Chad_10_Q
This weekend I read an exploration of Irish storytelling done around the year 1975. The author focused on two types of tellers: local, landed people who have learned their national history; and travelers, or what we would call gypsies (Think Brad Pitt's character in the movie "Snatch.")
In Chapter 10 Simmons tells us the "line between a storyteller and a miscreant is a thin one."
By focusing on "respectable" types and homeless types, the author of my book must have either ignored the line or thought little of it. He treated everyone equally.
In my trip to Ireland the tellers I met consisted of several professionals, a few amateurs and one drunk. Since my return I've been trying to figure out why, only after talking to the latter individual, I felt like I got the most authentic experience.
I'd welcome any thoughts.
Labels: Chad
posted by Chad @ 7:33 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Inhibitions, worrying what our audience will "think" of us, dampens our authenticity perhaps.
I read this opening to the Book Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller and knew I would be listening to someone sincere.
"I NEVER LIKED JAZZ MUSIC BECAUSE JAZZ MUSIC doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.
After that I liked jazz music. Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way. I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened."
His entire book says things you would never "dare" to the audience he is selling it to. I like Don.
(from Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality)
I think that being a storyteller or a miscreant aren't mutually exclusive. The drunk storyteller gave you the best and most memorable view of Ireland.
The stories that often captivate are those that take us somewhere we haven't been. If that's through the bottom of a whiskey bottle then it might just add to the story.
I just like the idea of hearing a story from someone that has no qualms about telling you what exactly happened and in a halfway entertaining fashion.
When you get a story from a bit more of a professional look, you can get bored a little bit more easily. This is even with or without the interest in the topic.
Instead, with the 'free willed' person, you get a tapestry of information surrounding the topic that you wouldn't get from a stiff storyteller.
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