The Touchwood Project

“We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.” That’s the phrase circling around my head this morning as I watch another thrilling gust of snow sweep past the kitchen window.

I’m thinking about the often delightful responsibility of being a dreamer, a storyteller, and how you tell a story that’s both honest and worth telling.

A good story starts with the improbable or downright impossible

I think you start with attempting the impossible, which is why the quote above, which I discovered courtesy of Willy Wonka, keeps going through my mind. Here, take a look:

Isn’t it glorious?

The line is actually taken from a poem called “Ode” in a collection called Music and Moonlight — two of my favourite things and apropos since two nights ago we took advantage of a dusting of snow and bright full moon to go outside and waltz.

Impossible thing #1: Malcolm dancing

Dancing of any kind, much less the waltz, would probably have been on Malcolm’s list of impossible things to do up until recently. Even at our wedding, he refused to dance. But he’s always felt bad about that, so last Christmas my present was his promise to learn how.

We went to a few lessons of Scottish country dancing because that’s the closest thing we could find, but it still wasn’t quite what we were wanting.

Then the other night we were talking about it again and I finally thought to check YouTube, where I found a “Learn How to Waltz” video to teach us the basics. We then spent a goofy few minutes box-stepping our way around our kitchen.

We both felt so dizzy from turning around that we didn’t quite see how we’d be able to continue until I did some more Google searching (god I love research) and found you can avoid dizziness by looking at a fixed point in the distance.

So the other night we seized our chance and stepped out onto our gravel drive coated in a lovely couple of inches of snow.

The moon was full, the sky clear, and the light shone so brightly. I hummed off tuned-ly “Buffalo gals won’t you come out tonight…and dance by the light of the moon.”

I didn’t think to take a picture, and in searching around for a photo to best capture what it looked like and felt like, I found this one:

We too could hear the waves lapping on the beach, and while we aren’t actually Victorians, we felt like ones. Our house is the only one for maybe 1/2 mile around, and since we’re perched by the sea, half the view is ocean. That meant that once we stepped outside, the only illumination was moonlight.

But it was so bright you could almost pretend it was daytime, and I saw why there have been so many songs, poems, stories set to moonlight. With the snow reflecting the light, we could easily see our way through the steps and I felt a sense of timelessness and adventure.

Now before this gets too sappy, let me also say we looked a bit like those awkward teens at a school dance, less-than-gracefully shuffling our way through the “one, two, three, one, two three”s. Plus we couldn’t look at each other or else we’d get dizzy.

The point is, Malcolm put aside his self-consciousness about dancing and I put aside my lazy inclination to stay inside by the fire and we ventured forth into the improbable.

Result: a good story worth telling ourselves over the years.

The humble impossible

Doing the impossible or even improbable doesn’t have to be epic. It can be small, humble, silly. It’s a path to creating your own magical story, one you’ll enjoy telling yourself years down the line.

Now how to end this post? I asked Malcolm, and his answer was “by eating some soup.” OK then.

Tags: fun things to do, happiness, personal development

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