FIVE REASONS WHY I LIKE STORYTELLING

REASON 1: IT PUSHES MY COMFORT ZONE

Three years ago when I first began attending Peterborough Storytellers, I was no stranger to telling stories as part of my job, with family and friends and occasionally to the nice, but bored lady at the local Tim’s drive-through window. In fact, my wife and kids would say that I rarely met a crowd or audience that I didn’t like and at the slightest hint of interest, would launch into an amusing anecdote or personal story!

I went along as the interested but curious guest of a relative to my first ever Storyteller’s meeting. It was held in the auditorium of the local library and about ten or twelve other people were already there. Chairs were arranged in a semi-circle around another chair that was facing the circle and on a swatch of fabric on the floor in front of the chair was a ‘talking stick’. Tradition in storytelling circles is that the teller of the moment holds the stick as a symbol that they have been given the authority by the listeners to talk uninterrupted.

That evening, several of the more experienced members of the group told tales they had adapted or taken directly from myths, folk lore or legends. I was impressed with how each of these women crafted their story, performing it with such energy and enthusiasm. Everyone listening, myself included, were drawn into the stories in such a powerful and often unexpected way. I just had to be part of this night, so unexpectedly I found myself picking up the talking stick and sharing a personal story from my time as a social worker. I was hooked. From then until now, I have held the stick at just about every gathering.

I quickly realized that I had a great deal to learn about choosing and telling an interesting story. Prior to this, I thought I was an exceptionally good teller of ‘real life’ tales and anecdotes to workplace audiences. But to translate those skills and that experience into the public storytelling venue would demand much more thought, careful selection of story theme and message, lots of practice followed by even more practice. And even some coaching.

As I watched my local tellers perform their stories not only with words but drum, flute, harp, song, masks and amazing character voices, I realized that if I was going to do well at this new activity, I had to get far more disciplined about my preparation and delivery. I had to invite both helpful and critical comments from my group members, take a storytelling course or two, attend other telling events with fresh tellers that I didn’t spend time with on a regular basis. Instead of reading only what my wife somewhat sarcastically calls ‘Who Shot The President’ type books, I had to make room for books, articles and videos on the art of storytelling by some of the best author-tellers in the US and here in Canada. It was all going to be a new and I admit, strange and unfamiliar genre for me.

I have been at it now for almost two and a half years. I’m a reasonably good teller but I know I could become even better with more focused learning and practice. Yes, I still often feel awkward in my new storytelling comfort zone, but I think that’s as it should be. What do you think?

To be continued…

Written by Don Herald (A member of Peterborough Storytellers)

FIVE REASONS WHY I LIKE STORYTELLING

REASON 2: YOU MEET INTERESTING PEOPLE

People have always fascinated me. Everyone has a story to tell and over the years I’ve heard many. All the way from the totally weird, gross and disgusting to exhilarating, marvelous and inspiring tales from folks I don’t really know at all to my friends and family with whom I share intimate moments.

Maybe that’s the main reason I became a counsellor, educator and consultant. I worked hard at it for over forty-three years. When my kids were teenagers, they often warned their friends who would meet me for the first time, ‘Watch out when you meet my Dad. The next thing you know, you’ll be telling him stuff that you’d never tell anyone else!’  Being a good listener, someone who listens with both head and heart, thankfully just comes naturally to me. And I treasure many of the personal life stories that were given to me over the years. It’s from that vast storehouse of shared stories that I create most of the ones that I tell at storytelling gatherings.

Attending these events, both as a listener and a teller, has introduced me to many others who share a strong interest in the art of storytelling. It always surprises me when, introduced through the shared experience of listening to a well told story, a person I have never met before, invites me into their private world of experiences, thoughts and opinions. Tragic stuff. Totally funny stuff. Odd stuff. Deeply felt experiences that are often unfamiliar to me personally but through what is chosen to be shared, I begin to gain a new appreciation, a helpful understanding that I would likely have never had if not for this moment with them.

In my limited but growing experience, the men and women who enjoy telling tales and do it as often as they can in front of public audiences, equally enjoy talking about their own journeys of self-discovery through telling and listening. While each story is unique, they all share the qualities of passion and excitement, sometimes wonder and often a burning desire to have meaningful, unspoken conversations with those that hear their stories.

This past summer, I spent a leisurely afternoon in the cool shade of an aging barn sharing favourite tales with tellers from slightly afar, most of whom I had never met before. As often happens, each teller preceded his or her story with why this story was being told and usually, what this story meant to them personally. The glimpse into personality, lifestyle and relationships that these mini-stories revealed intrigued me. During dinner, I moved from person to person, asking about their story or telling them how their tale resonated with me. Even though I was the most novice of tellers in this gathering, some enthusiastically offered encouragement and helpful insights about my stories and performance.

Recently I spent three days immersing myself in the stories being told at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. In its fortieth year, nearly twelve thousand enthusiastic fans of storytelling made what I can only now call an annual pilgrimage from all over the continent to listen to well told tales from all genres by some of America’s best and beloved tellers.

But it was the listeners from whom I leaned the most. Before or after presentations, spontaneous conversations would begin among strangers. Usually it started with an opinion about the story, the performance or the artist but then quickly moved into the sharing of personal telling and listening experiences.

I remember talking with a recently retired locomotive driver who had been a cop before that. He had stopped me in the street outside the tent about an experience he had as a cop in the mid-west because in the story I told in a Slam competition earlier, a cop character triggered a memory he wanted to share. With noticeable emotion, he told me of growing up in a Home for Boys from an early age. But since retiring a year ago, he was now avidly pursuing storytelling as a retirement activity that someday he hoped to turn into his third career. He shared some incredible stories of the men and women with whom he worked on the railroad and a few of the perils facing crews. I think he will make a compelling and passionate teller.

Or how about my brief conversation with an older woman I judged to be close to eighty sitting behind me in a huge tent? Like me, she was waiting for the next performance to begin. She was in a flamboyant style dress with striking jewelry accessories and an attractive wide brimmed floppy hat. We struck up a conversation and I quickly learned that she herself had been a teller at the Festival for many years but now she came just as a listener. so I hesitantly asked if she was still telling stories. ‘Why, my oh yes, young man. In fact next month I am doing a one woman show that I wrote to explore getting old.’ Her entire being glowed, she sat taller and her blue eyes sparkled with the pleasure and anticipation of it all. A snippet of a marvellous life story only hinted at that had started just with a casual encounter! 

Looking at me intently, she asked how long I had been coming to Jonesborough. I replied that this was my first time and in fact I was telling a story in the Slam competition later in the day. With this news, she smiled and offered me helpful words of encouragement while wishing me well in future storytelling projects. Coming from her, who I sensed was probably a legend among tellers, made me feel as if now I was really becoming part of a much larger community of storytellers that reached well beyond my local group in Ontario. We shook hands warmly just as the performance began. Even now, I find myself thinking about her and wishing I had heard more of her life story that day. I wrote down her first name on a slip of crumpled paper I found in my backpack. I hope that will be enough to track her down and learn more about her life. Maybe there will even be some videos of her telling tales and that would be a special treat for me.

So, the next time you attend a storytelling event, look around you, find someone who you would like to know more about. Then go over, introduce yourself and ask. I guarantee that you will indeed meet an interesting person.

And better still, you will both be richer for the conversation.

To be continued…

Written by Don Herald (A member of Peterborough Storytellers)

FIVE REASONS WHY I LIKE STORYTELLING

REASON 3: IT AWAKENS MY CREATIVE SIDE

The stories that I like to tell are not usually from myths, legends or folk tales. I prefer real stories about the human condition that are drawn from my personal and work experiences. As a social worker for many years, I have been privy to situations that often show people at their very worst, in periods of great emotional stress, living with the consequences of decisions that may not have worked out well for them. At the other end of the scale, I been privileged to witness instances of great joy, triumph and love which provide reassuring evidence of the strength of the human spirit and intellect.  All of these experiences provide what master teller and author Jay O’Callahan calls ‘nuggets of pure gold’ that through my stories, I try and hold up for examination and admiration by my listeners.

I’ve always enjoyed telling stories. My stories have made people laugh, cry, gasp in surprise, nod their heads in recognition, pause and reflect or oftentimes say, ‘You know that reminds me of a story…’. While I also like to write about things that go on around me, most of the time I would be more comfortable telling than writing about it. But I never thought of myself as a true ‘teller of tales’.

Until I discovered Peterborough Storytellers. Ever since my very first, unrehearsed, spontaneously told anecdote, awkwardly holding the talking stick, my relationship to stories told and listened to has changed forever.

More than ever before I find myself listening much more carefully in conversations with family, friends and co-workers. I catch myself trying to listen in on the chatter going on around me in restaurants, the movie theatre, the gym, the barber shop, service centre rest room or on the street. I am always hunting for an interesting anecdote or fragment of whispered gossip, a unique phrase or word, a voice tone or body gesture that I can turn into a story. Some days I fear that I am becoming a tidbit junkie, deliberately hanging out in places where I just might get my ultimate fix for a potentially great told or written story.

Since I retired several years ago, I have more time now to examine my ‘story collection’ and decide what either goes on display to the public through my telling or writing or what stays hidden away on either my computer’s hard drive or in my memory, perhaps to be re-discovered later, polished up and brought out front for everyone to experience in their own way.

Telling ‘real life’ stories publicly has forced me to start writing them down before I tell them. I write short stories several times a week about life events that I think others would enjoy reading about. So far, thirty-seven of them have made it onto a personal story blog that I recently created. And I enjoyed blogging so much I volunteered to curate the Tales and Tips blog of Peterborough Storytellers where you are now reading this story. The more I write, re-write and then tweak a story just one more time, I am learning how to be a better craftsman of structure, situation, character and storylines. I know this would never have happened if I had not discovered storytelling.

Taking a written story and re-shaping it into a version suitable for telling has given me more focus and discipline as a teller. Watching and learning from a live audience reacting to my stories has led to unexpected insights into elements of the plot that listeners are connecting with which in turn sends me back to the written version to tweak it some more. Once done, I bring it back again to another audience and the process starts again.

Another benefit of storytelling for me is feeding the hidden actor in my nature. Many years ago, on a whim, I auditioned for a part in a community theatre production. To my surprise, I got a good part in the play but significantly under estimated how hard it would be for me to learn the lines as the author wrote them. I was terrible. It was three months of maximum stress and I am sure my struggling gave the Director and his crew many sleepless nights! It all worked out well in the end but I took a solemn vow after our last show that I would never go on the stage again.

But now with storytelling, I find myself back on a stage of sorts. Skilled tellers are also performers, assuming the roles and personalities, voice and gestures of their story’s characters. Watching and listening to them, gives me an aspirational goal to work toward. My creative side is getting a work out and once again I am back on the stage. That’s a cool thing for me.

Most everyone has their special, creative moments that sustain them from week to week, month to month, year to year. Right now, it’s the art of storytelling and listening that does it for me. What about you? What about giving storytelling a try to set free your creative Self?

To be continued…

Written by Don Herald (A member of Peterborough Storytellers)

FIVE REASONS WHY I LIKE STORYTELLING

REASON 4: IT’S LOTS OF FUN

Can you imagine fifteen hundred fans sitting under a big top tent listening to a professional storyteller telling imaginary stories of turning his old Jeep into a sailboat cruising down the highway or three boys at Halloween scaring themselves silly while lost in a cornfield maze? All of this delivered in a down home, ‘aw shucks’ country style delivery while wearing a baseball gap at a jaunty angle, looking just like your neighbour or the fellah you buy apples from at his farmyard stand every fall! I was in the tent that morning and joined in the rolling waves of laughter that went on and on for a full hour. When it was all over, there was a standing ovation that lasted as long as your average tv commercial. I haven’t had so much fun at a storytelling gathering in a long time.

Later the same day, two professional tellers, reunited after many years as solo performers, tell a wonderful mixture of their own stories and others they had adapted from folk lore, a children’s book and real tales told to them by strangers and friends. First cousins, these two women pooled their life savings, bought a beat up, old yellow Datsun camper and hit the road for many years, stopping in small towns all across America telling their stories, sharpening their craft and in the process collecting material for future stories from folks they met along the way.

In their reunion performance, it was magical to see the story characters taking shape before our eyes, each with unique voice sharing their stories of life, love won and lost, domestic abuse, difficult parents and a child’s primal fear of the monster under his bed. Once again, it was an audience of many hundreds of fans held spellbound by the women’s stories and performances, enjoying the poignant moments being shared on the stage while marveling at the chemistry that still exists between these two tellers. A different kind of telling to be sure but just as much fun to be involved in as with the fellow in the ball cap.

A woman enjoys a folk tale so much, she decides to make a Coyote mask out of paper mache, cloth and yarn, learn the story, and then sit down in mask and perform a story so absorbing in content and theatre, you find yourself imagining trotting alongside Coyote and sharing in his adventures. Thirty minutes later, when she removes the mask, it takes several racing heartbeats to shake yourself free from Coyote, return to the telling circle and realize you have just experienced a master teller at her best. If your definition of having fun is being caught up in the power of a story well told and performed, you realize you have just experienced it at its finest.

Or the time that I was telling a real life story of an elderly man, recently widowed and grieving mightily, who turns to what has always given him deep pleasure and calms his troubled spirit, re-building a rock wall, stone by stone, day after day, dawn until dark. His teenage grandson, drawn to the loneliness, silently joins the old man on the wall and they work quietly together. Hushed conversation sometimes passes between them and it is obvious to the distant observer that each is getting from the other as much as what each is giving to the other.

In front of me, listeners are connecting with this story. Some smile at the images the story is painting while others turn inward, perhaps to revive a personal memory long buried but now re-awakened. Many wonder who the elderly man and his grandson really are. Are they only a creation of my imagination? The unspoken question remains unanswered as I set the talking stick back into its waiting place, and quietly move back to my chair in the circle. My fun came in sharing a poignant moment in the lives of two individuals while experiencing my listeners hearing and seeing the story unfold so movingly in their imagination.

Moments like these four vignettes are many in storytelling and at the end of such performances I find myself thinking that this is what storytelling at its best is all about. Fun can wear many faces it seems.

To be continued…

Written by Don Herald (A member of Peterborough Storytellers)

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)