Stone soup
One of my favorite stories as a child was “Stone Soup.” I don’t know if you know it or not. It’s an old European folktale, and there are a lot of v ariations, but in most of them two soldiers come into a town during a war. They ask for food, and everyone tells them they have nothing to eat. So the soldiers build a fire, and they ask an old woman if the y can borrow a pot because they are going to make stone soup.
“Soup from a stone?” the old woman asks.
“Yes,” they say. “We are going to make stone soup!”
So the old woman loans them a pot, and they fill it with water, and they start cooking a stone. “Soup from a stone!” the old woman e xclaims. “Imagine that!”
Pretty soon, a small crowd ga thers. No one had ever heard of making soup from a s tone.
“Stone soup is wonderful,” one soldier casually mentions. “But it ’s even better with a little onion.”
“Oh! I have an onion,” someone offers, and throws it in the pot.
“Carrots are also nice,” the soldier adds. And, a fe w minutes later, someone throws some carrots in the pot.
Soon, a little beef is put in, and a few other ingredients are added as the crowd grows. Before long, there is a large pot of soup, and e veryone in the village is fed, including the two soldiers. A village where everyone said they had no food ea ts a meal together — a meal that would not have existed if it were not for a stone.
I told my friend, Wally, this was a favorite story of mine.
“I see men coercing others to g et what they couldn’t get themselves!” Wally said. This astonished me.
“But everyone ate!” I told him.
“No one even knew they had soup— and they didn’t — without first believing it was possible.”
Wally is not convinced that any good comes from telling a lie. But I never saw it as a lie. Because I be - lieve in stone soup.
A couple of months ago, I went to a beautiful little theater in Mexico, in the town where I spend the winter, and I met with a producer there. Suddenly, I saw the possibility of doing a show in this space. T he whole thing was completely real in my imagination before I’d written a word. So I worked on the script and I planned all the cos tumes and the music and everything needed for the show. The show became as real on the page as it was in m y mind.
Yesterday, I learned it wouldn’t be possible to do my show in the the - ater as planned. I was ver y disappointed — for about 12 hours. And then I realized I had a pot of s tone soup.
The theater and the producer had never made it a show. The show was made of all the things I’ d put into that simmering pot. It was the belief that I could make a show — if I just added enough ideas, if I s tirred those ideas long enough, if I k ept the fire going.
The soup was never about the stone. The stone was the excuse to make the soup.
I have no idea where this show will be performed, but I am abso - lutely certain it will be, because this soup is filled with good things, put together in a way I believe people will enjoy.
In the story, after everyone has eaten, the old woman shakes her head. “Soup from a s tone,” she says. “Imagine that!”
Imagine that.
Till next time,
Carrie