager, I did not have a taste for fantasy, and did not read CS Lewis or Tolkein like many of my contemporaries in the late 50s, early 60s. I was too reality-based. I have not been able to read any of the fantasy that is now widely available. But I just read a sample chapter of T. A. Barron's work and I am intrigued enough to try one of his Kate novels. Thank you for the introduction, and the brilliant episode. The idea of accepting your identity as a writer even if not published is so encouraging. I have learned that from Rosemerry, and now claim my identity as poet.
And Christie, I read A Tale for the Time Being when it was first published, and always said I would re-read it. I brought this book to my book group recently, and after re-reading it, I think it is one of the most brilliant novels of this century. Ruth Ozeki has a lot of resources on her website. Her conversation with Leanne Hall about A Tale should not be missed! https://www.ruthozeki.com/writing-film/time-being/watch