Larger: 2010

Last month, Alette Willis interviewed storyteller Michael Williams and published the interview on her site (visit www.restoryingtheearth and then Storylistening). In the interview, Michael shared some of his experiences in Emerson College, where he attended a life-changing storytelling workshop, and in Israel, where he performed and facilitated storytelling workshops for Arabs and Jews who sat, told and listened together.

I wrote to him. Was there any chance we could meet while he was in Ottawa? We met two Saturdays ago. We sipped mate and green tea, but mostly we talked. I mean T A L K E D. Last Thursday, we met again. We had a beer and a bite, we joined other storytellers, we attended a show, and we T A L K E D  some more. And somewhere along the T A L K I N G, Michael gave me a gift.

Emerson College offers a thirteen-week course called The Now of Storytelling. It runs September through December. Tellers work on:

• The Skills of the Storyteller: In-depth work on story structure, voice, gesture, movement, audience awareness, authenticity and presence.

• The Oral Tradition: Working with humanity’s heritage of stories from folk and teaching tales to wonder tales and myth.

• Biographical Storytelling: Shaping and crafting our personal stories as gifts to illuminate the human experience.

Now this is my L A R G E R. This is the steady glow that will carry me to next September. My heart is at work on it. It’s already shining my way. It’s lighting my work. Oh, to burn for a dream! To catch flame and endure the fire of living! For this gift, I shall always be grateful to Alette and to Michael. And to Michael, for this quote: 

“Clear sailing shall you have now, homeward now, however painful all the past.”

King Alkinoos wished it on Odysseus in The Odyssey. Michael wished it on me in his last email. Now I wish it on you.

Cuppedia on Mondays

Two Fridays ago, when we met at Cuppedia, a beautiful new teller gave me permission to blog about the story of her name. Then Teresa, Cuppedia’s radiant new owner, told me the story of Cuppedia’s name. Then, the story of why, if you ever eat at Cuppedia, food will melt in your mouth. Last, Teresa told me the story of who religiously visits Cuppedia weekly and monthly, and why.

You see where this leads to.

I said to myself, “Weekly or monthly?” Weekly, said myself. “Morning or evening?” Evening. “Mondays?” We had a deal.

As from next week, I’ll take myself to Cuppedia every Monday. I’ll arrive at 5:00 p.m. I’ll order coffee. And a pupusa. Some Mondays I will fall for crepes. Mondays are never too busy in the evenings, said Teresa. I’ll pick a table by the window. Stories like natural light best. I’ll write a little, I’ll craft a little. You might even see me muttering to myself. Don’t let that stop you! If you have stories to tell, in writing or otherwise, come join me. We’ll talk a little and then we’ll get down to work.

Granted

Last Friday afternoon, when we came back from our Henrywalk, I found an envelope in my mailbox. It had the logo of the City of Ottawa. I held it ever so carefully and sat on the steps of the front porch. The envelope looked so white under the sun. My Henry, so golden. Henry’s been with me for almost as long as Canada’s been with me. I stroked his long hairy hair. It rippled with the breeze. Poor Henry, he was panting. His heart was pounding hard, too. I held his paw for a little while. Then I ripped the envelope open:

On behalf of the City of Ottawa’s Arts Funding Program for the year 2009, I am writing to inform you of the results of your application for funding in the Professional Artist Category. We are pleased to advise you that the evaluation committee has recommended an award in the amount of $4,000.

I spent last weekend reading that paragraph. I called Jan. I sobbed. I walked Henry again. I wrote to my friends. I blew my nose. I told my Mom. I emailed my grant officer, Faith. And Steve and Kristen, at Liverpool Recording Studio. Henry took me out for another walk. Mostly, I cried from gratitude.

When all the thank you’s had been said, when everyone who wished me well had rejoiced with me, I stepped into that quiet place where not even Henry can follow. Ten years ago, I left the country where I was born because something in me had long been dying there. I left to quit myself and to save myself. I left to quit those who had quit me and those who didn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t save me. I left to quit my story. I left to change my story.

In that quiet place where not even Henry can follow, whom I saved and whom I quit awaited me. They had always been with me, they said. They said they always would. I listened.

I’m thinking, maybe I had to travel this far, this long, to listen. I’m thinking, maybe I didn’t leave to quit my story or change my story – maybe I left to tell my story. If your story is burdened with silence, isn’t telling your story quitting your story? Isn’t telling your story changing your story?

Early in July, I will begin the work for which I requested this grant. In the meantime, as I walk where Henry can follow, I’m thinking what else awaits me inside that envelope, what else that I have wished for is quietly being granted.

Tea Party Stories Go to Sherbrooke

Last week storyteller Petronella Van Dijk, the heart and soul of Productions Littorale, left a voicemail: Storyteller Jacques Falquet had really liked the personal stories he heard me tell on March 24th at The Tea Party. Would I like to tell at this year’s Sherbrooke Storytelling Festival?

I wish life was all about answering questions like this.

I will drive, and once I leave Montreal behind, the world will look like this. I will stay with someone who will make me feel we are all characters in a larger than life story whose juicier plot points are just about to begin. I’ll spend every day oohing and aahing at stories. In the evenings, after the last show, we’ll gather at Petronella’s long wooden table to drink wine and share exquisite bread and food and tell and chat and sing till early in the morning. And once again I’ll have that glorious feeling of being gathered together for that common cause.

We haven’t talked program, yet. And Petronella just left on holidays. But La Muñeca Asombrosa and The Bearcoat are coming with me. In English and in Spanish. What can I say? Y E S!

And:

Thank you, Lucie! No Tea Party, no Tea Party stories. Thank you, Jacques and Petronella! No sharing, no trusting, no Sherbrooke. And thank you, storystars! For listening.

Like Operas into Sofas

This year, OCVO asked Sherri and me:  How about you facilitate that one-day workshop you have been dreaming about? The Master Archer – Reloaded? Our YES! must still be ringing in the ear of every upholsterer from Bavaria.

It took place on Thursday, April 30th, at the Richelieu Vanier Community Centre. An ideal venue for this, and not only because of its accessible price, friendly staff and free parking facilities. When you intend to spend a whole day working on your creativity indoors, you want the indoors to support you. Our room was not only spacious: Through the skylights, windows and glass doors, sunlight streamed in and your eyes could roll over the vast garden greens. And green matters, as you know.

Who came?

The Ottawa Innuit Children’s Centre, the Friends of the Ottawa Public Library, the Shepherds of Good Hope, the International Development Research Centre, a Community Association of Kanata, and the Cooperative Development Foundation of Canada. Six is a good number. Even: Perfect for working in pairs. Small-ish: Friendly to longer-ish stories. Beautiful: It creates intimacy where there appeared to be only six strangers.

What did they do?

• In a circle, they set their intent for the day. They listened to “The Master Archer.” The watched us deconstruct the circle drawn around the bullseye without taking down one single note! Thank to the StoryGods, they asked questions. Then, in pairs, they went searching for the elusive bullseye of the experiences-for-story they had brought. And if you ever went down the What is your story about? road, you know: This “about” is not only elusive, it’s a changeling. So we kept curiosity high and perfectionism low. And we divided into two smaller circles to walk a little further down that road.
• By the time lunch arrived (compliments of OCVO), they all had a bullseye to aim at. And that is a good thing. It adds to the flavour of those nuts and sun-dried tomatoes in your salad. It makes the bread of those triangle-shaped sandwiches softer and fluffier. It turns those rich, dark chocolatey dessert squares into sheer story form. A tray of fresh fruit to lighten things up, a cup of tea sipped in the spring-affirming breeze outdoors, and afternoon, here we come.
• The first thing they did that afternoon was show how much what we care about matters, even if what we care about is as simple as jelly salad or liver. Believe it or not, some listeners will react very passionately to liver. If you are the teller, how you feel about liver will affect your body language, your narrative pace, the tone of your voice.  As will anything that you feel strongly about (strongly for or strongly against). So, in a circle, they gave that a little attention. Then they went into pairs for the three-step response.
• For three consecutive times, tellers told their stories. First, from their ear. Second, from their nose. Third, from their skin and hands. For three consecutive times, listeners listened and gave feedback. First, about what words/images had stuck with them. Second, about what feelings they had experienced when. Third, about what else inside the story they would like to know. When they had finished, those story-bones had grown their own flesh, skin and hair.
• In a circle, they watched one teller who had been given no other task than to stand silently before them until someone said “Thank you. That’s enough.” Then they watched the same teller who, this time, had been given this task: “Stand silently before them and journey through your story as you stand.”  If you ever wondered whether thoughts affect matter, try that.
• By the time the awe-dust had settled, it was time to go quiet.  Some went for a storywalk, some sat and drew, some doodled on their notebooks, some relaxed into their chairs and gazed out the glass doors. We played music. And when it was time to gather in the circle for the last time, they played music.

Because this is true: When you tune into your experience so consciously, you turn that past into present. You are no longer recounting a memory. You are there. Playing it live. We hear what you hear. We see what you see. We feel what you feel. And because we have felt, we will remember. We will remember because now your story not only happened to you. It happened to us. That is the power of story.

And one for the road:

Once, long ago, storyteller Ruth Sawyer wanted to have her sofa upholstered. Good fortune brought the master of a guild to her door. A little man he was, and very old. He was so old, that he’d been young before Germany was Germany. He only got to measure the front of her sofa, before he told her his story. He had been born in a little town in Bavaria, by the Danube. When he was twelve, he began his apprenticehip in Wurzburg. And when he became an under-master he went to work at the palace of King Ludwig. Every year, King Ludwig had all who worked for him take part in an opera. You could sing? You went to the chorus. You could play? You went to the orchestra. From the great cities, the King brought soloists. From Dresden, the King brought a conductor to direct the orchestra. Even the great Wagner came! For a week the feast was held. Then everyone went back to work. And what this Bavarian upholsterer said at last, Ruth Sawyer always remembered: “All the goodness, the lift of the heart, that we got out of playing in those operas, we would put back into our work – in the draperies and tapestries we hung, in the cabinets we made. Nothing was lost.”  He said to Ruth Sawyer: “Madam, something of those operas will go into your sofa!”

I believe this. In Story, nothing is lost! Everything we gain in crafting and sharing the stories of the work we do in this world will carry that work forward, and the music we play will find its way into the world, yes!, like operas into sofas.

Friend & Storypartner Sherri Yazdani and I would like to acknowledge the following

Sources and Thanks:

Ruth Sawyer’s The Way of the Storyteller

Sheila Bender’s Shaping Your Life Experience for the Page (special thanks to Alette Willis who left it on the “Marta-Must-Read” shelf of her bookcase)

Questions posed by Elizabeth Ellis during her workshop Giving Voice to Our Bodies

Story-In-A-Sentence, an exercise I learnt in a creative writing workshop facilitated by Alette Willis.

“The Master Archer” awaits you in Chapter 4 of The Story Factor, by Annette Simmons.

The Master Archers

Do you know the story of how Sherri and I took storytelling to organizations? Sherri’s friend and neighbor works for the Ottawa Chamber of Voluntary Organizations(OCVO). Last year, she asked Sherri: How about you facilitate a storytelling workshop? Sherri asked me, replacing the you with the we. And we started plotting. We started small, one three-hour Story and Truth workshop at a time. An invitation to tell at an AGM. An opportunity to build a story-based teambuilding workshop component. A request from OCVO to develop follow-up storytelling workshops. You know the story … We grew  l – a – r – g – e – r.

This year we grew The Master Archer. When we envisioned it, we only knew it would address the HOW-TO, rather than the WHY, speak Story. When the Centretown Laundry Coop (CLC) asked us to take Story to them, we chanted in unison: The Master Archer! and sat down to plot. We submitted a proposal for three 2-hour sessions, each with detailed activities and crystal-clear goals to mine for experiences that showed how CLC made a difference and to craft those experiences into Story. It took us the first session to realize that in crafting The Master Archer we had left the master archer’s secret out.

We knew why and what we wanted to share. What we didn’t know was how to share it with them. We didn’t know their stories! Our detailed activities and crystal-clearly set goals had missed their tragedy and their beauty. We had missed the bull’s eye. How do you realign your arrow with magic when “the best that you know”  is the best that you have? You restory!

Heartwood House’s Art Gallery, where our workshop was held, faces Rideau Street. When we started, I couldn’t hear myself telling Story and Truth because of the traffic. Ten minutes into the second session, I couldn’t hear the traffic because of the truth in the stories that were being told. When stories came forth with laughter, we listened. When stories came forth with tears, we listened. When stories failed to come forth and the room was filled with ache and silence, and a hand stroke a shoulder, and someone smoothed somebody’s hair, we listened to the silence, until the silence brought forth another story.

There was no way we could have prepared for this. There is no way we can prepare for this. At all. I’m beginning to think that all we can hope to do is bring forth, as best we know, what we think they may need. They will reach out for what we’ve missed and the magic will happen somewhere in between. It will follow us home and leave a little something in the mailbox.

When I spotted the small envelope with the unknown handwriting, I got curious (I take pride in recognizing the handwriting on every small envelope I get). I took the small envelope on our Henrywalk. I think I started sobbing out loud when I got to Alta Vista. Henry didn’t mind, and sniffed and peed as usual, as I read to him (yes, aloud) what each one had written on the card. What each of them said meant more to me because now I knew their stories. And I knew with what trust, with what art they had listened to each other, as they all shared their stories with us.

You know this story by now, yes? It’s the story in which you go out into the world thinking that you have something to teach, that if they give you a bow, you can shoot that arrow right where it needs to land. And then – the beauty is always in the ending! – one by one, all the arrows of your Master Archers land on the very centre of your own bull’s eye, hit you right through the heart.

Gift from My Funeral

Every year, around the end of the year, I attend my own funeral. It’s a very touching ceremony. Outdoors, in a green and sloping clearing under golden sunlight. It lasts less than thirty minutes. People I know and don’t know gather to listen to the man who reads my obituary. I watch and listen from somewhere above, like a tree branch. Then everyone throws flowers, birds, or butterflies up into heaven. I always catch one and bring it back with me.

This year, things worked a little differently.

On February 8th, I slipped on the ice, fell, and hit my head hard. Twelve days passed. It seemed cervical pain would be all there would be to it. Then on the thirteenth day, all the otholiths in the utricle broke loose and flooded the posterior inner ear canal. The terror ended with a  name: Vertigo. Ah, well. Where there’s a name, there’s a treatment. And the treatment worked. Then on the twentieth day, I woke up, but my neck and the back of my head didn’t. In the shower, I stopped feeling my legs and my chest. A tingling in the hands turned into hot pins and needles shooting up my arms. And when I started translating the description of a backpack, the left side of my face went missing, as a troll squeezed the sides of my head flat. It was March 27th. Emergency doctors did tests, but they couldn’t name it. They said a neurologist might.  On April 2nd, the neurologist did tests, but couldn’t name it either. He did suggest that perhaps the name I was looking for was stress.

Things have improved since then. Some of what I felt still lingers. Sometimes I do feel a little fear (what if it’s not stress, but something else?). Mostly, I’m grateful that my longest funeral EVER is finally over. And I’m still looking at what I brought back with me. No bird, flower, or butterfly, this time. Just this gift I hardly began to unwrap:

All throughout the terror with no name, when thoughts were as dark as the clothes people wear at funerals, I didn’t regret the book I might never get to write. My one regret was the stories I might never get to tell.

I do hope my next funeral is back to normal. I’ll have people come dressed in pink and orange and egret-green. And before I perch on my tree branch, I’ll pass a note to the man who reads my obituary. It’ll say: She got it (finally!) shortly after turning 41. It’s not about whether you are a writer or a storyteller. It’s about the stories that, during your longest funeral, you pray you’ll live long enough to tell.

Where do stories come from?

Mine come from Henrywalks, the shower, and the kitchen sink. Usually, in pieces. Truth and Story is the only story that ever came all in one piece. Straight from the kitchen sink! It happened like this.

With friend & storypartner Sherri Yazdani, we were plotting our very first storytelling workshop for organizations. We both had agreed that story was the way to begin. Now we just had to find the right story. We looked everywhere. In vain. And then, one day after lunch, I found these bones in Annette Simmons’s The Story Factor:

Truth, naked and cold, had been turned away from every door in the village. Her nakedness frightened the people. When Parable found her she was huddled in a corner, shivering and hungry. Taking pity on her, Parable gathered up and took her home. There, she dressed Truth in story, warmed her and sent her out again. Clothed in story, Truth knocked again at the villager’s doors and was readily welcomed into the people’s houses. They invited her to eat at their table and warm herself by their fire. (Jewish Teaching Story)

The little voice went, “This is it!”

This?, I said. This was not a story! The little voice went silent. I knew what that meant. It meant she expected me to go digging for the truths I couldn’t tell, for why I couldn’t tell them, and for what would change couldn’t into can. Not that I didn’t dig. But the dirt didn’t look like story. And I was not about to catapult myself from the life-affirming safety of somebody else’s words into the void of my own unworded creativity. I slammed the book shut and stormed towards the kitchen to do three meals’ worth of dishes.

Don’t you just love kitchens? Sunlight streamed through. Outside the open window, cardinals were calling. Green leaves rustled. You could smell spring. And as I soaped, sponged, scrubbed, and run plates, cups, and forks under warm water, truth and story started crafting in a loud voice. My loud voice. I hadn’t planned it. I wasn’t doing it. You know, “doing it” as in “on purpose”. They just found their way of happening out of my mouth. And when the dishes were done, Sherri and I had Truth and Story.

My Truth and Story is VERY different from the bones in Annette Simmons’s book. So will be yours, if you do your own fleshing. If you are curious to hear how my fleshing turned out, ask me next time you see me. I’ll tell you the story. And if you did your own fleshing, please let me know! I’d love to hear it. 

Listen: Nothing like this had ever happened to me. And, since then, it never has. And, like many of us who sin on the control side of life, I wish I knew exactly what made it happen, so that I could make it happen again. And again. But I don’t. Still: There’s always hope! And books about creativity.

In Rollo May’s The Courage to Create (available through our Ottawa Public Library), I read that the creative process needs sustained conscious intellectual effort, followed by letting go. If either piece is missing, the creative gift doesn’t spring forth. So now, when I work on story, I do it deliberately. I commit to, say, an hour of conscious intellectual effort, and then I go for a Henrywalk. Or I take a shower. Or I do the dishes. If you haven’t, try it! Be ready for truth and story. And be ready to say Thank You (yes, in a loud voice) when the creative gifts spring forth!

On Our Marks

What is the next story we will choose to believe in? What will make us notice it? What will make us want to own it and run with it?

One Friday last year, Alette emailed me possible dates for our first creative writing session. For her remaining time in Canada, she would help me craft better stories. It was almost 5:30 p.m. The movie I was going to see started at 6:10 p.m. There was time to reply. As I did, I noticed, for the first time, the website link below Alette’s signature: www.greenlivingottawa.com. I clicked on it. And I never made it to the movie.

One year, The Hopes of Snakes, The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter, and countless conversations later, Jo MacArthur emailed me the final proofs of my storytelling business cards. Postcards. Double-sided. Designed after my website. They looked even better than I had envisioned them! And they would cost less, too. Two hundred color double-sided postcards would cost me $265.55; our Fangorn forests, nothing.

Jo MacArthur co-owns and co-runs On Your Marks, a certified FSC and Eco-Stewardship Award winning print and design centre. I did my own research and shopping around before I entrusted her with my story. On Your Marks beat everyone else in response and delivery time, service, vision-interpreting skills, patience, self-correction, relationship-building ability, planet consideration, price, AND Spanish. I told her. She said thanks. They felt the crisis crunch, she said. What I told her was doubly welcome, because  ”Right now, we need all the love we can get.”

Me too, I feel the crisis. So I make sure that I always carry with me my stories of power. 

I trust this year will be better than last. And last year was my best one since I came to Canada. I made almost $27,200. Gross. And I’m elated that I can afford to choose and choose to afford $265.55 for my prints.  I know it is making me a better storyteller.

You know? Our personal story and the stories that, as artists, we meet, seek, and craft, do cross paths. They unveil and reveal each other. They take root, sprout, twig, branch, leaf and flower us out in all directions. Some days we follow them; some days, they follow us. And prints are left everywhere! That’s how we can retrace the steps along our path.

As I look at my brand-new storytelling postcards and retrace mine, I can’t but marvel at how they found their way into my hands. And I can’t but feel elated to see how, in more ways than one, Alette has helped me craft better stories.

I don’t know what story you will choose to believe in. But if it is the one in which the very act of printing your business cards can build towards the turning point of a larger-than-life story, the one in which every daily act can carry us one step further along the march against the forces of Isengard, oh, I call upon you, notice it, own it and run with it.

To us and our stories of power. ON OUR MARKS. GET. SET. GO!

Getting past “And now what?”

Many an emerging artist is said to have gone And now what? after submitting her first grant application.

If your story stars are listening, they might just shine their Ta da!  and Lucie Roy might just ask you to go personal at The Tea Party on Tuesday, March 24th. On your 2009 Workbook you will replace And now what? with:

January:”The Bearcoat”

February: “La Muñeca Asombrosa”

However …

My story stars listen only after I’ve done the dirty work. So when “La Muñeca Asombrosa” was ready and (again) I went And now what?, they didn’t shine no Ta da!  They handed me a shovel and a pair of yak tracks so that I don’t slip on the muck. Thus handsomely provided, I’m going to try a Month-by-Month-One-Grant-at-a-Time-Foremost-Fear-First approach and see how that goes.

Month by Month

What doesn’t make it to my workbook doesn’t happen. This is doubly true for stories. I never know how long it will take me to craft them. If I only have the “idea,” I’m overwhelmed by FOREVER. So I give it a month. If it is a story in Spanish that I’d like to retell in English, I now know better than to go “phew, it’s just translating, it’ll be ready in a week.” So I give it at least two. It doesn’t matter whether the time I give it is the time I will actually need. What matters is that I assign the story physical time to be born. Then, it will tell me what it needs and I can shift down to doing as I’m told.

One Grant at a Time

I am deadline driven. What gets a deadline gets done. Performances and workshops are dealines. So are grants! The minute I believed I was grant material, I wanted to apply for every grant available in 2009. Now, I think I will approach them one project-with-no-voice-but-mine at a time.

Foremost Fear First

My plan was to apply for the Canada Council Grant in April, to develop a program of Argentinean Legends involving historical research (I got the four books in January), on-the-ground research, monumental crafting, translating, Spanish-tuning, and marketing. But a little voice said that wasn’t really scary. Well then, I said, why didn’t the little voice propose something that was really scary. Children, said the little voice. 

For the record, the little voice and I have agreed to apply for the Canada Council Grant next April and devote the first part of this year to developing a children’s program that will enable us to apply for an Artists in Schools grant by the end of 2009. Why? Because the little voice is right! I have resisted telling to children for five years now. What I resist I fear. And what I fear shows where power lies buried. I’ve got the shovel and I’ve got the yak tracks. The sooner I start digging, the better!

 So, right now, my 2009 Workbook looks like this:

March: El desbravador de cabras (Children’s Program)

April: The House on Nigger Hill (Children’s Program)

May: El Ucumar + Story about grandmother’s ghost: Write, Tell or Let Go? (Children’s Program)

June: The Life We Give (Ottawa Grant)

July: The Life We Give + Lines (Ottawa Grant)

August: The Life We Give + Lines (Ottawa Grant)

September: Argentinean Legends of the Andean Northwest (Canada Council Grant 2010)

October: Argentinean Legends of the Andean Northwest (Canada Council Grant 2010)

November: Argentinean Legends of the Andean Northwest (Canada Council Grant 2010)

(Of course it will change! That it changes doesn’t matter. What matters is that we get past And now what? Cause we all know what happens when we dwell in And now what?  N  O  T  H  I  N  G)