By Don Herald of Peterborough
Storytellers
REASON 1: STORYTELLING EXPANDS MY
COMFORT ZONE
Five years ago when I
first began attending Peterborough Storytellers, I was no stranger to telling
stories. I did it as part of my job. I did it with family and friends. And
occasionally I would try out a quick story idea with the nice, but bored lady
at my local Tim’s drive-through window. If you asked, my wife and kids
would say that I rarely met a crowd or audience that I didn’t like and if you
handed me a live microphone, well it was performance time!
At my first ever gathering
of storytellers, I went along as the interested but curious guest of a relative.
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. On a colourful swatch of fabric spread
out 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 without interruption.
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 much energy and enthusiasm.
Everyone, myself included, was drawn into the stories in powerful and often
unexpected ways. 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.
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 more experience
group members. I should take a storytelling course or two. I must plan to 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 must 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 type of oral storytelling for me.
I have been at it now for five
years. I’m a reasonably good teller but I know I could become even better with
more focused learning and practice. Yes, I sometimes feel awkward within my new
storytelling comfort zone, but I think that’s as it should be.
REASON 2: STORYTELLERS ARE
INTERESTING PEOPLE
People have always
fascinated me. Everyone has a story to tell and over the years as a social
worker and consultant 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 the intimate sharing with my family and friends.
I think that being a
collector of stories about the human condition is one of the reasons 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, just seems to come naturally for
me. I treasure many of the personal life stories that were freely shared with
me over the years. It’s from that vast storehouse of shared stories that I
create most of the ones that I now tell at storytelling gatherings.
As a listener and a teller,
attending these events has introduced me to many others who share a passionate interest
in the art of storytelling. Through the shared experience of listening to a
well told story by a person I have never met before, I’m openly invited 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 they choose to share in the
story, I begin to gain a new appreciation or helpful understanding that I would
likely have never had if not for this special moment with them.
In my limited but growing
experience, the men and women who enjoy telling tales 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 listen to their
stories.
Several summers ago, 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 an interesting
anecdote about the story’s origins and usually what this story means to them
personally. During dinner, I moved from person to person, asking about their
story or telling them how their tale had connected with me. Even though I was
the most inexperienced of the dozen or so tellers at this gathering, some enthusiastically
offered encouragement and helpful insights about my stories and performance.
In October of 2012, I
spent three days immersing myself in the many varied telling events at the
40th anniversary celebration of the National Storytelling Festival in
Jonesborough, Tennessee. Unbelievably, twelve thousand enthusiastic storytelling
fans made their annual pilgrimage from all over the continent to listen to well
told tales from all genres performed by some of North 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 experiences of telling and listening.
I remember talking with a
recently retired locomotive driver who had been a cop before that. He had stopped
me in the street outside a performance tent about an experience he had as a cop
in the mid-west. In a personal story that I had told in a Slam competition
earlier, a cop character triggered a memory he wanted to share with me.
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 he hoped someday 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
conversation with an elderly woman sitting behind me in a huge tent where two
thousand fans had gathered for a performance? Like me, she was waiting for the
next performance to begin. She was in a flamboyant, granola-girl meets Bette
Midler style dress with striking jewelry accessories.
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. She appeared to be
in precarious health and so I cautiously asked her 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 celebrate my time as a teller and growing up as a woman in
the mountains.”
With these words, her entire presence seemed to take on a glow
of energy. 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 there in a tent. And it had all started 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. Her kind,
supportive words made me feel as if now I was really 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. It was only months later that
I learned this woman was one of the true legends of oral storytelling in all of
America. I regret that I didn’t talk with her more.
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.
REASON 3: STORYTELLING AWAKENS MY
CREATIVE SIDE
The stories that I like to
tell are not usually from myths, legends or folk tales. I prefer 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 usually have not worked out too well for
them. At the other end of the scale, I been privileged to witness instances of
great joy, triumph and love which provided me with reassuring evidence of the
strength of the human heart, spirit and intellect.
All of these experiences provide what master
teller and author Jay O’Callahan calls ‘nuggets of pure gold’. It’s these very
nuggets that through my stories, I try to hold up for the examination and personal
reflection by my listeners.
As I said earlier, I always enjoy telling stories. My stories have made people laugh, cry, gasp in
surprise, nod their heads in recognition, pause and reflect. Oftentimes they
would say to me, “You know that reminds
me of a story…”. While I also like to write about such things, most of the time
I am more comfortable telling than writing about it. But over the years 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.
Now 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, gym, 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’. I can decide
what anecdote goes on display to the public through my telling or writing or
what will remain hidden away on either my computer’s hard drive or in my
memory. But my recent experience with storytellers is that some of the hidden
tales will be re-discovered later, polished up and brought out front for
everyone to experience in their own way.
Performing and telling stories
that are based in real life events 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, almost a hundred tales
have made it onto a personal story blog that I created several years ago. I enjoyed
writing these tales so much that I volunteered to curate a Tales and Tips blog for
the Peterborough Storytellers where most likely you are now reading this essay.
The more I write, re-write and then tweak a story just one more time, the more I
am learning how to be a better craftsman of structure, situation, character and
story lines. 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 shaping process starts again.
For me, another benefit of
storytelling is that the very act of telling feeds the hidden actor in my
nature. Many years ago, impulsively acting 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 I significantly under estimated how hard it would be for me to learn
the lines exactly as the author wrote them. I was truly terrible at learning lines! It
was three months of maximum stress. I am certain my obvious 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 again go on the
stage.
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?
REASON 4: STORYTELLING IS A LOT
OF FUN
Can you imagine two
thousand fans sitting under a big top tent listening to a professional
storyteller sharing imaginative 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 cap 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 collection of their own stories and others they have adapted
from folk lore, a children’s book and real tales told to them by strangers and
friends. Many years ago, 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 a 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. Each of us connected
in some unique way with the poignant moments being shared on the stage while marveling
at the chemistry that still exists many years later between these two tellers.
A different kind of telling to be sure but just as much fun to be engaged in as it was with the fellow in the ball cap.
A local woman enjoys a
folk tale so much, she decides to make a Coyote mask out of paper mache, cloth
and yarn. She learns the story and then sits down in mask and performs 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 how about 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 aura of 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.
When I tell that story, I can see and feel that the listeners are connecting with it. 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 is that magical moment of 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. 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.
REASON 5: STORYTELLING IGNITES MY
IMAGINATION
Writing this essay has helped
focus my thoughts about what, for me, are the key elements that combine to make
storytelling 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 for a few weeks. From previous experience, I
knew that a valuable insight that I could share would eventually float to the
surface.
In March 2012, 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, 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. Fostered by the
nudging of the slide images, I not only saw imagination bursting forth but I felt
it deeply too. So many of us that night were emotionally moved at the
demonstrated power of individual and collective imagination ignited by both the
visual and told 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. Imagination has a wonderful way of filling in the details unbidden.
I was listening to a well
told story recently. Unexpectedly, I had a mental image that all the teller was
really doing 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 sneak in 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.
On August 7, 2012, I
posted a short reflection about Imagination on our Tales and Tips blog. I’d
like to end this essay with some lines from it because they still sum up my
continuing 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.’
December 6, 2014
This essay is a revised version of a series of posts to Tales And Tips in November of 2012.
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