Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Sunday, March 07, 2004
Community Columnist: Storytelling an ancient tradition
I'm learning a new story these days. It's my favorite kind of story, a story about a story.
I have a whole file full of them, waiting for a dry spell where not much else is happening in my storytelling life, beckoning me to learn something new.
This story doesn't even have a name that I've discovered, but it's about a story and a song, so I suppose it could be called "A Story and a Song." Clever, huh? Guess I prefer to save my creative energies for developing and telling the story, rather than its title.
This is one of the beauties of the oral tradition. Stories evolve with each telling, even when the same person tells them.
Sadly, in our times, this rich oral tradition is in danger of fading away, instead becoming a fixed version of a joke forwarded through e-mail without benefit of voice, or recapping the latest TV "reality" next day at work.
My day job is working with kids who have not developed language skills typical for their developmental age. Telling a story is an indicator of how sophisticated one's language might be, and can be one of the methods used to determine a child's language issues.
I had learned to expect a diminished level of storytelling ability when I first started with a student.
What surprised me when I began working in a team teaching model with regular education teachers in the classroom was it wasn't just my students who couldn't share a personal story.
Many kids could barely relay the previous night's activities, much less retell a long narrative.
My frustration with the problems kids had sharing a narrative led me into the world of storytelling. It's an ancient calling, one often held in high regard, second only to the chief.
In many cultures, the telling of a story carries far more than entertainment value. Cultural history, ceremonial codes and even entire educational systems rest within story. Yet in the Western world, it is often viewed as something only for kids' library hours, not worthy of sophisticated adult tastes.
Too bad.
I have a story from Kenya that explains in wonderfully bawdy fashion how it came to be the lot of women to bear children.
One about a man who discovers his wife caught "in flagrante" with the village pawnbroker, using cleverness to dispatch the gigolo while earning a fortune from him along the way.
Why, even Scheherazade had three stories among her 1,001 that dealt with embarrassing body sounds in hilarious fashion!
Storytelling connects us, creating a kind of dance between teller and listener. When done well, both will leave feeling enriched, connected by a force that has been with us as long as we've had speech.
We're lucky in the Coulee Region that no one needs to hunger for story. In fact, this coming Thursday, you can enjoy a latte with your story, and even tell one yourself if you feel so inclined.
The Bluff Country Talespinners Storytelling Guild meets the second Thursday of the month at Grounded in downtown La Crosse at 7 pm.
Who knows? I might even be ready to tell that story about the story and the song!
(Gwyn Calvetti of West Salem, Wis. is a storytellter and
special education teacher.
She is one of 14 Tribune Community Columnists, whose writing appears on
the Sunday Opinion page.)
All stories copyright 2000 - 2006 La Crosse Tribune and other attributed sources.