Author: Brian d'Eon
Located in: Nelson, BC, CANADA
Submitted: November 24, 2020
Tell us a little about yourself. Brian d'Eon is an ardent admirer of the classics: The Odyssey, Don Quixote, War and Peace, all the plays of William Shakespeare, and, of course, the Bible. His novella Eta Carinae and his novel Big Ledge are available through various online distributors. D'Eon lives in the little mountain town of Nelson, British Columbia, where he divides his time between writing, hiking, and losing games of Scrabble to his wife.
What was your motivation behind this project? Photography and writing are the two principal means I use to express my sense of wonder and adoration: I use both to connect to what I'm experiencing, to search for greater intimacy and understanding. Whether an alpine wildflower, a comet, or a toddler running along a beach. I want to reach out and touch them somehow. I approach passages from the New Testament in the same way, with a sense of wonder and delight and a wish to get down on my knees and have a closer look. That's why I write in general, and certainly my reason for writing Loose Ends.
I was well into compiling my collection of stories before I learned of the Jewish midrash tradition, which includes many stories like mine, concentrating, in the case of the Jewish writers, on stories from the Old Testament. Midrash literally means 'to seek', and in Loose Ends, I suppose I'm seeking to better know some rather famous biblical passages. Not know them in a theological sense. Clearly, I'm no theologian, but to populate these stories with real flesh-and-blood characters, so I can more deeply identify with them, and try to follow in their footsteps.
What do you hope folks will gain from this project? I have no special expectations beyond hoping the characters depicted in these stories will seem like real people who—despite their legendary status—were very much like you and me in their hopes, and fears, and limitations. As in real life, the characters of the New Testament have much more grey in them than black and white. I hope readers might begin to regard the New Testament passages as living, robust stories, that one can squeeze and re-shape, and sometimes toss about playfully like a brightly colored beach ball—always with due reverence, of course.
How were you personally impacted by working on this project? Certainly it made me read Scripture more closely. I began to absorb some of the stories more deeply, until they almost became personal memories.
Who are your influences, sources of inspiration or favorite authors / artists? I depended very much on Henri Daniel-Rops's book "Daily Life in the Time of Jesus" to give me the necessary cultural and historical background to write confidently about first century Palestine. It was important to me to make the details as authentic as possible: the smells, the sounds, and sights, the vegetation. Apart from the great classic writers of history (and Shakespeare is the best, in my opinion), another great influence would be the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis. The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas did much to form my poetic sensibility.
Anything else you'd like readers / listeners to know: In Loose Ends, many of the stories are written from an unusual point of view. A reader might well ask why? I would answer: for fun, as much as anything. But in a more serious vein, for me, at least, it helps establish the universal character of Christ that even a donkey had a special relationship with Jesus. Even a stone. There is no part of nature or humanity not affected by his presence.
