Friday's Father

Difficult piece for me to comment on. Rafe Martin suggests (in his essay on in Who Says? Pivotal Essays in Contemporary Storytelling) that to view stories critically, we need to set aside personal preferences of taste. I agree with him. But if we are disengaged from something because we don't like its content, then it can be difficult to see how it operates.

Nevertheless, I shall try.
I think that the first thing that is interesting is using the folktales and myths to interrogate a personal narrative, rather than elements of personal narrative to highlight the resonance of a folktale. (I've seen the latter done more frequently, and tend to prefer it - unsurprising given my interest in the mythic).

Cathy has commented on the small references and how they are used as description within the personal narrative world - I liked the walnut -spinning wheel one particularly as it is a reference from a less common and well known tale type.
I also note that the parallels between Hans and Gwenda's relationships with the father are accentuated because they both climb trees. But it seemed more of a neat trick than any kind of deep resonance. There were no moments during the performance for me where I felt that "oh yes" click of things fitting together which is one of the things I tend to look for when stories were woven together - maybe partly the fact it was audio only, but it was something I expected to feel a lot more.

It was interesting that we moved from folktale, to myth, to biblical story in terms of the non personal narratives that were actually told at any kind of length (although the Israelites were only referenced, and the African story is somewhat different to Babel). Follows the Ladder of the Moon type pattern - although we come back full circle to the folktale with Meat Loves Salt.

The questions of forgiveness raised by Hans and the Hedgehog, and of destructiveness raised by Saturn had greater resonance with the events of the stories for me than Meat Loves Salt (there is something about the father that rejects one of several children for a specific event that is energetically different to the father that is incapable of engaging at all). Additionally Meat Loves Salt allows a resolution which is clearly the narrative that Gwenda wanted to tell about her relationship with her father - so it helps her achieve her ends - but perhaps at the price of artistic truth?

I also felt that the folktales, myth etc which were clearly working to tighten structure and make sure the narrative kept moving couldn't combat the main pattern of the delivery style, which included charming description and created speech suggesting character, but which didn't necessarily always seem relevant. I appreciate that this may be something Gwenda's audiences enjoy - her eye for local colour (but if so the mikes were too low to pick up the appreciative buzz that that tends to create). I found that each personal narrative, missed out on my maxim of relevance and quantity levels, and thus I was just desperate to get back to a folktale for movement to occur.

Also, like Kathryn Windham's narratives it has all the problematic issues of what you do about touching some of the dark secrets of America's past and using them in a story which has for essential arc something that is seperate to those issues, in this case "A daughter reconciles with her father". Two examples of those questions that Cathy and I discussed would include the very probably genuine kinship with Sam (at a greater or lesser level of generational remove) and the question of why alcohol can poision a family. The Meat Loves Salt ending focuses our attention on the positives - and I object to that, though I can see it is probably successful in its aims.

One final thing is that I find that there are some early elements of metanarrative towards the beginning and they return again in Meat Loves Salt, but in between they fade. Perhaps because the more serious elements of personal narrative need to stand without it? I wasn't sure what that was intended to achieve, but from a place where I was disengaged from the main storyline, it left me just puzzled, rather than certain what it meant.

Etymology - Journey

Since I speak French I should have guessed but I didn't. Before a journey is a journey, it is a day. Then it is a day when something is set to happen, like a battle. Then it emerges as a distance travelled in a day (or number of days). And finally becomes a spell of travel to a place (a usage which took a while to embed) As usual OED is the source. Interesting, that once, it applied more usually to travel by land than by sea (where voyage applied) - I don't think we are that specific and careful with it any more. (But then I call the ground, floor, even when it is covered in grass)

Also interesting, that it had a phase of also meaning a days work (perhaps because military used to talk about a days journey for their march, and this was a military mans work?) - from here I think we get journeyman (like an apprentice) whereas I had assumed it was a metaphoric connection to "life journey".

From my perspective telling Phaeton as I do at present, it is interesting to think of the sun's journey - was once a non figurative description (pre Gallileo) and is now a metaphoric one.

Interestingly no references to journey as crossing into death, or journey as metaphor for life. Particularly in comparison with Fire where so many metaphoric usages were listed.

Neologism - Thread

Old word, new meaning this time. But interesting. A thread is the string/chain/list of comments on a blog or update on a social networking site. Can also refer to tweets sharing the same hashtag. String has some currency too, and because of its prevalence in computer programming terminology, it might have been expected to dominate.
The fact that thread does, fascinates me, as it goes back to that place where text and weave intersect. Also because it is very satisfactory as a metaphor as these new threads can unravel into multiple strands. And finally because it makes me think of throwing the ball between the horses ears and seeing where it ends up.

Neologism - Clippable

a real one! My friend Ed is an escapologist who happens to work for BBC Parliament by day. He was going to be presenting live yesterday - which is not his usual role - so he noted it in his facebook update. This ran into a long thread where people pretended to misunderstand what he was up to and he launched his "manifesto". It related to public regulation of polite behaviour. He decided that people who cut in lines were the first culprits, and the punishment would be a "clip round the earhole" from any bystander who wished to intervene. Soon the thread evolved, and people were chipping in with other crimes that could be considered "clippable", following his initial use of the phrase.
(Ed's escapologist persona is a Victorian Era gentleman adventurer - hence both the obsession with politeness and the nature of the punishment chosen.

Neologism - Dreamfire

cheating again. Because no one ever really started using it. But in my early twenties I had a definition for it. Or multiple. cyclic.
Dreamfire - the light in someone's eyes when they are truly commited to a project
Dreamfired - a pair of those eyes, or a project which has been shaped with the kind of enthusiasm that shows in the eyes
In my dead local government years my nethandle was ashenkat. No dreamfire. Or dreamfire that burnt out too easily.

Etymology - Fire

Vast and varied word - and I love the OED's tortuous phrasing of its first definition:

"The natural agency or active principle operative in combustion; popularly conceived as a substance visible in the form of flame or of ruddy glow or incandescence."

Many similar words in old english/germanic languages. Range of more prosaic meanings - from the flame itself, to the engulfing blaze across and entire city. Also lots of figurative meanings listed and evolving relatively early on. Including "Luminosity or glowing appearance resembling that of fire" particularly of the eyes, and from Shakespeare forward.
As well as the fire of illness or disease, and love or hate (both also often termed illness - here are links to two examples for love: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G11gwgji8Dc Tim Minchin and http://www.william-shakespeare.info/william-shakespeare-sonnet-147.htm

But I'm getting rather of the topic. I adore a 17th century usage of the word - a town of fifteen thousand fires. With storytelling we - especially in the UK where porches do not have a role in our world except as awkward little things by the front door where you stick your umbrella, milk bottle and the gas meter cupboard - evoke the hearth as both a human centre and a story centre. So I like a description of homes counted by fires...

Etymology - Dream

Interestingly, two seperate nouns listed, thought to be different to each other because of different roots. But not unrelated - the obsolete form refers to joy,pleasure, mirth or music - in old english or middle english.
The usage retained today appears in middle english only (and the OED scholars are puzzled to why it was not in old english) but also links to germanic of similar period.

Significantly, the usage starts earliest with the classic idea of dreaming - thoughts while sleeping, moves into day dreaming, and only later takes on the meanings at one step remove - like ambition or aspiration - appearing only in the twentieth century.

I also find it interesting that there is a tentative etymological connection to draum/draug in early german - words which have meanings relating to deception and to ghosts.

I feel like dreams linger like ghosts do, and have similar energetic qualities in the way we relate to them (I am not a believer in ectoplasm, but I am a believer that people can put themselves in a state where they have to all intents and purposes "seen" a ghost, and this state has connections to a dream state)

Telling Phrases - "You have me at a disadvantage ma'am"

Glanced in a text book, this might be a telling phrase giving away a certain class of britishness. In a Skype chat message from my bloke, it takes on another context entirely. It covers mild embarrassment in a jokey fashion, and apologises for something that we both know doesn't need apology. It also places him in a particular conversational idiom, which he and his father and brothers and friends often use when they are at home - a sort of play at being victorian gentlemen - which makes me smile.

The occassion - I sent him a song for Valentine's Day - very out of character for me - I normally scorn it as a commercial nonsense - but had happened to be listening to a new Stereofidelics CD the day before and heard something exactly right. We've never discussed it, but he knows me well enough to know I don't usually bother, and so he hadn't bothered, since his natural instincts about the day are similar to my usual ones - hence the half apology...

Telling Phrases - "Zed's Dead Baby, Zed's Dead"

And if you don't know that I'm talking about Pulp Fiction, then I think it must be a generational thing. It was the movie playing on AMC (see previous post)and is a masterpiece in non linear storytelling. It is also stuffed to the gills with memorable phrases - both those that it generates and stealing left right and center from the bible to pop culture (Samuel L Jackson's character is talking about being cool and Fonz and uses correctomundo shortly after).
It is also fascinating as the actors are so synonymous with the characters - that I can't remember the names of Uma, John, Samuel, Bruce, Bjork, Roth, or the Arquette Girl (which is interesting in relation to blending theory - but not relevant here)
So telling phrase - why this one? Because of the rhyme. It means actually very little at this point in the movie - its just a closer. Get on the bike and stop asking questions. Lets go.

Telling Phrases - "Story Matters Here"

What can I say? It is the brand marker of TV channel AMC. No wonder people find it frustrating when we try and suggest that storytelling is a word particular to the oral telling of tales...
Also interesting, as I think about how that is very different to a lot of other channel brands (for example the news channels that focus on facts)), and how I am in the middle of writing an Independent Study paper which is winding up suggesting that for all the rhetoric about the importance of story within the storytelling revival, the experience that audiences at most of the festivals are seeking is not actually the journey of the story - that is often just a convenient frame for other types of entertainment. Sometimes this is intentional on the part of the teller, sometimes it isn't.
I'm afraid I haven't had the time to review AMC's programming and see whether I think they are justified in their claim

Neologism - Corplaining

I don't find that I hear or see that many neologisms (as evidenced by the fact that so many of my neologism posts include reference to the fact that a phrase has often been around for a while) so I headed over to Word Spy to check out a few of theirs. Corplaining I like very much. I spent the last few years indulging in it, although strictly it would be some longer phrase like municiplaining, which is not close enough to the original complaining to be funny or effective. Nevertheless I like there being a word for the type of carping that can become ubiquitous in corporations.

Quick question for David

I meant to ask this in class today and completely forgot! Are you still looking for 25 each of Neologism, Telling Phrase and Etymology from each of us?
I feel like I've been posting quite a lot of them, and am still only at 12 of each. I'm sure I could find the rest before the end of the semester, but it'll be a bit forced. And since you've changed some of the details of the other assignments along the way, I thought I'd check at this point before trying to crank out a lot more.

Telling Phrases - "Look up and lengthen"

Yoga Class is patterned around known phrases which guide us through the exercises. They are more or less detailed as to how much they actually describe about the relevant pose. Instead they connect to the pose through association. Here I think the alliteration and the two part patterning are crucial in the shaping of the phrase. Interestingly I have had classes with four different yoga tutors in Johnson City who all use this patterning, although it is not the formal title of a posture. I wonder if there is a patient zero teacher somewhere or whether it is simply a rhytmic description of a movement which it is easy to land upon.

Neologism - Cran

Actually a prefix, not a word. From Cranberry. Gets attached to all sorts of words. Cranapple juice, Cranraisin cookies, cranraspberry smoothy.
The interesting thing is that if you to try it with other berries, it doesn't work try it... raspapple Juice? Blackraisin cookies? strawraspberry smoothy?
So why do we do this with cranberries?
Something to do with the sound pattern of the word? Or the fact that the flavour is distinctive and dominates? Or perhaps because (in the UK at least) cranberry is a relatively recently available fruit with which we have a love affair for its supposed antioxidant properties and benefits to health - it therefore lends itself to marketing led usages?

I have no answers, only questions.

Etymology - Epic

The OED hasn't caught up with teenagers who call a day out at the funfair "epic" yet. But actually thinking about it - at a deep narrative level - the metaphor is potent.
So of course it starts with or before Aristotle, classifying a poetic genre as exemplified by the Iliad and the Odyssey. And then the usage just grows. It becomes any poem which deals with successive events in the life of a hero or a period of history. After that, other forms are possible, provided the material is of the right sort. Films, we know, are often epic. It has almost come to mean "big budget" in that context. Finally, in the 19th century, we see a figurative listing for "a series of events worthy of an epic" initially I think intended only at one metaphoric remove... now, in the funfair example, the metaphor is not with the nature of the event, but with the rollercoaster path between them - different function I think.

as an aside, the OED seems a bit confused about Epic theatre (or I'm a little bit confused about Brecht) - characterizing it as Brechtian - but also saying that it equates to realism and lack of theatrical devices. I always thought Stanislavski was the realist, Brecht all about the distance and theatrics... Not sure which Epic best fits - realism - because original epics were "life events" or a more theatrical style which would perhaps equate to the poetic form?

Neologism - Lizarding

Quite possibly not that much of a neologism, but a relatively new entry into my vocabulary.
A noun verbified, or a verbified noun, to lizard is not to flick ones tongue, to crawl on all fours or up walls, but to enjoy basking in the sun.
It was introduced to me by my friend Chelle who lives in Cornwall, and who has also lived in Botswana. Last week was one of my first opportunities to indulge in this important human art.

Ladder to the Moon

http://www.crickcrackclub.com/CRICRACK/ARTLADRF.HTM
This is the link...

Listening Assignments - Catching Up

Listening Assignments - since we've discussed in class now, just a few of my thoughts about each style, rather than summarising what we covered - since I don't tend to take notes.

Story Corp

“There was this hole that I had all of my life.” MJ Seide and Genna Alperin
a grandaughter learns how her grandmothers met and fell in love.

“I wasn't afraid. I thought, 'I'm going to be cool about it.'”
A fan seeks out J.D. Salinger

“I didn't know if I was ever going to see you again.”
a mum and daughter share feelings about what it was like when the mother was fighting in Iraq

storytelling for the benefit of the participants, but in a style that makes them accessible to a wider audience.
value to audience is in the whole as an archive, not in each individual entry as entertainment
rules are fairly flexible in terms of whether it is narrative based or interview based - with emotion being foregrounded and narrative only implied. (in the Iraq story above participants have almost equal speech, and though there are anecdotes, the narrative of "the family experience of the Iraq war" is mostly to be inferred)


2nd Story

(Not-So) Still Life by David Blatt
Brutus and Portia by Khanisha Foster
Push, Kick, Coast by Ric Walker

stylised, sophisticated, claim authenticity as written by those presenting them, but not stated as "truth". Range of delivery styles permissable (Ric Walker sounds like Donald Davis for 2/3rds of his story, whilst Khanisha Foster is performing a complex monologue cut in with Shakespeare, and David Blatt sounds like a weekend newspaper columnist (a style which I've also noted in Moth episodes) it is like a more measured version of stand up). 2nd story excites me as a performing art form in a way the others do not, and not just because the material is more provocative, in fact, perhaps despite that, which is a bit of a cheap trick.

The Moth

Jon Levin
Elevator ER

Cindy Chupack
'Til Death or Homosexuality Do Us Part

James Braly
Pink Bicycle

I was expecting a distinct change of style between mainstage and slam - didn't get it. A storyslam is not improvised in the way a poetry slam is. Or maybe the "impromptu" was not part of the original meaning of slam, and is just something we think of it as in the UK.
Moth tellers are required to entertain an audience. However they have a much more limited means of doing so than 2nd Story tellers (I think) as they do not seem to be encouraged to show craft. They can have craft, but they should not be displaying evident performance skill (oh, except comic timing). Instead they have to rely on observational humor combined with emotional honesty, and interesting events to relate.
I know, I'm bitter, I'm all about the craft, about heightened delivery, about the magic. Some of this is great entertainment, some largely dull. But it isn't a place I'd chose to spend an evening.

This American Life

my biggest listening failure. I don't like talk radio in general and every time I tried to listen to an American Life episode I would find my attention had wandered. We talked about formality, and I accept that the production values mean that it is formally constructed. But the delivery styles of the participants are in a conversational realm that strikes me as closer to Story Corps than either 2nd Story or The Moth. And when they're long... they really drag.

268: My Experimental Phase (all parts but not very focused listening)
339: Break Up - Prologue (actual listening)

I think part of my dislike is the English thing. British reserve does exist - this kind of public sharing - well it does happen - and often on radio, but in careful formulaic "letter and song selection" shows which are easily avoided. Not in a strange combination of confessional and documentary. Although to be fair we are just as blighted with the reality tv syndrom that is just that as America is.

Neologism - Awemazing

I haven't heard this in use yet - but one of my Twitter contacts tweeted it. Unfortunately not in any context, just to say that she thought it was a great word. So why post it as a neologism? Well it has an urban dictionary definition so is in some kind of usage. Its a portmanteau and I am a Lewis Carroll fan, or was, for a while at least (never did get round to staging Hunting of the Snark - but that's another story)...
Of note however is who this twitterer is - she is Jane Mcgonigal of Urgent Evoke. TED talk giver. Gamer. Erudite writer on how gaming can and does change the world. Not a 14 year old in creative writing class, who has finally learned the lesson from their teacher that they can't use awesome all the time.
I also feel that if we hadn't - no if you hadn't, you dastardly Americans, denuded the word awesome of all its meaning by using it all the time, we wouldn't need awemazing at all.
And Awe is important to me. It was the name of my first theatre company (the one that actually existed, rather than the one that never did).
So will I adopt awemazing? I sincerely doubt it. But Mcgonigal has followers, among my peers and friends in the uk. And I know at least one of them will use it in our creative workshops this August where we brainstorm ideas for their company to pitch to various producers.. I just hope they do so ironically.

Apropos of nothing and everything

http://www.ted.com/talks/patsy_rodenburg_why_i_do_theater.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2010-03-31&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email

Watch to the very end. It takes a while to get where it is going.