Press Play to hear Michael Cotter speak on farming the heartland of American storytelling on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

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Brief Bio
Michael Cotter is the first national storyteller to perform personal stories on the main stage at Jonesborough, TN. He is a semi-retired farmer and winner of the 2009 oracle award for excellence in storytelling.

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Press Play to hear Eric Wolf speak how you can support the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

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For Immediate Release Wednesday, June 17, 2009

The Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf is an internationally recognized podcast listened to in 142 countries worldwide with over 50,000 total lifetime downloads, 13,000 distinct listeners, and 8,000+ downloads in the last thirty days. With over 88+ storytellers interviewed on the show this website is rapidly becoming the worlds première source for teaching storytelling online. Through this encyclopedia of storytelling techniques a listener can improve their communication skills and get a complete storytelling education.

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Press Play to hear Kim Weitkamp speak about reaching troubled youth through storytelling on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

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Kim Weitkamp writes…
For 15 years I saw first hand the amazing power of story. The right story deposited at the right time is like a time release capsule. I cannot count how many times one of the teens that I was working with would come back to me, after I told them a story, and they’d say, “Hey, you know that story you told me the other day? Well, I’ve been thinking about it…”

When I would hold group discussions, a story would bring together opposing sides. When I was digging into a person’s heart, trying gently to unearth the pain that was causing them to act out in anger, a story would be the trowel. When I looked into the angry hurting eyes of teen, a story would prove to them that I understood and that I had been there too.

I loved working with at risk youth and found great satisfaction in using story to bring healing. It was a worthy calling. But, after 15 years, it wore me out physically and emotionally, so I retired. From youth work, not storytelling. You cannot retire from what you are, you can only retire from what you do. So what I was had to release itself in another form.

I pulled out journals that I had kept over the years and started going over stories that I had written for no other purpose than to make me smile. I started sharing those stories with people outside my family and friends circle. After a few years of puttering around state festivals, schools and libraries, I branched out and before I knew it I was telling full time. But inside of me there was a struggle going on.

For years, I had used my stories to help teens who were suicidal, self-mutilators, violent offenders, lost, lonely and at their breaking point. I had used my stories for a worthy cause, but now I was telling for the sheer pleasure of it. I was using my stories to entertain and to make people laugh. I was at odds with myself. How could I go from one extreme to another? Was I selling out? Was there a purpose to what I was doing? I was constantly asking myself these questions.

One evening I was telling in a tent that was draped in white lights. The night was cool and still and the audience was perfect. I was in the middle of one of my favorite stories, right at a part where I pause for effect, when I had the most beautiful experience. As my gaze swept across the crowd I could see each face individually, expectant and ready. It was like slow motion, a hard thing to explain really, but they were there…with me… in the story, not in the tent. They were waiting to turn the corner with me and see what I saw and laugh at what I laughed at and smell what I smelled and taste what I tasted. They were there with me, in my story, walking with me.

It was at that moment I knew that what I was doing was just as worthy as my previous work. No matter how long I have them, no matter how large or small the group, no matter how funny, sad, silly, or heartbreaking my story is…it’s a miracle.

Each time I tell I have the privilege of taking my listener away from this world. For a few minutes I provide a much needed break from the rent payment, from the knee pain, from unemployment, from the wayward child, from the death of a loved one. It is a form of medicine, therapy, whatever you want to call it I don’t care. I only know that it is good. And to be a storyteller is a worthy calling.

After that experience I went to Jonesborough for the first time and in the glass shop on Main Street I found an art print that brought tears to my eyes. The artist had drawn a picture of a woman and beside it had written: “In the midst of the song she heard every heartbeat and knew she was a part of something bigger.” Nough said.

Bio of Kim Weitkamp…
Written by Diane Pelegro

Kim Weitkamp used applied storytelling for over 15 years within her work with youth. She has been a guest speaker, keynote and storyteller at camps, retreats, conferences, libraries, schools, leadership summits and festivals throughout the country. After overseeing various non-profit programs in four states she retired from youth work three years ago.

At that time Kim decided to take her love of humor and storytelling to the stage, and she has been warmly received. Her impressive performance list as a newcomer includes Timpfest in Orem, Utah, the Exchange Stage in Jonesborough TN, the historic Lyric Theater in Virginia, the Northeast Storytelling Festival, the Storytelling Festival of the Carolinas, The Smoky Mountains Festival in Pigeon Forge TN, The Colonial Williamsburg Storytelling Festival and many others. She holds residencies at the Montgomery County Museum, the JuneBug Center for Storied Arts and the Lewis Miller Art Center.
She currently serves as President of the Virginia Storytelling Alliance and is the Virginia State rep for the National Youth Storytelling Showcase. She is also a commissioned performer for the Virginia Commission of the Arts. Kim has written and performed vignettes and stories for the PARfm Radio Network morning show which has a 3 state listening audience. She has penned numerous children’s stories but is most noted for her original and humorous Pitscreek Series, which has resulted in two CD projects.

Kim is the founder of the Wrinkles Project, a nationwide program that helps raise awareness of the treasure we have within our ’seasoned citizens’ and the stories that they have to share. Kim’s first CD, “This Ain’t Bull It’s Fertilizer” was her freshman release. Her new self titled CD, shows her growth as an artist and writer. The stories are solid and well written and her telling style is casual and warm. The collection is a beautiful example of storytelling at its best. Recently Kim has added the dynamic of singing original songs to her performances. They cozy right up to the story and add depth and additional appeal to her telling.

Kim’s genuine care for the audience, love of story, and natural talent has alloted her a solid position within the arena of spoken word artistry.

To Learn more about Kim’s work check out her website at http://www.justkissthefrog.com/

Press Play to hear Catherine Burns who is Artistic Director of The Moth speaking on diamonds in the rough, coaching new storytellers on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

The Moth is America's #1 storytelling podcast with over 600,000 downloads a month and at least 100,000 listeners. Catherine Burns is one of the minds behind the curtain at The Moth storytelling main stage in NYC and LA.

The Moth storytelling website.

Press Play to hear Loren Niemi who was interviewed by Eric Wolf on Honoring Elders and Apprentices on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

Loren Niemi writes...
I’ve been a storyteller for 30 plus years and yet in so many ways I feel like a beginner learning how to do now, what I learned how to do then. It is – LOL – a very “Zen and now” approach to storytelling: beginner’s mind.

At this point in time, I understand clearly and fondly what a gift I received when I came to storytelling. The gift of generous mentors – specifically, Ken Feit and Rueven Gold – who took a “Zen and now” approach offering friendship, access, who posed and (sometimes) answered questions, encouraged and gave permission for me to find and develop my own voice rather than adopt theirs. They welcomed me wherever they were telling and often made space for me to tell a story at those gatherings.

They were prolific in suggesting, cajoling, handing me books and lists of books to read that would ground me in the storytelling traditions. It is one of the laments I have about a significant portion of those coming into storytelling now, that they do not read (or feel they have to read) widely and deeply. My mentors understood the value of reading anthropology, mythology, theater, folklore collections as well as the importance of listening to stories and storytellers of all kinds from many traditions to enrich our understanding of the power of this art and the breadth of its reach across cultures.

They are dead now, but the stories I heard them tell still resonate for me. What they taught directly and indirectly has served me well over these many years. Many of the tellers (Marshall Dodge, Ray Hicks, Gamble Rogers, Jackie Torrence, Duncan Willimson) who were here at the beginning of the American Storytelling Revival are dead now but I was fortunate to have heard them and cherish the fact of it.

As the generation that is the root of our storytelling culture pass, I also understand that I have been at this long enough to be able to mentor others. I welcome the opportunity. It is consistent with the tradition of storytelling apprenticeship. It is both a responsibility and a pleasure to nourish “tongues of fire.” It is not a matter of ego or authority, but an understanding that if storytelling is to flourish I have a vested interest in passing on to those who would take it, the gift of craft and knowing.

Inevitably I will pass. But stories, perhaps even some of mine, will abide and I would hope that as I have honored my elders I will have shared the joy and terror which is storytelling with my apprentices.

Loren Niemi Bio

“I began as a child fibber
but soon discovered that I was less interested
in telling lies than I was in improving the truth.”

Storytelling is also the only sensible explanation Loren Niemi can offer for forty plus years as a community organizer and public policy consultant, trainer and Lobbyist working with non-profit groups to articulate their dreams, shape their messages, and resolve their conflicts.

Loren has also spent thirty as a professional storyteller, creating, collecting, performing and teaching stories to audiences of all ages in urban and rural settings. He has served as the Humanities Scholar in Residence for Northern Minnesota, the ringmaster and tour manager of In the Heart of the Beast Puppet & Mask Theatre's Circle of Water Circus, and is one third of BAD JAZZ, a performance art trio with Michael Sommers and Kevin Kling, experimenting with theatrical and storytelling forms. His work has been called “post-modern,” “on the cutting edge of storytelling,” “with the dark beauty of language that is not ashamed of poetry.” It is, as storyteller, Kate Lutz said, “a sensibility that owes more to the New Yorker than to the Old Farmer’s Almanac.”

He is the co-author, with Elizabeth Ellis, of Inviting the Wolf In: Thinking About Difficult Stories, from August House Publishers and the author of The Book of Plots, on the uses of narratives in creating oral and written stories, published by Llumina Press.

Loren has a BA (Philosophy and Studio Arts) from St. Mary’s College (Winona, MN) and a MA in Liberal Studies (concentration: American Culture) from Hamline University (St. Paul, MN). He teaches Storytelling in the Communications Department of Metropolitan State University (St. Paul, MN) as well as providing organizational and corporate message framing, storytelling branding and community building workshops around the country.

Loren was one of the founders of the Northlands Storytelling Network, a five state storytelling education and advocacy organization, and spent four years as the Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Storytelling Network, the 3000 plus member advocate and promoter of America’s storytelling revival. He was the 2005 recipient of the Oracle award for national leadership and service.

Press Play to hear David Novak who was interviewed by Eric Wolf on storyteller’s compass using narrative as guide on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

The Scattered Brain

by David Novak

“I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodies
I saw boys, toys, electric irons and T.V.’s
My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things to store everything in there”
David Bowie, Five Years

I’m dreaming about a legless blind man when the radio alarm wakes me. In the short time it takes me to crawl to the bureau to turn off the radio (an arrangement designed to get me out of bed) I hear the DeeJay tell me that 5% of men surveyed admitted to wearing women’s underwear. I drift to the kitchen to feed the cat and dog and pour the coffee and juice. I go to the front door to collect the morning paper which informs me of the multimillion dollar judgement against O.J. and of an area magnet school which teaches children how to play the bagpipes. By the time I step back inside, my son is awake and Darkwing Duck is “getting dangerous” on the TV. I’ve been awake for less than 30 minutes and already I’m drowning in a sea of information, images and stories.

The day is far from finished. Everything is far from finished. I feel like my life is in the hands of an insomniac channel-surfer: unfinished stories in constant collision with one another adding up to one story: life today. It is all so scatterbrained. I worry: what am I adding to the noise as a voice telling stories in the thick of all this? Who am I to enter the fight for everyone’s attention? What is the point of storytelling in the technologically determined culture of today?

Exo-Brain

Technology enhances us: clothes enhance skin, glasses enhance eyes, wheels enhance walking. Such enhancements extend our physical bodies outward. Our techno-bodies can “see,” “hear,” and “reach” farther than our bio-bodies. We technologically express our bodies outward, forming an exoskeleton of clothing, cars, and houses. Inasmuch as our communica- tion media express images, ideas, and informa- tion, we express our minds outward too, forming an exo-brain. The exo-brain is the scattered brain.

In The Global Village (1989) Marshall McLuhan and Bruce R. Powers discuss the way technology affects cultural change. New technology, they suggest, begins as a distinct figure set against the current cultural ground. Eventually that technology becomes the new cultural ground. As our new technologies become assimilated they reform the ground which determines our culture. McLuhan and Powers:

“Media determinism, the imposition willy-nilly of new cultural grounds by the action of new technologies, is only possible when the users are well-adjusted, i.e. sound asleep.”

To be “well-adjusted” in this sense, is to be accepting yet unthinking; to be an open receiver like a well-adjusted antenna. For such media determinism to be possible, it helps to have a populace that is illiterate, anti-intellectual, inarticulate, and emotionally reactive. The well-adjusted user is hungry (literally and figuratively); dissatisfied with what he has (”been there, done that”); afraid of the unknown (”brand x”); afraid of the outside (the only safe places, we are told, are the places where you find an approved point-of-sale that accepts the right credit card); accepting without thinking (uncritical and thereby open to shallow rhetoric and “sound bites”); has a short attention span (being therefore less likely to scrutinize merchandise or ideas very closely); and is impulsive (reacting to ersatz emergencies from headline news to one-day-only sales.) In short, the well-adjusted user lets the scattered brain do its thinking. The scattered brain directs our attention to what it considers important, leaving what does not interest it to be forgotten.

If this is the culture we live in, it is also the culture that welcomed a revival of story- telling. Why?

A Gentle Reminder

I have just finished a story program for a family night at a local school. The occasion is a combination of book fair and turn-off-the- tube week. During the program I presented some cats cradle figures and used them to tell Jack & The Beanstalk (see Storytelling World vol. 2, no. 1, Winter/Spring 1993.) Children come up to me, chiming the giant’s refrain and asking how they can learn more about string figures. Adults come up to me with a slightly different response. For the children, this is new information. For the adults, this is old information that was lost until they were reminded of it. I will call these two responses: minding and reminding.

First of all, minding. The telling experience brings a wealth of stimulation to the young listener in the form of images, rhythms, patterns, sequences, emotions, and ideas. The aural stroking between real-time-and-place teller and real- time-and-place listener is something that our sciences have begun to verify as essential to brain growth in early childhood. The recognition of this importance is bringing a new validation to the storytelling art in a culture obsessed with technology.

4/18/97

AP-Washington – In a day of “talking about baby talk” and how brains grow, President Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton offered parents simple child-rearing advice: Songs and storytelling fire up infants’ brainpower.

When we tell stories to children we are truly minding them.

Next, reminding. Adult listeners at storytelling events are often surprised by the recognition that storytelling evokes. Listeners tell us, “Gee, I haven’t thought about that in ages…” “I’d forgotten what it was like to…” “I remember when…” and so on. A wealth of dormant memories and experiences are invited up from the deep past to the surface of our present minds. Such storytelling reminds us, literally re-minding: giving us back our minds. It is as though we have lost cognizance of who we are amidst our scatter-brained lives.

What’s going on? Why are people having little epiphanies in the company of storytellers? I believe that there is something missing in our modern media saturation that the storytelling revival is providing us. Something primary to who we are. Something that our daily distraction has lead us away from.

In a prophetic essay for Harper’s in 1938, E. B. White wrote:

“Clearly the race today is between loud speaking and soft, between things that are and the things that seem to be, between the chemist of RCA and the angel of God. Radio has already given sound a wide currency, and sound “effects” are taking the place once enjoyed by sound itself. Television will enormously enlarge the eye’s range, and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tabs, the mags, and the movies, it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote. More hours in every twenty-four will be spent digesting ideas, sounds, images – distant and concocted. In sufficient accumulation, radio sounds and television sights may become more familiar than their originals.”

These days we are enchanted by the Elsewhere and attend to matters “distant and concocted” at every turning. Admittedly, storytelling itself advertises the Elsewhere: “Once upon a time, long ago and far away.” But there is a difference. The medium is the message and the very medium of the told story carries a message distinct from other media. There is a different kind of Elsewhere being advertised by storytelling. We are urged to look away from that which distracts us to that which has become the most remote: the primary and the near.

Version x.x.x

Each new software package is incrementally defined as version x.x.x of an incomplete and never-finished idea-set. Are we cracking the silly idea that a thing is made and maintains its shape immutably? That meaning is constant? All things change. All things are in some state of iteration, always shifting. Set in stone? It is the property of stone to diminish. Organic? Living? If so, then growing and evolving. We live between the last version and the next version. Storytellers have always known this. But the market place has a vested interest in keeping things unfinished in order to keep the customer. “Keep the customers satisfied” becomes “dissatisfy the customers in order to satisfy them.” This is how Scheherazade survived: with perpetually unfinished stories. We are sold software and systems that are not ready and then charged for the more complete (but still unfinished) version, paying for the privilege of beta-testing someone else’s product. While we rush ahead to get the latest version, all new and improved, we are littering our lives with all the old, obsolete versions. Our lives are cluttered with the hard and soft wares we abandon on impulse as our scattered brains chase the latest hot item. The more we neglect the past, the more we will be burdened by it. How did grandma get to be sick and alone in a wolf-infested woods, anyway?

Story Technology

Stories, as technology, enhance memory and understanding. Storytellers are a sensual, human medium. Modern electronic media pretends to respond to its users, but is hopelessly remote and uninvolved. The user who stays too long at the hearth of such media may suffer a kind of sensory deprivation. The storyteller brings touch in the form of aural stroking and warmth in the form of being truly present. Neuroscience now confirms what ancient voices have always known: storytell- ing is important emotive and cognitive technology. Storytelling as true virtual reality, transfers experience while massaging the listener and influencing growth.

Storytelling is re-minding the user at the center of the scattered brain; directing attention back to the primary and the near. Storytellers are strengthening our ability to endure long, considered thinking: to listen, to reflect, to discern, and to feel deeply and knowingly. McLuhan and Powers continue: “There is no inevitability where there is a willingness to pay attention.”

Within our scattered brains we seek something, hungrily, in the bright distracting lights around us. Yet we are perpetually dissatisfied. We are like Nasruddin searching in the sunlight for the gold coin he knows he lost in the dark.

Clockwise

So busy were we
moving papers around the room
we failed to see the East
and the dawning of the day.
So worried were we
at the tallying of doom
we failed to see the South
and the brightening of the bay.
So certain were we
at the importance of our task
we forgot to note the West
and the fading of the light.
So lost were we
we forgot to ask
the sirens of the North
the meaning of the night.

Light & Dark

There is a house in Mailbu, halfway up a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I was a guest in this house when I was in Malibu to tell stories. The evening of my performance, my hosts had left early to prepare for the event and I was leaving the house to join them. Out of habit, I checked to be sure I was turning off the lights as I left the empty house. I noticed a bright light coming from the bathroom and reached in to flick the light switch off. The switch was already off and I was momentarily confused as I tried to determine the source of light in the room. Then I realized that the light I was seeing was coming from the late sun shining low over the ocean and through the bathroom window. I was trying to turn off the sun. I had somehow forgotten that a room in a house can be lit by sunlight.

Today our manipulation of light puts the day/night cycle into our hands – or perhaps more correctly – the illusion of the day/night cycle into our hands. Lights are on at all hours and there are many times when we begin our artificial days long after the sun has set. The time to turn out the light is the time of cessation: bedtime, sleeptime, endtime, deathtime. “Turn out the light, then turn out the light” remarks Othello before extinguishing the candles and then extinguishing Desdemona.

So what does this have to do with a storyteller turning off the sun on his way to tell stories? In his introduction to the Pantheon collection of Grimms Fairy Tales, Padraic Colum writes: “The prolongation of light meant the cessation of traditional stories in European cottages. And when the cottages took in American kerosene or paraffin there was prolongation. Then came lamps with full and steady light, lamps that gave real illumi- nation. Told under this illumination the traditional stories ceased to be appropriate because the rhythm that gave them meaning was weakened.” The prolongation of light has pushed back the shadows of the hearth where, once upon a time, stories were told. Further, the prolongation of light has weakened the “rhythm that gave them meaning.” That rhythm, simply stated, is the time for light, the time for dark, the time for work and the time to tell stories.

We have prolonged the light: we can work whenever we want (and more than we wish) and we have prolonged the seasons: I can buy fresh corn in February. We have changed the ancient rhythm. Is there only cacophony? Or is there a new rhythm?

“Today, while raking the front lawn, Todd said, “Wouldn’t it be scary if our internal clocks weren’t set to the rhythms of waves and sunrise – or even the industrial whistle toot – but to product cycles, instead?”

“We got nostalgic about the old days, back when September meant the unveiling of new car models and TV shows. Now, carmakers and TV people put them on whenever. Not the same.”

Douglas Coupland, Microserfs

The Hearth

The tradition of the hearth is still among us and played out regularly in many technologies. When we go to the cinema, popcorn in hand, to watch shadows flicker on the wall, we are practicing a human behavior as ancient as the first domestic fire. (As an aside, it is interesting that popcorn is so intimately linked with the cinema ritual. Certainly, on the American continent, popcorn has been enjoyed by fireside story listeners for a long time!) There is something soothing about sitting in a dark theatre. The cinema is a communal hearth creating adhoc communities that exist for a few hours and then are scattered. The television set and the computer screen provide the hearth of the modern home. This hearth is available at all hours. We can bathe in its stories and images, from waking to sleeping, whether the sun is shining or the moon is full.

For a long time now, the modern hearth has maintained the broken rhythms of the scattered brain.

Reversal

McLuhan and Powers describe the cycles of technology as moving through four phases: Enhancement, Obsolescence, Retrieval and Reversal. For example, the automobile en-hances travel, obsolesces the horse and buggy, retrieves walking as recreation, and reverses into the inefficiencies of the traffic jam.

The modern hearth brought the Elsewhere into the home and rendered the need to be out there obsolete: we could stay home and still be in the Elsewhere. We could, as The Firesign Theatre told us, be in two places at once and not anywhere at all. We were brought indoors to look out of doors. The hearth still functioned as a hearth: it was the organizing principle of the home. But the rhythm of this hearth belongs to the scattered brain. The technology that enhanced information and cultural unity is reversing into insanity.

The insanity of the scattered brain is driven by an insatiable appetite. If storytellers are not careful, they stand to be consumed by that same appetite.

Appetite

In the storytelling revival we are fond of drawing sharp distinctions between “our kind of storytelling” and other story media. The thing we don’t often admit is that we all serve the same appetite.

Our bodies have certain basic appetites. Today we are able to satisfy those appetites to excess. We suffer illnesses from our over consumption of fats, sugars, and salts, and have learned the importance of a balanced diet and exercise in order to maintain our health. Similarly, we have an appetite for images. Today we are able to satisfy that appetite to excess.

Stories are rich in images. When we tell stories we are feeding that same insatiable appetite that consumes T.V. radio, cinema, billboards, magazines, etc..

Are there consequences to a surfeit of images? Are there illnesses of the mind and the soul that can result from too many images, all cluttered and confused?

Less is More

It is easy to say that what the world needs now is more storytelling. But what if what the world needs now is less storytelling?

Traditional storytelling was often restricted to certain seasons and certain times in balance with the life of the community. Taboos against telling stories out of season were (and still are) common. If we are genuinely concerned about the health of our storytelling culture we will have to come to terms with the notion that there is a time to tell and a time to be silent. In a way, we try to do that with efforts like “turn-off-the-tube-week.”

The idea of less storytelling is a heresy, perhaps. My intention is to challenge some of my own assumptions about the relationship between our current storytelling revival and modern technology. I think there is a need for more of certain kinds of storytelling. Yet even as we are serving that need we are in danger of losing our direction and succumbing to the rising confusion around us.

The point is: the appetite for image is insatiable and it is being served at a feverish pace throughout our culture. Storytellers such as myself, who are on the verge of the entertainment industry, are in danger of being consumed by the scattered brain. Doing so we may become famous for 15 minutes, but we may also cease to be true storytellers and render ourselves obsolete.

What is the relationship of the storyteller to the other storytelling media? Is it simply that of the story-producer? (I’ve got a story to tell and a story to sell.) When you put a storyteller in front of a camera and broadcast that storyteller, you turn that storyteller into another TV program. The entertainment industry looks at the storyteller and sees one of two things: a writer or an actor. The media looks at the storyteller as a kind of product. If storytellers wish to get involved in the entertainment industry (and why shouldn’t they, considering the celebrity and the remuneration) they will have to come to terms with the voracious appetite for story that drives the industry. If the storyteller becomes merely a story-product, something essential will be lost. For the real art of telling stories is concerned not so much with being the producer of the unique story as with understanding when to tell and when to be silent and how to match the right story with the right listener at the right time. In short: the art of telling stories requires a good sense of rhythm.

To tell, we know, means to report; but we must remember that it also means to discern.

Wayfinding

“The Spider Woman taught us all these designs as a way of helping us think. You learn to think when you make these.”

-Navajo teenager speaking to folklorist Barre Toelken regarding string figures.

Consider the metaphors which abound in the new technology: Net Web Mosaic Link String. These are the first technologies. They describe pattern and complexity. These are the constants of the human experience, still alive within the mutable modern media. We are finding our way in complexity like Theseus in the Labyrinth. Many of the current video games concern themselves with wayfinding in mazes and worlds where the rules are unknown and waiting to be discovered. Does the mind get stronger from the exercise? Or lost, in Spiderwoman’s web?

“Wayfinding is a set of principles. An art. And at the center of the circle of sea and sky is the wayfinder practicing the art, trusting mind and senses within a cogni- tive structure to read and interpret nature’s signs along the way as the means of maintaining continuous orientation to a remote, intended destination.”

Will Kilselka, An Ocean In Mind

The new cultural ground now brings the center back to the user. The home video recorder breaks the broadcast schedule cartel and allows viewers to determine when they watch. The personal computer takes the next step: allowing us to watch when we want and to broadcast what we want. Control of the technological hearth is coming back into our hands. With it comes all the confusion and chaos of “the second Tower of Babel” that Victor Hugo describes. In response to this chaos we are developing more and more powerful “search engines” to help us navigate the madness.

The same need that brought about the search engine has brought about the storyteller. The art of the storyteller is the art of the wayfinder. The teller gives us the cognitive strength and the story constellations that we need to find our way. In keeping the ancient rhythm, the storyteller is here now to help us stand once again at the center and reorient ourselves to ourselves as well as to one another. The storyteller is minding and reminding the scattered brain.

Sources:

An Ocean In Mind by Will Kilselka University of Hawaii Press. 1987.

Introduction to The Complete Grimms Fairy Tales by Padraic Colum. Pantheon Books. 1944/1972.

The Dynamics of Folklore by Barre Toelken. Houghton Mifflin. 1979.

The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century byMarshall McLuhan & Bruce R. Powers. Oxford University Press, 1989.

Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. The University of Chicago Press, 1980.

Microserfs by Douglas Coupland. HarperCollins. 1996.

Notre Dame of Paris by Victor Hugo. English translation by John Sturrock. Penguin Books USA, Inc. NY, NY. 1978.

One Man’s Meat by E. B. White. Harpers Magazine, vol. 177. October, 1938.

Spiders and Spinsters by Marta Weigle. University of New Mexico Press. 1982.

Teleliteracy by David Bianculli. The Continuum Publishing Company. 1992
–
David Novak

A Telling Experience
“Finding ourselves together telling stories.”

PO Box 15122
Asheville, NC 28813
(828) 280-2718
www.novateller.com

Press Play to hear Connie Regan-Blake who was interviewed by Eric Wolf on a history of the National Storytelling Festival on the Art of Storytelling on Tuesday, Dec. 17th at 8pm.

Connie writes…
It was October 7, 1973, in Jonesborough, Tennessee – an afternoon that changed my life . . . and the course of storytelling in the United States. The setting was the first National Storytelling Festival.

I had been hired two years earlier by the Public Library in Chattanooga, TN, as a full time storyteller – another life changing event for me. So when I heard about a festival devoted to storytelling, I was thrilled – and knew I had to go. My cousin, Barbara Freeman, who was also a teller, was up for the adventure so we jumped in her little yellow truck and headed off on an adventure.

There I met and heard Ray Hicks, who was to become the patriarch of Southern Traditional Storytelling. He was perched on a flatbed truck, telling Jack Tales to a group of 35 of us, sitting on folding chairs in front of the County Courthouse, hanging onto his every word. When they asked if anyone in the audience wanted to tell, I jumped at the chance and have been involved ever since.

That day, I also met Jimmy Neil Smith, who had the brilliant idea to have a storytelling festival. His vision included an organization to promote the art of storytelling and two years later “NAPPS” came to life – the National Association for the Preservation and Perpetuation of Storytelling. With the town’s support for seed money, a Board of Directors and lots of volunteers, the word began spreading.

And now, over three decades later, storytelling is thriving. That first intimate gathering inspired many to go home and start their own events. Now hundreds of storytelling festivals take place in almost every state in America and around the world from New Zealand to Austria. Today Jonesborough is home to the International Storytelling Center. The National Festival continues to be the premiere storytelling event in the country with an audience that has grown from the original 35 listeners to over 10,000 people who make the journey every year to listen to and tell stories. For many, it is a transformative experience; reawakening the comfort, joy, and pathos that is storytelling. Elizabeth Ellis sums it up best – “The festival is more fun than you can stand!”

For my own professional path, storytelling has taken me across the world. As a partner with Barbara Freeman, we were known as The Folktellers for 20 years and trail-blazed the art of tandem telling. During the past decade I have continued telling stories as a solo performer and workshop leader, as well as collaborating on a unique blend of storytelling and chamber music with the Kandinsky Trio.

Every autumn since 1973, I continue to be drawn to Jonesborough, and welcomed onstage with the distinct honor of being either a featured teller or an emcee. Now, after almost 40 years as a fulltime, professional storyteller, my life’s work continues to be a privilege and a blessing. And I always remember, as the storyteller I have the best seat on the house!

Bio

Connie Regan-Blake is one of America’s most celebrated storytellers. She has captivated the hearts and imaginations of people around the globe with her powerful performances and workshops. Entertaining audiences in 47 states and 16 countries, she brings the wisdom, humor and drama of stories to main stage concert halls, libraries and into the corporate world.

Both as a solo artist and a member of the acclaimed Folktellers duo, Connie has been featured on seven award-winning recordings – five audio and two videos produced by PBS. New Age Magazine, School Library Journal, and Southern Living have praised her work. She has been a guest on NPR’s All Things Considered, ABC Good Morning America and CNN.

When Connie takes the stage she generates a brightness and warmth, drawing in listeners with her engaging humor and Southern charm. Her stories range from hilarious traditional Appalachian Mountain tales to poignant true-life drama. A consummate professional, Connie’s rare talent can transform a convention hall into a wondrous landscape and turn a packed theater into an intimate circle of friends.

Connie has performed at the nation’s top folk music and storytelling festivals in Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, as well as the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C. Her groundbreaking collaboration with the Kandinsky Trio – an innovative blend of storytelling and chamber music – has been hailed as a “new art form.”

As a founding board member of the National Storytelling Association (formerly NAPPS), and a frequent host and featured performer at the National Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee, Connie helped ignite and shape the American storytelling revival.

Connie resides with her husband, two dogs and a frisky cat in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Asheville, North Carolina. For more info, see www.storywindow.com

Tired of the tin sound? Purchase a HQ Mp3 File of Interview #055 Buck Creacy for $2.23 What makes stuff funny in storytelling?

Who Is Buck P. Creacy?
Buck P. Creacy is a homegrown Humorist and a Storyteller. But that is hardly an adequate description of this very funny man. Buck P. has always used humor to make life better for those around him. In the process you can tell he has gained a passion for life and people himself.

He started his humor apprenticeship in Slim’s Barber Shop, Farmington New Mexico, at the tender age of 14. There he realized he could shine more shoes and get bigger tips, if he made his customers laugh. He is still putting a shine in peoples eyes and making them laugh.

Buck P. is also a real live “honest to God” Toolmaker, with nearly 30 years in the tool room, working, consulting and teaching for the benefit of companies all over America. Sharing his wit and wisdom with some of the best known international companies in the world such as Toyota, Dresser Corp., Osram Sylvania and the list goes on and on for more than 98 companies. Groups both large and small love him.

Today his focus on humor is as razor sharp as ever, but never malicious. He has chosen early in life to make his humor “safe” for any audience. Whether his audience is a group of first year students or industry team members or a family reunions, he manages to bridge the gaps with easy grace.

Buck P. sees the whole wide world just a little bit different. And that difference is enough just enough to make you laugh out loud.

To Learn more about Buck P. Creacy check out hisi site.

Tired of the tin sound? Purchase a HQ Mp3 File of Interview #045 Syd Lieberman for $2.23 Telling your Family’s Stories.

Bio From Syd’s Website
Syd Lieberman is an internationally acclaimed storyteller, an award-winning teacher, and an author. He has appeared at major storytelling festivals across the country, including seven featured appearances at the National Festival in Jonesborough, TN; at the Glistening Waters Festival in New Zealand; and on American Public Radio’s Good Evening as a guest storyteller and host. Syd Lieberman was featured in The Call of Story, a television special, and has received commissions to write and perform stories across the country

Syd Lieberman has been telling as a professional storyteller for 25 years
For more info goto…
http://www.sydlieberman.com/