Story Telling

When I was in high school I went with a school group to Johnson City, Tennessee for their annual story-telling festival.  Come to find out, my maternal grandmother had attended Tennessee State Teacher's College in Johnson City as a young woman.

Arriving at the festival, I realized story telling was a folk art form.  Now, my most dearly held art tends to be folk and self-taught.  I love that these art forms often narrate histories, locate place, & build community.  I love the sense that we can self-direct and hone our skills.  All my various loves of poetry, performance, & literature were being voiced while I sat on straw bales & heard people spin their yarns.

There were so many other adventures too.  I was sixteen & good at finding some dude I had no business finding.  This particular guy was a spiritual seeker.  He had spent time with a Shaker community in Maine, Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn, Hare Krisnas, and was currently Pentecostal, living in Appalachia.  He played me tapes of his religious community speaking in tongues and taming snakes.

These story-tellers reminded me there is art in speech.  My friend, Yvonne, is a Texan.  She & I collect Southern colloquialisms.  We both love creative speech.  Her Texan finds tend to feature lots of fence posts & horses.  What I recall of my grandmother's self-described "hill-billy" drawl was a lot of exclamations-- "hell's bells" & "mah stars!"  & a lot of warmth: "sit raht-cheer" (AKA "sit right here").  Because of her pronunciation her lap felt cheerier.

My grandfather grew up in Alabama, but lived his adult life with my grandmother in Atlanta.  I remember something from him about a frog bumping his ass but that's about as far as I get.  All these witticisms were told dryly-- a sly look in his eye but no curl of a smile.  His face almost mirrored an Irish dancer who's movement is isolated to the feet, keeping the torso still.  His lively eyes gauged your response while the deadpan delivery gave away no interest either way.

This festival reminded me about the vastness of creativity.  At any moment, we can learn to create music.  At any moment we can pull out a story, write it, speak it, share it, & find that creative spark.  Art can be in our voice, in our hands, enacted in our bodies.