I’ll grant you “substantial aspects of life remaining across the ages.” Aspects such as death, the need to live in relation to other people and the world, etc. These do form a base-line human condition of sorts.
I also agree that any story that sticks must be about, or must take up, (some of) these base-line conditions. In the potency and individuality of its message the story can achieve a universality, which is to say a lasting relevance to the matter at hand. Furthermore, should its message touch a chord, the story can achieve an even deeper relatability to those concerned. That is, not just a relevance but a deeply moving experience…
So maybe that’s my point: this relatability (or chord-touching) is not guaranteed. For instance, certain myths that take up the matter of life and death, such as the Illiad where death is the end and the goal of life is to make it brilliant, if short, so that one will live forever in memory, might not touch a chord with a Christian, who believes in resurrection and won’t see the point of such a life. A Christian won’t be able to get into Achilles’ story in the same way as an early Greek, even though they share the same base-line human condition as the Greek. The Christian may find the story relevant, and therefore interesting, but not relatable, or truly chord-striking.
It is not just a matter of making the story “current” either. It’s more the fact that the teaching of the story simply does not relate, no matter how relevant it is.
There I may have to disagree with you. I understand what you’re after with the bard and the personal telling. I do get it. But I also get, as you do too, the need to change with the times. Bards are no longer confined to personal performances or performances to small crowds. The modern bard, if there is to be such a thing, must leverage modern mediums.
The point, it seems to me, is to get the message/story out there, to as many people as possible, in the most relatable way possible. To make stories come to life through mass-media: that is ideal. (Hence the transition from oral to written?..) In this way a bard could relate all persons in the world through a story relatable to all, one capable of carrying the world forward into the future and out of this murky, directionless time. (Just like the Greeks were carried forward into the future by Homer, which arguably realized its teaching through Alexander’s immortalizing impact.)
To me it’s all about mass-impact. About doing what you are describing on mass. This isn’t to say that the time of the bard is over but that the bard must evolve, and find new ways to tell their stories in this technological world, no longer confined to intimate performances but making the power of their performances accessible to all.