FIVE REASONS WHY I LIKE STORYTELLING

REASON 5: IT IGNITES MY IMAGINATION

Writing the Five Reasons series for Tales and Tips has helped focus my thoughts about what, for me, are the key elements that combine to make story telling and listening such an exciting and challenging hobby. Without much effort, I teased out and wrote about the first four reasons. But number five was not coming easily. I decided to just let everything slosh around unorganized in my consciousness and from previous experience, I knew that a valuable insight would eventually float up to the surface for me.

Last March, I facilitated an ‘Awakening Our Imagination’ mini-workshop at Peterborough Storytellers. As part of the program, I projected randomly themed photographs onto a large screen that I hoped most members of the audience could relate to in some way. With each picture I asked this simple question: What’s the story you would tell about this picture? The responses were immediate as folks excitedly volunteered their perceived ‘story’ as they imagined it being represented in the picture. Every photo elicited several quite different story lines. There was a high octane flow of creative energy let loose in our group that was enjoyable and stimulating. We were all having a good time, telling spontaneous stories filled with humour, sensitivity and best of all, the products of very rich and even, some would say, ‘overactive’ imaginations!

Recalling that evening now, almost nine months later, I knew what my fifth reason just had to be. Imagination. Not just the plain old, every day, garden variety kind of imagination but imagination that is ignited in our souls and burns hot with energy, brilliance and creativity. That night, I not only saw it bursting forth but I felt it deeply too. Many of us were emotionally moved at the demonstrated power of  individual and collective imagination ignited by visual stories.

Told stories don’t usually come with a You Tube video playing silently in the background. Yes, sometimes there is music and movement, changing voices and moods in the story, but for the most part, it’s just a told story performed well with just enough detail of plot, location, character and take away messages, that our imagination gets a full workout, filling in the details unbidden.

I was listening to a story recently and had the sudden mental image that the teller was just putting random dots on a blank page for me and encouraging me to connect them in any way that I felt made sense to me. And just for fun, the teller would add a few more dots on the page when I wasn’t looking, creating even more possibilities for the story picture I was drawing in my mind.

Often popular told stories are about cultures, characters, countries, traditions and beliefs that I am unfamiliar with. My imagination adds the details, the colour and the subtle meanings into the story line whenever my mind sees the message ‘insert imagination here’.

What I love about telling stories is that I get the opportunity each and every time to set my imagination free and put my own vocal brush strokes of colour, form and feelings to it. As I said before, my imagination gets ignited by telling stories and I experience great delight in it all.

What I love about listening to told stories, is discovering how my unfettered imagination always enriches a story, sharpens the performance, and flirts with my gut reaction to the total experience.

Back on August 7^th, I posted a short reflection about Imagination on this blog. I’d like to end this one with some lines from the earlier post because they still speak to me about my relationship with imagination through storytelling.

‘Imagination is part of the software that is always running in the back of our daily lives. Without it, our lives would be mostly black and white images. Our dreams are playgrounds for our imagination.’

Written by Don Herald (A member of Peterborough Storytellers)