written by Julie Pasqual
I hope I am not the only one who loves
it when someone you admire, and think is talented, smart, deep, and inspiring says
something that you yourself have thought?
Something that you have felt to be “deeply true”, but you were never
quite sure if that idea, or concept, would make sense to anyone other than
you? That moment when your mouth drops
open, and you bleat out, “That’s what I ALWAYS thought!!”
If it hasn’t happened to you, let me
be the first to tell you that it is an AWESOME feeling, it’s like having the
kid that teased you in junior high march up to you and say, “Sorry, I stuffed
you into that locker, you’re actually pretty cool.” It has a sense of immense validation, a giant
“I told you so” to the world, and it leaves me thinking that maybe, just maybe,
I am not as crazy as I look!!
And that is how I felt the other
day, when I opened up my most favorite author – Anne LaMott’s, newest book
“Small Victories” If you are unfamiliar with her books – READ THEM, if you know
her work – READ THEM AGAIN. Here is a
woman who lives a REAL life – that is messy, joyful, funny, and tragic – and so
when she speaks in her poetic yet earthy voice, she is more than worth
listening to. And, so I – a storyteller,
who, through the marvelous opportunities that Storytelling Arts has allowed me,
tells stories in prisons - was delighted to see that one of her essays was
about her experience going to San Quentin with a storyteller friend of hers.
She speaks of her fear that the prisoners
will not respond to her friend’s stories, and stands ready to save the
situation – but then, as I have seen it do over and over in the Morristown
Youth Detention Center, the magic of
storytelling, to quote Ms. LaMott “steals the show right from under her”. She writes of how this group of hardened
career criminals listened to the stories, mesmerized, and when they did, she
writes “they looked like family.” And
why? Because, her friend, the
storyteller, Neshama had shown them that “I’m human, you’re human, let me greet
your humanness. Let’s be people together
for a while.” And that “they had thought
Neshama was going to teach them a lesson, and she instead sung them a song.”
YES!!
BINGO!!! THAT’S ABSOLUTELY
RIGHT!!!!! ENOUGH SAID!!! NAILED IT!!!
I have witnessed first hand, this
“song” of storytelling, and I have experienced over and over, the power a story
has to create not just a relationship and bond between teller and audience,
but, also, between one listener and another – one human being to another. Too often, these incarcerated young men and
women have had their essences whittled down to the mistake they made that put
them in that facility. But they, like
all of us, are complex, multi-faceted beings.
Their lives have, and will, twist, turn, then twist again – just like
those of the characters in the folktales we bring to them. And because to tell a story one must listen,
REALLY listen to their audience by looking at their faces, feeling their
energies, feeling out the way to the tell the story at that moment, for just
those people, we are given a chance to, as Ms. LaMott beautifully states –
greet them at their humanness.
There is such a beauty in that –
reminding someone that their transgressions do not define them, and that life
is not simple, streamlined, or linear. It is big, messy, individual, and to a
great extent a mystery. Stories remind
of us that – with their sometimes incredible series of events, larger than not
just life, but the universe’s characters, and their truths – things that
resound in all of us, that sound off an alarm of AHA!! somewhere inside those
that hear them, and that make us turn to the person next to us and, even if
just for a second connect!
