Ancient stories, honeymooning, and the Greeks

I’ve been thinking about the origins of storytelling these days.  It involves piles of rocks and a multi-platinum, New Age musician.  Go figure.

My wife and I, married this past May, recently returned from our official honeymoon.  We visited my brother and sister-in-law for a week in Qatar (a great story in and of itself), then spent the next week in Greece.

You know the New Age musician Yanni?  He wrote a song called “Santorini”,  the island where we stayed.  Ever seen a postcard of Greece featuring blazing white villas with cobalt blue doors perched on craggy cliffs above a cerulean sea?  That’s Santorini.  (I’m not usually given to flowery adjectives, but believe me, the place is amazing.) More on Yanni in a bit.

One of the places we went in Santorini found us driving up an insanely narrow, winding road – more like wide sidewalk – to the mountain top ruins of the ancient city of Thira.  Since very few visitors come to Santorini in the winter, we had the place almost completely to ourselves.  We walked through the agora, public baths, and individual residences occupied by normal, island-dwelling men and women – three thousand years ago.

You’d think that walking ancient streets would prompt visions of centuries of toga-clad characters living, marrying, building, worshiping, fighting, and dying.  Some of that happened for me, but frankly… not all that much. (Probably why I’m an editor, not a screenwriter.)  The thing that would really blow my mind was still to come.