_{“Tell me the facts and I’ll learn. Tell me the truth and I’ll believe. Tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.”}

I’m not sure who said the words beneath the photograph above. I’ve seen them listed as a North American proverb, but can’t get closer to their origin than that.

Since finding the quotation, I’ve been thinking about it. I have an idea where facts are supposed to come from, and the truth. But stories? Perhaps children are the true gatekeepers of stories, happy always to follow them into the unknown, to escape along their paths into the land of make believe.

As adults do we lose that ability? I certainly seem to have less of it. It’s as though a muscle has wasted away, overwhelmed by the day to day and the every day. However, I’ve discovered that the camera finds stories. It slows life down. Catches it for a second and holds it there, like a challenge.

Take the photograph above. The fact is that I was photographing the birdlife on the Thames. The truth is that there was a man feeding the geese just out of sight of the camera. The story begins “once upon a time …”, and includes a bossy white gull, some obedient soldier geese, and a daring raid on the Tower to rescue a young river swan who the ravens want to make their king.

Who knows how it will end?

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023