Transcript
Hi, I'm Dan Slone. This is Dan's Tiki Bar.
And this is Bits & Peaces, a story about storytelling.
Today, I'm going to do a little technical discussion about the last couple of stories. I've told the Alice and Charlies stories, and I'll start with the easy technical stuff, which is, as you saw, I left the date stamp on the videos - a rookie mistake.
There were some sound problems. There was a humming in the background that I think I figured out how to deal with. That's a machine that I've turned off. Hopefully that won't be a problem this time, but I've also changed mics from the boom mic that I was using last time to this road mic that will be in my pocket.
So some of the other technical things that came up from the last one are: the lighting, the idea was there wasn't sufficient lighting; the use of my notes; the fact that you could see my iPad there in front of me and you can see me referring to notes. And that actually is probably going to be a problem through several of these because I'm completely intimidated by telling a longer story, particularly a story about people in which I want to get all the pieces right. And so I tend to not only have notes, but then be afraid that I'm going to leave out some pivotal sentence, and I'll come back to some of the great teachings on how to get past this that I'll be trying to use. And also show you how I'm cheating today trying to deal with the fact that I want to remember all the technical things that I'm going to address as well.
There were technical problems with the storytelling itself. Stories are supposed to have a number of things. They're supposed to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. They're supposed to have the ability to change the listener. That’s supposed to be the major difference between a story and an anecdote, is that the listener is changed. Either there's some insight, some empathy, some moral, something that is taught and changes the listener on the other side of a story. And if not, it's an anecdote. That's pretty true of western stories. There are stories around the world where it's not true. Many, many stories from other parts of the world are more teaching stories. They teach, and they still result in a change in the listener, but they may be teaching just social skills, or they may be teaching, don't eat these berries. Any number of things may be taught in a story.
But, my stories needed clearer themes. I was talking about Alice and Charles and I told their lives kind of chronologically. I told important parts of those lives, but I may not have done a good job of keeping themes in place. With Charles, it could have been the theme of truth and myth, and maybe the fact that at the end of the day truth and myth don't really matter that much. Alice, the theme could have been this is the luckiest unlucky person you've ever seen, and both of them were dear individuals and I wanted to honor them and their stories. I have been trying to tell those stories for a while. And I probably could have done a better job with a theme for them, a better story arc in those, and as I mentioned, the beginning and an end. They sort of came to an end with their lives, but that's not necessarily how you would best end that kind of story.
The other thing that I wanted to talk about is that this is a Tiki bar that I speak from. It’s not a Tiki bar at a commercial operation, but it is a Tiki bar and there are some things about Tiki that are parts of public discussion these days, and there's no doubt that the sort of culture of Tiki, which is a completely made-up culture. These days, the reason I enjoy it is because of umbrella drinks and escape from heavy issues, but there is no doubt that it began as a culture that had gender exploitation. It went through a kind of madmen period in which Tiki restaurants competed with Playboy clubs. Trader Vic's was considered a very sophisticated madmen-esque place to go. Tiki borrows from many cultures, but that's in many ways like Chinese food, Mexican food, Italian food, Thai food in America. Much of it suggests those cultures, but it's not really found in those cultures. Tiki is a little further than that as a made-up culture. It drew from Polynesian cultures, but there's very little authenticity in most Tiki discussions. Polynesian cultures are wonderfully complex and distinctive cultures to group together as Polynesian, sort of like grouping European, which has a lot of different cultures, and are well worth studying in and of themselves.
And finally on the storytelling elements and the things that I'm working on, I wanted to mention some resources. One of them is a wonderful class at Harvard taught by Marshall Ganz, and I took this class. It was an incredible class. Marshall has a background in activism for farm workers and with voting rights in Mississippi. He teaches Storytelling for Advocacy at Harvard, and if you get a chance to take that course, it's an amazing course. I also want to mention Jonesboro, Tennessee, where the International Storytelling Festival is held each year. Unfortunately, this year it'll be virtual because of COVID-19, but I'm looking forward to it nonetheless. Amazing storytellers and drawing from the East Tennessee tradition, which draws from Appalachia, which draws from the Scotch-Irish that came to the United States many, many years ago, bringing their music and their stories with them. A couple other resources I wanted to mention - a CD that I've used called “The Art of Storytelling from Parents to Professionals.” It comes from Great Courses. It was not particularly expensive but was an amazing CD of 12 lectures by Professor Hannah Harvey. This is about the art of storytelling, not just the sort of stand up and do it, but the art that's involved in the incredible skills that it takes to really do great storytelling. Skills I aspire to and have not achieved yet. I'm on that journey to try to achieve those sorts of skills. Another great resource has been “Long Story Short,” which is a book by Margot Leitman, and Margo was a Moth GrandSLAM champion, who teaches storytelling, including techniques for being able to do something like this without notes, and so I highly recommend that book.
I'll be working on some of those techniques as we continue our journey together. I hope you'll continue with me. I've got to do more videos like this as well, just sort of technical stops as we're going along. You'll be able to tell they are different because I will try to do them on my iPhone like this - a quick version of a video.
The next couple of stories I'm going to tell, I think I'll be able to tell maybe without notes there. They're pretty straightforward stories of times my wife and I spent on our farm. When I got out of school, we rented for a year, and then the first house we bought was a small farm in Amelia, Virginia, and I'm going to tell a series of stories about our life on that farm. I've told several of these stories many times, and it's my hope that they'll be good, and I'll be able to do them without notes. At the end, I'm not sure that you will find them to be more than anecdotes. They may be just for amusement. I'm sure they will not change you in any way other than having you convinced that I know nothing about horses.
I hope you'll continue to join us here Bits & Peaces and I'll see you in the next one. Thanks, bye!
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