Tell Me a Story
The Ancient Art of Sharing and Listening
I slipped out of the house last Sunday afternoon to listen to live music. There were heaps of other things I could have been doing, like housework, or writing (always writing), but I had just spent an hour helping my 18-year-old edit an assessment for her university course and my brain needed a break. I needed to hear a story.
The Jam Factory is a funky old house in the Historic Village that provides an intimate venue for small concerts. It’s like sitting in grandma’s living room, if grandma decorated as if she had just dropped acid. A psychedelic mural adorns the back wall, oriental rugs line the floors and clear plastic chairs and old-fashioned sofas are grouped in an intimate arrangement.
Only around 12 of us were there. Pity, as the music from Nick Newman and saxophonist Sam Raney, followed by Juliet McClean singing and playing keyboards, was top-notch. I thought I might daydream during the performance, but I was spellbound by the stories these performers wove through their songs. Instead of running through my to-do list, I soaked in the moment.
Nick had taken photographs for a storytelling event I coordinated a couple of weeks earlier, and I knew about his gig because he posted it online. The storytelling evening, Tell Me Tauranga/Kōrerohia Mai, had been a pipe dream until last year, when I secured a small grant from Creative Tauranga to stage two productions.
Few of us need to lump more items on our plates, but I wanted our community to host something similar to The Moth, a global storytelling project that started 25 years ago in the States. I devour episodes of The Moth podcast, along with Family Secrets; This American Life; The Death Dialogues Project ; Terrible, Thanks for Asking and many others.
Tell me a story, I think as I press play. Suddenly, I’m transported - to the ocean where a lobster fisherman got swallowed by a whale; to the heartland of America, where a mother of seven survived an abusive marriage and went on to earn millions of dollars selling houses; to Mariupol, Ukraine, where a 12-year-old boy navigates streets with land mines to attend school. So many stories. So little time.
This year’s storytelling event in Tauranga sold out, as did the one last year. We started with a group of participants who may not have been sure at the outset what they had signed up for. They knew our theme: soul food (many thanks to the Toi Ohomai culinary students who planned, cooked and served a feast).
In the end, each of them told a personal tale that was at times funny and sad. Certainly it was memorable.
Brad Dixon talked about how his relationship with food changed after loved ones had gotten sick or died; Angela Maritz explained how art fed her soul; Libby Robertson revealed how she had broken up with tequila to pursue real love; Kenneth Setiu showed us how his kuia (grandmother) expressed her love by giving not of her abundance, but also in times of scarcity; Anish Paudel took us to Nepal where his grandparents served up dumplings and connection; Valerie Rowe-Mitchell brought us to Russia where, as a young woman, she sacrificed her food budget for fashion; Peter Blakeway shared a New Year’s Eve story involving a large knife, someone’s rear end, and a bucket.
One of our original storytellers dropped out about a month before the event. Because it was our second go-around and because I had so much great support from my organizing committee and from people at work, I felt comfortable enough to prepare a story and take the stage, in addition to emceeing the show. My story was “Food is Love.” See if it resonates with you, too (jump to four minutes into the video to hear the story).
There is tremendous value in not only telling our stories, but in listening to other people share theirs, too. Listening is a lost art. I ask myself repeatedly if I’m really absorbing information when someone else is speaking, especially when I’m with a group. Or, am I mostly waiting for my turn to speak?
What if you tried a storytelling evening at home, among friends and family? What would happen if you gave someone the floor and really listened? I’d love to hear what happens.