John Howe - Cathedral (EN)

"I believe in the importance of encounters, especially now, in a world of ever-increasing virtuality. The encounter between two unique entities – you – and any work of art or nature, is always to be sought after. In this case, it happened one misty midnight, astride a borrowed bicycle in an unfamiliar city on a new continent. In a fog so dense I lost my way, rounding a corner, I found myself at the foot of a vast and lofty gothic façade that disappeared upwards into the glowing mist. I was enchanted. That enchantment has never faded. I marveled that the wind-worn sandstone volutes of Vancouver Island’s shores could so powerfully evoke the gothic interlace I discovered half a world away.
I wondered if ravens spoke a universal raven-tongue. Like Nathaniel, I clambered over every portion of the cathedral, even to the very top of the spire. I too spent time conversing with the gargoyles, was deafened by the gigantic bronze bells, and waited out thunderstorms under ledges, watching those same gargoyles vomit dozens of sudden waterfalls. The experience was so much out of a storybook that it became a storybook. (I also wrote two more stories, one inspired by the marvelous castle of Haut-Koenigsbourg, and another by the cathedral of Vezelay, but I fear both are lost as well.) In the end, that’s where it all comes back to: telling stories. The cathedral is a vast vertical book of stories, full of tales that most of us no longer know how – or can be bothered – to read. This book is to remind us of that.
Stories are not just entertainment, they are encounters, invitations to look again at the things we take for granted. Stories are the points of contact and resonance, the kingdom of what-if and might-have-been, realms where justice and truth are poetic, and the marvelous always just around the next corner.
It’s always all about the stories we tell."