[Finally, we are live-posting! Thanks
for everyone's patience.]
I have been doing a lot of thinking
since yesterday about the story that I told in class and the
experience thereof.
I know that we are tied to process and
not product. I know that and I appreciate it. We are dealing with an
art-form that exists in time. If I stand before an audience (as I did
yesterday) and I get a little flustered (as I did yesterday) and if I
leave out a few crucial pieces of the story (as I did yesterday), in
a sense, I have missed my shot. We storytellers cannot go back in
time the way a visual artist or writer can, honing and honing until
the art is deemed done. Ours is always a process.
There is good and bad in that, to be
sure. Lipman's Chapter 8, “Discovering the Structure” is
something that I wish I would have tried before telling on Friday. In
jazz, the form is what allows for creativity (except in free jazz,
but that's a different animal altogether).
The next time I have an
oral-traditional story to tell, I am going to use Lipman's model and
advice for outlining the story, found on pages 95-99. My biggest
disappointment with my telling yesterday is that I did not have the
form of the story well enough established in my own understanding. An
exercise like that that Lipman offers could be most helpful.
-Bob
I enjoyed the story you told on Friday---and I knew it was "in process"---being learned---so there was no expectation of your remembering all crucial lines and events.
ReplyDeleteHaving attended a workshop last year with Lipman---I learned that the more I told the story, the easier it was for me to recall the events---and the easier it was for me to process (all of this is totally oral).
In chapter 14, he writes a lot of pages on the need to develop different kinds of audiences. This will be my focus as a storyteller (a lot easier than memorizing--and also a way to encourage friendships and connections).
Joy
Bob, What would you have done differently or do you want to do now that you know? Do you want to make one of the outlines or timelines like in Doug Lipman's book? I did find that very useful to do after I read it and applied it to my story for class.
ReplyDeleteBob, I'm sorry to be replying late to this post. First, let me echo Joy and say that I also enjoyed your story and appreciated how you linked the appearance of the ghost train to the events of the day, WW 1. And I hope you've relaxed into remembering that the purpose of the telling the folktales was to experience the process rather than the "perfection" we aim for in performance (is there such a thing, anyway?)
ReplyDeleteBut let me tell you one bit of advice I was given by my mentor when I began teaching leadership workshops. I was terrified of FORGETTING SOMETHING IMPORTANT during a workshop. She reminded me that my students didn't know the workshop; that's why they were there. They wouldn't miss what they didn't expect. As long as I made the workshop clear and it met its objectives I'd done my job. As I matured in the profession, it was easier to work any "important" material I'd forgotten back into some other part of the class - if it really was important. I suspect that will be true of our storytelling, too, as we mature with it.