Creativity: The Encourager

April 11, 2013

Posted by jayocallahan in Creativity. 

Years ago my friend Doug Lipman and I were leading a week long workshop in creativity and storytelling in southern France. Our whole group – the Creative Monsters – were staying at a large house where we were served beautiful meals and were also given painting lessons.

Most of us were new to painting. I painted a window of the house and still have that in my study. The instructor said to the group, “Jay’s painting captured an image we’ll never forget.”

I think that was true. I’m sure the painting was amateurish but he saw what was alive in it and pointed that out. That delighted and encouraged me to create more.

All of us have this vast mysterious playful side to us. There’s a great playground in us and out of that playground comes the work of Picasso. Out of that playground also comes a song we might sing, a drawing we might do, a kind but creative word to a friend. There are huge negative voices that perhaps are cultural, but those voices are destructive. They say, “There is no time. I can’t draw” or “I can’t write” or “I’m not creative; that’s for talented people.”

Nonsense! You are creative. Let it out, plunk on a piano, whistle, try a pickle on your peanut butter sandwich. Or even take a workshop and find out how helpful it is to have a supportive, trustful, playful group.

Curator's Note: Jay graciously gave Tales and Tips permission to use this latest post on his Creativity blog. We recommend his blog to you. Also check out his personal blog: www.jayocallahan.com.  Jay's workshops are wonderful and we have taken one of them by the ocean in Marshfield MA last spring. Refresh yourself. Re-discover your creativity with Jay O'Callahan.   d

TELLING STORIES IN MASK, PART 2: THE MASK CHOOSES THE STORY

By Rita Grimaldi

           

Mask making is an art form that flows from my hands. Storytelling flows from my body and my voice. Sometimes I combine these two art forms. When I do tell stories in mask, the mask enables me to enter the story transformed into one of its characters.

         

In 1994, I began telling stories in mask. I decided to make masks for a story - a complex story that required four masks – a bear, a coyote, a woman and a boy. From that time onwards I worked on masks. Some masks I designed for stories but many masks had no story waiting for them to tell. These masks I hung on my studio walls and sometimes I would look at them and think ‘Monkey, what story could you tell?’ or ‘Fierce Rose (a female with jagged cut teeth and a rose petal crown), what is your story?’. No answer would come.

The Duppy Mask

This past October, our storytelling group planned an evening of telling ‘Tales of Terror’. Looking through my repertoire of stories, I came across The Duppy Tale. All of a sudden an image came to me of a mask with a long pointed nose or beak. I went into the studio and looked on the walls. There in the back corner was a blue mask with a long pointed beak. I had never worn this mask, but as I looked at it I knew that it belonged to the story of the duppy bird. In fact, it was the Duppy Bird. So I began to relearn the story in the first person and then began to practice the story in the mask.

The Experience Of Telling In The Duppy Bird Mask

A duppy bird is a ghost bird and the story involves a little boy shooting the king of the duppy birds on Halloween night in the cemetery. The bird makes the boy eat him and then causes the boy to die.

I can hardly explain how telling this story in this mask affected me. I went into a state of altered self. This self was not me. It was the self that belonged to the bird in the story. It took me several days to shed it. I doubt if I will ever tell this story again. Still, I don’t regret the experience and the mask remains on my studio wall.

The Story Of The Curious Girl

In March, our storytelling group was doing a special event for World Storytelling Day. I wanted to do something in mask. Researching for a new story, I found Kay Stone’s story of The Curious Girl. A vague memory came to me of a mask I had never used. Looking, I found that it was not hanging on my studio wall. I began to look through boxes. Finally after searching off and on for two days, I found it buried at the bottom of a box. Yes, seeing it confirmed that it was the Curious Girl and it wanted to tell the story.

The second mask I needed for the story was the mask of the Red Bird. There in the studio hung a red bird that I had made and never used. It was the very bird for the story. To use the two masks to represent the girl and the bird I decided to make a head covering that would act as a consistent visual feature during the girl’s transformation into a bird. I also added layers of feathers and natural objects to the bird. Finally, after learning the story, I rehearsed it in the two masks.

The Red Bird Mask

The Curious Girl Mask

World Storytelling Day - Telling Of The Curious Girl

The morning of the telling I went to my university class. Somewhere during the lecture I realized that something was wrong with how I had planned the performance. The girl mask would tell the beginning and after the witch transforms her into a bird, the bird mask would tell the middle but after the girl transforms back into girl I had planned to tell the story out of mask in the first person as if I was the girl.

But as the morning wore on I became more and more uneasy about telling in the first person out of mask. Finally, at the break between the lecture and the seminar, I discussed what to do with a fellow mature student who had done a lot of drama. She told me to switch into the third person to tell the end and trust your audience to understand the switch. And that is what I did.

Trusting The Masks. Trusting Myself. Trusting the Audience To Understand

From my journal, remembering the telling the next morning:

I am telling The Curious Girl in the young girl mask. The story belongs with her. She reads if off the face. She knows it in my body. One third way through I switch to the bird mask my voice remains the same. Two thirds through I switch out of mask and into the third person, my voice drops lower. I sit to finish – I have been standing for the rest except for the mask change.

Two ladies come up to me after the story in the break. One says with amazement, “The girl mask was smaller than your face and when you put it on you changed into a young girl.” The second one says, “And the bird’s mouth moved while you talked.”

The Curious Girl Is On Video

         

It is two weeks since the performance and my telling of The Curious Girl has now been posted on on-line. Watching the girl and the bird I feel the rightness of the mask story choice. They belong to the story. Watching myself at the end, finishing the story as storyteller and not a story character was right too. It was, after all, the Masks’ story and not mine. But I invite you to look at it yourself and see what you think.

You can find the video of Rita’s The Curious Girl story on the Tales and Tips blog of Peterborough Storytellers.

 www.peterboroughstorytellers.blogspot.com

THE SELKIE WIFE

On the lonely shore of a Scottish island one mid-summer night, a fisherman was hiding behind a clump of rocks, watching a. strange and lovely sight.  A group of maidens, slender as moonbeams and fairer than the stars, were singing and dancing on the sand.  They were Selkies, those shape-shifters who swam as seals by day, and walked as men and women by night.

Few mortals were ever fortunate enough to catch a glimpse the Selkies in their human shape, for few were bold enough to wander lanternless along the shores at night.  But the fisherman’s boat had drifted far from land that day and it was sunset before he managed to steer her back to shore.  In his exhaustion he had sat down to rest for only a few moments, but the soft summer air and the gentle murmur of the sea had lulled him to sleep.  When he awoke the moon had risen high in the sky, and in the path of light that it made over the sea, he noticed dark heads gleaming, seals swimming to shore.

The fisherman had heard stories of Selkies since childhood and curiosity led him to take shelter behind the rocks and watch. He saw the seals flop on to the shore rocks and rest for a few moments.  Then the beasts began to tremble and rise, their pelts slid in silky folds to the ground, and they were seals no more. Their harsh barks and coughs became the sweetest of women’s songs and they danced to the ocean’s rhythms and to their own enchanted music on the silvery shore.

One of them had a voice lovelier than all the rest, and a body that caused him to ache with desire.  Carefully and ever so quietly he crept over to the rock where he had seen her fold up and hide her own sealskin.  He knew that without it she could not return to her seal shape or the sea.  Picking it up he stealthily made his way back to own home and hid it in an old chest in his attic.

 In this way the fisherman won himself a Selkie wife, for without her sealskin she could not follow her fellow seals.  She was as faithful and pretty a wife as any man could ever hope for, and she bore him two beautiful babies, a boy and a girl.  Their fingers and toes were delicately webbed like their mother’s but people in the village did not fear them.  They viewed them as a special grace from the sea, bearing an enchantment. But the Selkie wife was prone to strange moods and longing for her other life.

She told her children about the magical lands under the sea where her people lived –where seaweed grew in every color of the rainbow, where crystal palaces stood, lit by twinkling phosphorus and gilded with the shifting sheen of the northern lights.  When she saw seals out at sea she would call to them as if they were old friends.

The fisherman was always afraid that one day she would find her sealskin and leave him, but he could not destroy it, for he knew that would cause her death.  One day his fears were realized.  When he returned to his cottage after an outing he found it cold and silent, and the children unfed.  Despite all his efforts to keep the chest hidden and locked, she had managed to open it and return to her former shape.  The fisherman mourned his loss for a while, but he knew that she had never truly been his.  A daughter of the sea, she had returned to her own people and country.  No union could be permanent between the races of the waters and those of the land.

Adapted from the original Celtic version and performed in April 2013 with harp and vocals by Angelica Ottewell, a member of Peterborough Storytellers.

MORE WORLD STORYTELLING DAY VIDEOS

I am delighted to introduce two new tellers to you via video. Both Adli and Kemi are first time tellers in a storytelling environment. They are active members of the Speakers' Bureau of the New Canadians Centre in Peterborough. The NCC is our co-partner in presenting 'Fortune and Fate: Inspiring Stories From Around The World'. And of course, our event received funding from Storytellers of Canada.

Both stories are of the personal genre. Adli shares recollections from his birthplace of Iran where the famous 1001 Nights series of stories originated. Kemi wrote her story about cross-cultural love and she performs it beautifully.

We know that you will enjoy the passion of their performances.

ENJOY OUR VIDEO STORIES!


Videos of some of our tellers are now available on our Tales and Tips blog!

Three videos have just been posted. The tellers are Rita, Angelica and Don...all members of Peterborough Storytellers. More videos of other tellers will follow in the days ahead.

These videos were made at our very successful World Storytelling Day 2013 event on March 20th held at the Public Library in Peterborough. In these videos you will see three unique styles of telling, story genres and in one instance, the use of harp and voice. The tale by Rita is unique in that she uses two character masks to tell her story.

The videos were made by our co-partner in the event, the New Canadians Centre of Peterborough, and we thank them for making these stories available to our blog. Our event, Fortune and Fate, was made possible by a grant from Storytellers of Canada.

Enjoy the three stories and watch for more to be posted shortly.

World Storytelling Day 2013 (playlist)

World Storytelling Day 2013 (playlist)

THE HEALER: FORTUNE OR FATE?

Note: This is one of nine stories told at Peterborough Storyteller's World Storytelling Day event on March 20th, 2013. The Healer was written and performed by Don Herald. Check back in a few days to this Tales and Tips blog to view video clips of some of the wonderful stories told that evening.

My story is based on true events that happened almost forty-five years ago.

It had been another hot, busy day in the surgery of the Christian mission hospital in north Central India. Dr. Tom, a British surgeon, had been operating all day long. Since his hospital was the only one for hundreds of miles in any direction, his surgery, outpatient and inpatient units were always filled to overflowing.

It was not uncommon for a person to travel on foot, or be pulled in a buffalo cart or sometimes carried on a stretcher for several days to reach his hospital. As would be the case here in Canada or in Britain, each patient also came with the expectation that Dr. Tom’s skill would fix them, perhaps even save their life or that of a loved one. But unfortunately not everyone could be fixed or saved.

At day’s end, we were relaxing with a cooling drink in his small living room. Dr. Tom was showing us some x-rays of a young child whose parents had carried him to his surgery many months ago. The child could not walk due to a severe congenital degeneration of the hip sockets. The x-rays clearly showed very little bone and cartilage in and around the joints. The boy was a cripple.

There was no surgery that Dr. Tom could do that would repair the bone structure enough to allow the boy to ever walk, even with the aid of a crutch. His parents were devastated that the famous Dr. Tom and his legendary healing powers could not help their son. This time, the famous Healer could not heal.

Putting down the x-rays, Dr. Tom sipped on his drink and for a moment seemed lost in thought. Then he resumed his story.

In the months after the child had been at his hospital, Dr. Tom began to hear stories from patients about a wandering preacher man who had mysteriously appeared in the more remote areas of the region. According to Dr. Tom’s patients, this bearded fellow dressed in flowing robes like a holy man and was always accompanied by a group of ten to twelve men who appeared to be friends of the Preacher and assisted him in his ministry.

But what most intrigued Dr. Tom about the growing reputation of the Preacher was that at his gatherings, villagers reported that the Preacher laid hands on some of the ill and suffering and apparently healed them. For these acts, he and his band demanded no money, but asked only for food and modest lodging to support them in their travels and ministry.

The Preacher’s reputation as a healer grew incredibly fast among the villagers. Soon his gatherings grew from at first dozens, then to hundreds of men, women and children who came to hear the Preacher’s words and hopefully for a fortunate few, to benefit from his healing work.

As a surgeon, Dr. Tom was understandably very skeptical of the growing number of reports from his patients about what were now often referred to as healing ‘miracles’ performed by the Preacher. Dr. Tom began writing down these miracle stories, curious to get to the bottom of what was really going on here. He showed us a notebook where he had meticulously recorded dozens of villagers’ reports about the healing acts of the Preacher.

Dr. Tom began to wonder if this man’s reputation was by clever design or perhaps by divine guidance.

One day, quite unexpectedly, the young boy and his parents returned to Dr. Tom’s outpatient clinic. Only this time, the boy was walking with the help of a cane. Dr. Tom couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He learned that the parents had heard of the Preacher and carried their son a great distance to a gathering. The boy had the good fortune to meet the Preacher who laid hands upon the boy’s hips and legs and prayed. The boy had risen slowly and awkwardly, and then walked unsteadily away supported by his thankful parents. Ever the scientific skeptic and after hearing this story, Dr. Tom again x-rayed the boy’s hips.

It was these x-rays that he now pulled out from a folder and held them up for us to examine. Dr. Tom pointed out how the sockets were now complete with bone and cartilage into which the boy’s leg bones fit snugly and properly.

Dr. Tom looked at us. ‘I have no real explanation for this. It would appear that the Preacher man has done the impossible and healed this child. If I had not seen this with my own eyes and did not have these x-rays as proof, I would never have believed this’.

So now, I leave it for you to decide. Was it Fortune? Or was it Fate? Or was it something else entirely?

WE DID IT! OUR FIRST ANNUAL WORLD STORYTELLING DAY EVENT

It was a wonderful evening of storytelling last night at our annual World Storytelling Day event, Fortune and Fate: Inspiring Tales From Around The World.

The nine tellers from Peterborough Storytellers and the Speaker's Bureau of the New Canadians Centre spun tales and music from across cultures that were greeted with considerable enthusiasm and praise from the nearly forty listeners who came and participated. We were delighted to welcome many new folks to the experience of storytelling here in Peterborough. Everyone agreed that it was truly a worthwhile evening of entertainment and learning.

Our thanks to all the tellers: Diana, Naser, Sharon, Don, Rita, Andrew, Betty, Kemi and Angelica. And of course to Yvonne and Safo from NCC, Don and Rita from Pb Storytellers who worked so hard on planning and coordinating the event. Also our thanks to the media who told the community of our event: the Peterborough Examiner and Trent Radio.

And we wish to acknowledge the continuing support of our local storytelling activities from our national organization, Storytellers of Canada, who so generously provided us with a grant to help meet the costs of hosting this event.

Check back to this blog in the coming days for videos of many of our tellers performing at Fortune and Fate 2013.

Let's do it all again next year!

A GOOD OVERVIEW OF THE HISTORY OF STORYTELLING

Believe it or not, Wikipedia has an excellent summary of storytelling through the ages. Topics such as:

• The historical perspective
• Contemporary storytelling
• Oral traditions
• Storytelling in Indigenous Cultures
• In business and the workplace

There is an comprehensive section on References and Further Reading for articles, papers and books on storytelling. 

And a final section on internet links.

This article in Wiki will be a good introduction and overview for anyone beginning research on storytelling. 

We recommend you check it out.    dh