So, just finished Spirited Men by Brian Doyle and it was fantastic, of course, and smashed full of all the random-seeming, delightful, useless, picturesque, poingnant, telling, tiny facts about men Doyle loved as humanly possible. And I realized that I'm channelling Doyle and I'm honored. These are resolutions of mine: to read more and learn more and know more. To follow my passions (which a certain faux-hawked Colombian who will remain nameless has been telling me for years but for some reason coming from her it seems beyond the reach of a mere live-action mortal like me. Though why it's more credible coming from this near-saint of an essayist and one of the biggest hearts I've every shared a room with and Joyce and Paul Desmond and Van Morrison escapes me). To learn how to listen. To learn how to tell stories, which is a lot like listening, but the concrete, harder end of it. To listen to great music. To love better and more fully.
Personal application: 1. Learning how to tell stories? I know stories. I have funny stories, but I am no good at telling them. Can I learn? Also, are stories important for everyone? I feel like there are some cultures for whom story-telling is this driving genetic need. Like the Irish for instance are always talked about in terms of their oral tradition and also I went to church with the Spanish-speaking branch Sunday and I don't really speak Spanish, but I will say that the speakers did not have notes and they were charismatic speakers even through a lauguage barrier and even though I could tell the second was kind of a condescending ass who was deigning to teach us all about the Roman empire instead of bearing his testimony which is all, eventually, that matters. So the question is, can I be cool without learning how to tell stories? Can I instead do things like analyze arguments and know cool things or less cool things and pass that off? (Methinks the answer is no: all of the people on my top-ten people to bring to a party when it really matters that the people there like you list are storytellers.) There is an interesting question here though (though a very thinky one for the vacation): what is the difference between cultures who produce epic story tellers and those who don't? If cultures don't produce storytellers, what do they produce? Lastly: how do I learn how to do this? (Because isn't sitting and watching people telling stories while taking notes in my head the exact opposite of telling stories? Doesn't that make me less a storyteller just by virtue of doing it possibly by virtue of imagining it?)
2. I'm finishing I am Legend. I'll let you all know how it goes.
3. I'm going to have a book at hand always for the rest of my life and my house is going to be full to brimming with books that I will buy used from libraries when I call there once a week. I'm halfway there already, but it's time to hop in and take this seriously. Really.
Personal application: 1. Learning how to tell stories? I know stories. I have funny stories, but I am no good at telling them. Can I learn? Also, are stories important for everyone? I feel like there are some cultures for whom story-telling is this driving genetic need. Like the Irish for instance are always talked about in terms of their oral tradition and also I went to church with the Spanish-speaking branch Sunday and I don't really speak Spanish, but I will say that the speakers did not have notes and they were charismatic speakers even through a lauguage barrier and even though I could tell the second was kind of a condescending ass who was deigning to teach us all about the Roman empire instead of bearing his testimony which is all, eventually, that matters. So the question is, can I be cool without learning how to tell stories? Can I instead do things like analyze arguments and know cool things or less cool things and pass that off? (Methinks the answer is no: all of the people on my top-ten people to bring to a party when it really matters that the people there like you list are storytellers.) There is an interesting question here though (though a very thinky one for the vacation): what is the difference between cultures who produce epic story tellers and those who don't? If cultures don't produce storytellers, what do they produce? Lastly: how do I learn how to do this? (Because isn't sitting and watching people telling stories while taking notes in my head the exact opposite of telling stories? Doesn't that make me less a storyteller just by virtue of doing it possibly by virtue of imagining it?)
2. I'm finishing I am Legend. I'll let you all know how it goes.
3. I'm going to have a book at hand always for the rest of my life and my house is going to be full to brimming with books that I will buy used from libraries when I call there once a week. I'm halfway there already, but it's time to hop in and take this seriously. Really.
1 comments:
1) Remember when we went to fast & testimony meeting on the island of Sardegna and a then-not-so-faux-hawked Colombian translated from her third (or fourth?) language to her second language?
2) My old roommate Catherine once took a class at BYU. This is a relevant detail only because that class was a storytelling class. Yep. A whole class on how to tell stories well. Awesome. Maybe it's worth checking out.
3) Never question a faux-hawked Colombian.
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