Storytelling Starters ~ Passing it on
If you sometimes get into a muddle, I have every sympathy with you. Muddles have a way of muddling you up even more when you recognise that you’re in a muddle. That’s how I feel when I get into a muddle. And, oh yes, it does happen.
As to why it happens, it could be that you (or in this case I) haven’t got properly prepared. For instance, when you plan to write anything at all, it’s wise to have some kind of clue as to what you are going to write. What’s so important anyway about what you thought you might write? And why did you think it was necessary to write it? Why not abandon ship (or in this case your computer keyboard) and go and do something else?
Of course, all this did actually apply to myself when I began writing this piece. I’d sat down at my computer and found myself in a total void. I had no thought about what to write or why I needed to write it except that I do write my blog each week ready to publish on Saturday. Call it a weekly task I feel I must fulfil as part of what I do. Or, if you prefer, call it a habit.
So now I’ve had to ask myself is this habit worth it? Why write about storytelling when I no longer work as a storyteller and therefore have no fresh information deriving from my own experience? Well, the only answers I have derive from my memories of doing it over lots of years.
For instance, I quite often think about a girl who came up to me after a storytelling session and said that one day she’d be pushing me up. The image she used was of drowning. But I wouldn’t drown, she told me. For she’d be pushing me up. It was an extraordinary idea she was expressing. I’m not sure I’ve ever quite understood it despite thinking it over on many occasions. What I do know is a sense I got that I was in some way part of a chain. I was handing something over to her and this was important.
Perhaps I did hand something to her. Perhaps she has become a storyteller herself. Or perhaps that wasn’t quite it. But from that occasion and all the hundreds of others during storytelling sessions, I cannot help feeling that the power of stories and storytelling does hand itself on. It’s like a chain. It’s not necessarily the storyteller. It’s not necessarily the particular story. It’s more about the power of the communication that occurs. Sitting in a storytelling session, something happens and you feel it. The people who are present on such an occasion will probably forget who was the person telling the stories. They’ll probably forget the stories. But I bet my bottom dollar that something about the quality of the experience remains. I myself believe that it does and I believe it’s important.
PS: Good luck Wales in the Six Nations rugby this afternoon!
February 12th, 2022 at 11:10 pm
Hi Mary
I know what you mean. I had a similar conversation about what happens to listeners during the telling of a story.
Acfriend says she came to a storytelling session when she was having a tough time. She’s been a regular in our audience for over 30 years. She thought it was a ‘performance’ more like a ritual.
As a teller I tend to favour the ‘time slip’ feeling, the way I fall into the story as I’m telling, then come back to the present when it’s over!
Does it all hinge on our personality, do you think?
Thank goodness it’s still going, in a small way, here in our little group.
Kind Regards from Meg