Storytelling

"Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience [...] For storytelling is always the art of repeating stories, and this art is lost when the stories are no longer retained. It is lost because there is no more weaving and spinning to go on while they are being listened to. The more self-forgetful the listener is, the more deeply is what he listens to impressed upon his memory. When the rhythm of work has seized him, he listens to the tales in such a way that the gift of retelling them comes to him all by itself. This, then, is the nature of the web in which the gift of storytelling is cradled. This is how today it is becoming unravelled at all its ends after being woven thousands of years ago in the ambience of the oldest forms of craftmanship."

Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller
in: Benjamin, Walter (1999), Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zorn, Pimlico, London, p.90. 91