SAY IT WITH MUSIC - HOW MY JOURNEY BEGAN

By Angelica Ottewill, (Harpist, Singer, Storyteller)

I discovered the world of storytelling and the Celtic harp simultaneously.  They were to change the fabric of my life forever.

It began about twenty-six years ago at a summer course in Toronto, when a fellow student mentioned she was going to the 1001 Friday Nights of Storytelling and would I like to come along.  I was intrigued by the idea of storytelling as a performing art.  I had first heard about it from Professor Jaques Yashinsky while attending a French immersion course in St. Pierre et Miquelon.

“Your son does what for a living? Whoever heard of telling stories to make money?  Does he tell to adults?  Who are his audiences?”

Well, this was my chance to find out more about this mysterious art form.  The professor’s son, Dan, would be hosting the Friday night session and Alice Kane, Irish storytelling icon would be telling. 

The event took place in a café. I’ve forgotten what it was called or where it was, but I remember it as magical.  All the tables had candles and there was an intimacy and charm that I had never experienced before in any performing venue.  I was a classically trained singer and performing was always a big production, replete with nerves and anxiety.  Here in this congenial space, the performances were effortless, the ambiance warm and encouraging.  The evening was not about the performers as much as it was about the stories.

A few days later my classmate Jane, who was a singer and storyteller, said “Have you seen that little lap harp for sale at Remenyi’s?  I think it would be a great accompaniment for storytelling!”

Now just to back-track a little. I was no stranger to the harp, although I had never played one.  A friend of mine, George Mills, had purchased two Celtic harps several years earlier and had stumbled through various musical arrangements of Celtic tunes while I sang the melodies.  However, it had never occurred to me to take up the harp myself.  I was a singer, and my accomplishments on the guitar and piano had been pretty pathetic.   

Now, with Jane’s suggestion buzzing in my ears, I went to visit George and for the first time, I asked if I could play a few notes on his harp.  The moment my fingers plucked those strings and the resonance of the instrument vibrated through me, I knew I was hooked.  It was what Gardner would call “A crystalizing experience”.

I went to visit my parents the next day and breathlessly announced, “Guess what?  Something wonderful has happened in my life!” 

They looked at me hopefully as I had been married for two years.

“You’re pregnant?”

“No,” I said, “I’m going to buy a harp!” 

They looked crestfallen!

When I brought the little lap harp home, my husband said, “It’s a five minute wonder.  You’ll get sick of it”.  Well he was right about the fact that I would not be enamored with the lap harp for long.  It was a toy instrument and within a few months I realized that I should have bought a proper floor harp – which I did do not long afterwards.

But my love affair with the harp has continued and has dramatically changed my life, just as my entry into the magical realm of storytelling has. 

From the beginning, I was intrigued by the possibilities of connecting the two art forms.  I began to research and discover stories that had music as a central theme.  I delved into Celtic lore, discovering that my true musical calling lay not in operatic arias or madrigals, but in these elegant Celtic airs.  They were technically easier to sing and now I could save money on accompanists, by accompanying myself on the harp. 

Strangely enough, all my earlier nervousness vanished while I sang and accompanied myself on the harp.  Perhaps it was because I had so much to occupy my brain while playing and singing, that I no longer had time to be nervous.  Perhaps it was because I was now one with the music. Or perhaps it was because if I made a mistake I could easily cover it up. 

Whatever the reason, my performing career suddenly took off!  There was no one in Toronto at the time who played the harp and sang.  I had a virtual monopoly!

So at age thirty-six, while others are giving up their performing careers to raise families or pay off their mortgages, my performing career began. I began to take lessons on the harp and joined the newly formed Ontario Folk Harp Society.  One of its members, Angela Kaija, was a professional actress and we decided to collaborate on a harp and storytelling project.   We worked on “Sir Orfeo”, the Medieval Scottish version of Orpheus and Eurydice.  Angela would tell the story while I accompanied her telling on the harp. 

I decided to create a kind of soundscape behind the words – almost like the music in the background of a movie.  I did not play continuously – sometimes the words of the story were enough.  Sometimes the telling would stop, as I played an actual piece. 

Since the story was about a person who played the harp, it was easy enough to find many places where the story could stop and the music could take over.  I realized why the story of Orpheus had inspired the very first opera, and why it had been the subject of many musical stories afterwards – including the modern movie Black Orpheus with Harry Belafonte.

The big day arrived! We were to perform for the first time.  The Folk Harp Society hosted a big Folk Harp Festival, in which big name harpers from the U.S. were performing. The response to “Sir Orfeo” was ecstatic.  One famous harper, Louise Trotter, commented that she loved the fact that the music did not detract from the story and she didn’t have to suddenly listen to “My Love Is Like A Red, Red Rose” or something corny like that in the middle of a great story.

Besides “Sir Orfeo”, Angela and I, along with several others, created a “Renaissance Tableau”.  It took place outdoors in the morning sunshine of June, with all of us dressed in  costume. Because it was Sunday morning, the performance was contemplative and spiritual.  We played lovely Renaissance airs interspersed with Renaissance poetry. There were harp ensembles and pieces with harp and recorder.  Louise Trotter said it was her favourite part of the entire festival!

 And so my musical storytelling journey began.  I have continued to work with other storytellers, as well as other musicians on a huge variety of storytelling projects.  My work has taken me to many different cities, and places. 

Now, as a retired elementary school music and French teacher, it has become the focus of my life and hopefully will continue to be for many years to come.

All Rights Reserved by Angelica Ottewill (2014)

‘How My Journey Began’ is the beginning of a series ‘Say It With Music’ that Ms. Ottewill will post from time to time here on Tales and Tips

Write to Angelica at her website: www.trobairitz.ca

Follow Peterborough Storytellers at: www.facebook.com/peterboroughstorytellers

AN ATTEMPT AT ORAL GEEKISH SCIENCE FICTION

By Peter Spasov

Storytelling is about performance and is often metaphorical.  Although we can draw on a vast collection of stories from which to tell, some strive to make up their own fiction.    It is an ambition of mine to write fiction which is one of the reasons for joining Peterborough Storytellers.   

Later, I enrolled in a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) named Stunt Writing For Personal Growth.   (See link at the end of this article.)  This is a process that uses writing as a tool for you to learn about yourself and gain skills in communicating your own unique story.  I suspect the intent is for effectively communicating one’s personal story, but I highjacked it for inventing a story.  I’m not sure, but I suspect many people take this course more for a self-help reason.  Although everyone including me can use help, I’m not in a personal crisis, as far as I know.  I just want to develop creative writing, period.  Alas, it is also hard work and requires persistence.

In short, I choose as my stunt, the challenge to write an original story and perform it in front of an audience.  To raise the stakes a bit, I included the task to write about the experience and post it in Peterborough Storyteller’s blog.  Hence, here it is: voilá.  

It’s hard to remember my exact inspiration process.  For sure, I’ve always pictured a theme of time travel and seeing if you could prosper in the past.  And I enjoy Science Fiction, the type that requires thinking.  I am not a ‘shoot ‘em up and zap ‘em with laser beams’ kind of guy.  There are dog people and there are cat people.  Similarly, there are Star Trek people and Star Wars people.  I happen to be a dog person who likes Star Trek.  If you wish, think Sheldon Cooper in the TV series Big Bang Theory. 

My story attempt doesn’t normally fit the typical traditional oral story or one from traditional experience which storytellers usually perform.  However, I did not want something requiring the supernatural or implausible.  For that reason, I decided that time travel would be virtual.  Maybe a geekish science fiction genre doesn’t fit.  Yet even this story fits the oral traditional genre even if in a very unusual way.  Upon later reflection, I see that the story is a form of journey or quest, so maybe not so original after all.

The story concept is a variation of Mark Twain’s ‘Connecticut Yankee’, except that time travel is not practical - and our setting is in the future when virtual reality is well developed.  The ‘Connecticut Yankee’ game is a realistic simulation of travelling back in time.  The point is to see how well a modern person can get by in the past.  In theory, we modern people should have advantages by inventing things.  The protagonist regrets not being practical.  For example, if you found yourself in ancient Rome, it would be impossible to impress the Romans with modern things like computer abilities or movie star trivia – because there are no computers and movies at that time.

The brief story line is a follows.  My teller is Antonio Lanyard and he is introducing the premise of the game.  His drop (the act of beginning the trip to the past) occurs during medieval times in what is now Switzerland, but at that time is essentially run by an Austrian.  As the teller, I try to convey some unusual aspects as in the clothing being worn, the smells and possible daily habits.  Antonio struggles because he has no ‘practical’ skills, and after hearing a joke, he tries to become a jester for a Landammann (roughly equivalent to a Chief Magistrate).  His attempt involves telling a joke.  Antonio is thinking about the standard joke structure of how many x do you need to change a light bulb.  Of course, he has to modify the joke. 

He ends up having to demonstrate lighting a candle by clanging bells to create a spark.  Antonio has to bluff himself out of this predicament.  He stumbles upon a stall tactic: he will teach Euchre.  To teach the game, he needs to invent playing cards.  At the end, when people are playing cards in candlelight, he cheats by using another candle to light the Landammann’s candle.  This doesn’t impress the locals but he has an idea as to how to justify his act. But suddenly Antonio needs to defecate.  I end my story at the point when he wonders what people use as toilet paper. 

When I performed my story, the theme for story tellers that evening was about connecting with nature.  In its own indirect way, in my story there is a connection to this theme.  Many of us can no longer identify common plants and animals, can’t grow or make our food and other similar skills.  This is because we can get by without them.  However, if you find yourself in a situation as in the past, these skills suddenly become necessary.  Even our abilities to think have declined because of our dependency on electronic assistants and the Internet.

I am thinking of continuing my ‘Connecticut Yankee’ story.  What I ended up writing became somewhat more bizarre, with some attempts at humour.  Whether it succeeded or not in conveying a message of being practical is another matter.  Alas, there is no real ending and that was intentional.  In my performance, when I said ‘the end,’ that was a lie.  In retrospect, I should have said ‘to be continued.’  Whether I continue this story remains to be seen. 

  

My own feeling about performing the story is mixed.  Honestly, I am uncertain as to what people thought of it.  It may have had too much, and as mentioned before, I could have stated there is more to tell but that is left for another time. 

One listener talked to me at some length due to his Swiss background.  We talked about the history.  The setting is the same time and place for a Swiss hero, William Tell.  He is famous for being forced to shoot an arrow at an apple set upon his son’s head because he wouldn’t pay the proper respect to the Austrian lord, Gessler.  When writing my story, I researched things such as playing cards, bathrooms, clothing and historical characters amongst other things.  I chose the town of Altdorf more or less arbitrarily but I have actually visited the place.  What I remember most is how small the sky is and that Altdorf is by a lake surrounded by mountains.

My story is technical in parts. I wanted to keep the story realistic, and that meant introducing technical elements.  Spending more time to ease through these parts might help.  An alternative would be to have an imaginary world with time travel, or turn it into a dream (a big cheat) or write it in a more mythic fantasy style. 

But I am a science geek so I have attempted this version of my story in terms of a virtual reality context, albeit extremely sophisticated, but plausibly it could exist in the future.

Want more information about the MOOC? Check out this link:

https://www.canvas.net/courses/stunt-writing-for-personal-growth-2 

It will probably run again in a few months.

All Rights Reserved by Peter Spasov (2014)

Peter can be contacted at peterboroughstorytellers@cogeco.ca

Become a friend of Peterborough Storytellers on Facebook: www.facebook.com/peterboroughstorytellers

THE SECOND STORY OF THE BLACK BEAR MASK - PART ONE

By Rita Grimaldi

         

My Black Bear mask knows only one story and it is part of a story at that.

The Bear mask was the third mask worn in the telling of The Navaho Emergence Cycle. The chief’s daughter wears the mask when she transforms herself into a bear. The last time I told this story was sixteen years ago. Since that time, the Black Bear mask has been hanging on my studio wall, always in a prominent place and always looking out at me.

In about a month I will again use the Bear mask to tell the Iroquois story of The Boy Who Lived With Bears.  Yesterday, while practicing the story in the Bear mask, I found that I no longer knew the feeling of the mask. I had a distant memory of using it to tell part of The Navaho Emergence Cycle but that was long ago. Now I no longer feel the power and energy of the mask. And on top of that, the new story feels foreign to the mask. So today, a month before the performance, I decide to seriously begin to belong with who the mask is.

I start this process with a second re-write of The Story of The Boy Who Lived With Bears. In my first writing, I had the Black Bear mask speak the story from the beginning. But yesterday, while rehearsing in mask, this felt wrong. Perhaps it is because the first part of the story has to do with the boy’s life in the human world and the bear has no part in that life. So I decided to rewrite and only have the bear mask tell the part in the new story from the time in the forest when the bear first appears.

I then reworked the costume. I had originally chosen the same blouse that I wore sixteen years ago for the bear in The Navaho Emergence Cycle. I paired the blouse with a black skirt. But this blouse and skirt combination had no power. It was a mismatch to the power of the mask itself. And it was a mismatch to the wild feeling of the bear in the forest environment.

So today I began to try different combinations of clothing. I settled on the linear look of a long slim brown jumper over a pair of brown-cuffed slacks. On top of this, I put a leather vest with long ties. The ties will have some green leaves attached to them. I will wear a green, long-sleeve jersey underneath the jumper. And black socks and shoes under the slacks.

The Black Bear mask’s second story about a boy who lives with bears, requires a new bank of experiences for its telling. They are experiences that place the bear in the wild, natural world of the forest. Even in the story, these kinds of experiences are not coded in human language. The story says that the bear spoke in what sounded like growls. But when the boy listened closely, he could understand what was said. I am working on understand this language of the wild so that I can become the wild bear mother inside the Bear mask.

________________________

Part Two of the Black Bear mask will be posted on Monday, February 10th.

All rights reserved by Rita Grimaldi (2014)

If you wish to contact Rita, please email her at:

peterboroughstorytellers.cogeco.ca

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THE SECOND STORY OF THE BLACK BEAR MASK - PART TWO

 By Rita Grimaldi

                          

Who am I? Who are my people? And where do I belong?

         

These are questions that are asked by many of the old stories. In the story of The Boy Who Lived With Bears these are the questions that define the boy. The boy has been orphaned. The uncle, his only relative, leaves him to die in a forest cave. The boy has no one and no place to belong to in the world of humans.  But luckily, as the story progresses, Bear Mother adopts the boy and he comes to belong to her family and to world of nature.

On Becoming Bear Mother

Bear Mother’s answers to the above three question might be…

Who am I? -  I am the most powerful animal in the forest. (In the story, Bear Mother says to the boy, “We walk slowly through the forest and no other animal bothers us”.)

Who are my people? - 'My people’ are her family of bear cubs.

Where do I belong? – I belong in the forest.

Now comes my first difficulty in performing this story in mask. The Bear mask has the power of the bear but in my first rehearsals of the story, I was not able to be in sync with this raw animal expression of female power. I am not used to being inside a female mask with such a strong animal physical power attached to its identity.   As a teller and performer, I could not yet answer the three questions as Bear Mother does above.

And answering the three questions as the mask and story answer them is absolutely necessary for telling a story in mask.

Two years ago, I told the story of Iron John using my Wild Man mask. The Wild Man was a powerful character living fully in the natural world and, like Bear Mother, he too looked after a young boy. The masculine power of the Wild Man mask felt right and good to me.  But with the Bear mask, I must get used to its feminine physical power. I am thinking that perhaps my smaller, less powerful female self requires an answer to a fourth question:

How will the bear, who has great physical power, use her power? 

In the first story told by the Bear mask – The Navaho Emergence Cycle - Bear/Woman uses her great physical power for revenge and killing. In the second story – The Boy Who Lived With Bears – which will be told by Bear mask, the Mother Bear mask will use her great physical power to nurture and protect her cubs. 

In this story, the Bear Mother assesses danger and knows when to take a stand, when to flee and when to hide. The surprising ending to the version I will tell in the Black Bear mask is that the human boy risks his small, unpowerful self to defend his adopted Bear Mother and his sibling cubs. In other words, to defend his family.

Here is a last look at Bear Mother’s answers to what are now my four questions.

1. Who am I? I am a powerful, female wild animal.
2. Who are my people?  My people are my bear cubs and my adopted human cub.
3. Where do I belong?   I belong in the natural world of the forest.
4. How will I use my great physical power? I will use my power in the best way to defend myself and my cubs, taking into account the resources of my enemies.

Rita feeling the power of the Black Bear mask in its forest.

Helpful Coaching in the Powerful Physiology of the Black Bear Mask

To help me prepare to be Bear Mother, I asked a friend to coach me in understanding the physical power of the female bear. My friend is a scuba diver and is far more attuned to physical activity then I am.

She began by describing the Bear’s head. “A bear has a big head,” she said, gesturing with her open hands, one to each side of her head.

“And the bear’s shoulders are massive,” she said, hunching her own shoulders forward and then moving them powerfully from side to side.

“And the bear’s legs and hips are big and strong.”  As she said this, she placed her hands on her own hips to signify strength. My friend ended by saying, “And all this strength she uses to defend her cubs.”

         

This was a very meaningful moment for me.

What I gained from this coaching was not so much what my friend said but how she said it. With her gestures and posture, she physically told me about the strength of the female bear. In using her whole body, she told me a powerful story about the animal’s strength.

         

I will let that demonstrated physical strength enter into me and then I will let it manifest in its own way within my body. The gestures that communicate the bear’s strength and power will evolve within me in a way that will be authentic to my own body.

The birth of the Black Bear mask and linking Bear mask’s first story to the second story it will tell

         

When I began mask making, the Black Bear mask was the second powerful mask I made. Coyote mask was the first. They were both made to tell the same story. In The Navaho Emergence Cycle, Coyote falls in love with the chief’s daughter and marries her. As the story progresses, Coyote through his trickster behavior, gets himself killed and the chief’s daughter blames her brothers. 

In order to have the physical power to avenge her husband Coyote’s death, the chief’s daughter turns herself into a bear and begins to kill her brothers. She kills all but her youngest brother. But he is able to kill her because she has made herself vulnerable by leaving her heart outside of her body. Divine power revives her dead bear body as a real bear, the ancestor of all wild bears. The youngest brother instructs this bear not to harm humans.

         

This is the first story that Bear mask has lived and told. And now I see a possibility.

Perhaps the real bear at the end of this first story is the ancestor of the mother bear in The Boy Who Lived With Bears. That is a fine thought. It links the two stories in a way that goes beyond Bear/Woman leaving her heart outside the body to a new possibility of Bear Mother using her heart to nurture her cubs.  For me, it shows a progression of the use of female physical power toward good ends.

Now I have arrived at a fitting place to begin rehearsing the story of The Boy Who Lived With Bears.

________________________________________

Part Three of this series will be posted on Monday, February 17th. In this posting, Rita will talk about the addition of a second mask to the storytelling performance.

All rights reserved by Rita Grimaldi (2014)

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THE SECOND STORY OF THE BLACK BEAR MASK - PART THREE

By Rita Grimaldi

The Story of ‘The Boy Who Lived with Bears’ Takes its Final Form

                  The Black Bear mask in the Forest

The Blog writing, the coaching and particularly seeing the forest photos of the masks helped me to internalize the strength of mother bear. As I rehearsed yesterday, her strength poured into me and released out of me as a deep voice and an upright body. But with this strength came a comparison. My out of mask telling of the beginning of the story, the part before mother bear enters, lacked depth and magic. After finishing the rehearsal, I wanted another mask to tell this beginning section of the story.

         

So I went to my studio wall of masks to see which mask might be right for the telling of the beginning. First, I tried the mask of the Chief’s Daughter from The Navaho Emergence Cycle. But she was not right.

Then my eye fell on a mask I had never used. It is a very special mask to me because I first saw it in a dream. It is a Tree Spirit mask. In my dream, it was in a store window. I wanted to have it. Looking through the window, I studied the mask carefully. And when I woke up I made it.

I made the mask in a special way by placing layers of birch bark directly into the mold of my face and then adding rice paper on top of these layers. I have always thought of this mask as a Tree Spirit so using it to tell the beginning of the story is in line with my feeling of the bond between the bear and the forest.

                                        The Tree Spirit mask in the Forest

         

Now I needed to rewrite of the story for a third time. I decided that in the story the Tree Spirit mask would be called The Spirit of the Northern Forest. This would link it to the part of the story that says ‘strange things happened in the forest to the north’. It would also link it more closely to the shamanic traditions of the northern peoples. I then rewrote everything using a lot of my own writing plus parts from three versions of The Boy Who Lived With Bears. My final performance version is a composite story that belonged to the feel of my two masks.

I will be careful to tell the audience how I have rewritten the story and that the story is no longer a true Native American story but is a version of the tale specific to me.

I practiced the new content using both masks. I am very pleased with its depth and beauty. I have formed an alliance with the two masks which will take me, and hopefully the audience, on the journey into the wild nature of my vision of the story.

This story will not be videoed so I hope that many of you will come to see it.

Wednesday, February 19^th at 7pm in the Auditorium of the Peterborough Public Library, Peterborough, Ontario.

Next week, we will post some photos of the performance and a small wrap up of the experience. Thank you for following this journey.

All rights reserved by Rita Grimaldi (2014)

Rita’s email address is peterboroughstorytellers@cogeco.ca

THE SECOND STORY OF THE BLACK BEAR MASK - PART FOUR

By Rita Grimaldi

The Hero and the Mask

         

I usually choose the hero of the story to tell the story. A mask representing the story’s hero tells his own story. This was not the case in last night’s telling of The Boy Who Lived With Bears. The Boy is the hero of the story. The story is about the boy’s journey out of the world of humans and into the wild world of the bears. And then back into the world of humans. Yet it never crossed my mind to have the boy tell the story. As I consider the power and emotion in last night’s performance, I wonder why I did not consider using a mask representing the Boy as the teller.

 The Boy, his Uncle and the Bear

         

The deep unconscious answer is that I thought the boy in the story was too vulnerable to be the teller. Certainly there have been other vulnerable heroes that have told their stories in mask through me. The Curious Girl’s story told last March is an example on one of these heroes (see our YouTube video).

But while the girl resolves her vulnerability by overcoming her adversary, the boy in this story does not. His adversary repents his bad behaviour but my question is would this repentance last. That is why I rewrote the ending of the original story to say that after the boy leaves Mother Bear she still watches to see that his uncle treats him well. My feeling is that even at the end of the story the boy needs to have her protection. Mother Bear says to the boy “Grandson, we will always be your relatives.”

This statement confirms that she will always be there to help him. As the storyteller I wanted to feel her strength and power as a protective force. I wanted to know that it would be there as long as the boy was a child.

The Boy, the Bear and the Spirit of the Northern Forest

         

So I chose the protective bear to tell the story. But the boy had his moments of dialogue through the bear. The most powerful section of the boy’s dialogue is when the Mother Bear describes him crawling out of the log to defend his adopted bear family. Mother Bear says in the boy’s voice, “Stop! Don’t hurt my family.” So in my body wearing the bear mask, I felt both the power and strength of Mother Bear and the vulnerability and courage of the boy. Still, this was not enough.

I wanted a second level of protection. So in the last week before performance, I added the Tree Spirit mask.  This mask portrayed the spirit of the northern forest. The Tree Spirit mask added the magic ability of a spirit presence who was able to witness the evil deed of the uncle and to bring the help of the animals to the boy.

Performance in the Black Bear Mask

The Experience of Telling the Story

         

The two masks I used to tell this story caused almost overwhelming feelings of different forms of identity in me. Once I accepted the power of the bear into me (read previous posts above) it swept over my body like a wave of strength. It gathered and focused all the power of my body in the story’s task of protecting its own life and the lives of its bear cubs and its human cub. The Tree Spirit mask, taking the role of the Spirit of the Northern Forest, gave me a real tangible presence, inside my body, of the spirit reality of nature.

         

The experience of rehearsing and telling this story in these two masks brought me into a feeling mode that I have not experienced before in mask. Usually when I perform in mask, there is a cognitive track running simultaneously with the feeling of the story. This performance obliterated the cognitive function of my mind. My mind ran on the Bear’s feelings of power, strength and protection of her young and on the Tree Spirit’s feeling of magic and spiritual reality.

         

Having lived this story through these two masks, I will always have some part of the strength of Mother Bear inside me. And I will always have some of the Tree Spirit’s feeling of the spirit of the forest inside me.

         

This is the achievement of performing this story in these masks. And it is an achievement that will always remain with me.

All rights reserved by Rita Grimaldi (2014)

Rita welcomes your comments on her Black Bear mask series of posts.

 She can be contacted at peterboroughstorytellers@cogeco.ca

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