We are always telling stories.
If you think about it, blogging is a kind of virtual storytelling. We post the stories of our lives. We embellish, we censor and sometimes we just very candidly lay everything out there with abandon. We choose our words with care for they carry the burden and weight of our hearts in the permanence of the internet. We cushion the way our words land by wrapping them in a blanket we’ve woven: our story.
I have always been drawn to storytelling, whether as the storyteller or as the wide-eyed, ears-perked listener.
Stories fascinate me. I learn about the character of a person by the stories they tell and the stories told about them.
Like my Granny, and the Story of How Granny Got Her Sewing Machine Back. Or Mommy’s Garden and how one mother chose to tell her daughter the donor origins of her conception. Even the Biblical story of Hannah – we learn so much in what is told…
And what is not told.
There are so many stories that exist in the silence and spaces between our words.
Space and silence are as much their own stories as the words we speak.
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When I’m not listening to and swapping stories with my family and friends, I listen to a lot of them online, usually as podcasts. So if you have a little time, pull up a seat by the virtual campfire and take a listen to these tales told by others – some of my favorite stories available online.
This American Life: My Big Break
(Quite possibly one of my most favorite episodes of This American Life besides NUMMI.) For those not in the know, This American Life is basically a human-interest story radio show; each episode is centered around a theme and told in various acts. It’s hard to entirely describe the show as each episode is distinct from the next, but essentially, This American Life explores as much of the theme from as many angles as possible.
The theme of one of my favorite shows was how the idea of a “big break” isn’t necessarily what we expect it to be. My favorite story is from Act 1 of the episode, told by an old married comedy duo who get the debut of a lifetime on The Ed Sullivan Show… only to encounter one disaster after another and one they never expected in their attempts to make it big on live national television:
So we go down, into Mr. Sullivan’s office, and there he was: Ed Sullivan. He was sitting in a chair, getting made up, and I looked at the man who could make our entire careers… He said, “The piece of material you’re doing is too sophisticated for this audience.” And I went, “What?” (because I had seen The Sullivan Show all my life) and he said, “Well there’s going to be mostly 14, 15, 16 year old girls in the audience tonight, and kids.” And it never occurred to me to say, “Why? What are we doing, like a circus show?”
Radiolab: Gravitational Anarchy
I’m a total science junkie and Radiolab is probably one of the coolest science podcasts there is. It’s basically an even nerdier version of This American Life if you can believe it. At just under an hour per episode, they make for a fascinating listen for a short car ride. In this particular episode, a woman from the late 1950’s describes the peculiar sensation of living with vertigo at a time before it was widely well-known in the medical community:
From early April, I began to move in a different world. I was conscious of a new dimension, a new plane. I had a new relationship to space. My legs. My arms. My face. My whole body felt different. It had no permanent shape; it changed by the minute. I seemed to be completely at the mercy of some outside force, some atmospheric pressure. I was… amorphous.
The Moth: Don’t Tell, Martha!
Have an even shorter drive? The Moth is probably one of my favorite podcasts for short trips or if I’m stuck a half-hour longer in traffic than I meant to be. Typically told in under 20 minutes, The Moth is simply “true stories, told live without notes.” You never really know what you’re going to get – the stories can be uplifting, tragic, inspiring, and heartbreaking, sometimes all within the same 20 minute story. But they’re all compelling – they pull you in and you can’t help but have a “driveway moment” to just sit there and finish listening to each story. Confession time… I totally want to be on The Moth one day.
My favorite episode of late is told by Lt. Dan Choi, an Iraqi veteran who risks his military career for the love of his life… who just happens to be a man. It’s an incredibly brave and powerful story that speaks to the beauty and power of love above all else:
I know a little bit about protecting freedoms and what it means to be free; even on my Westpoint ring it says we’re the “protectors of the free.” I know war. And now I know love and all the things that war can cost – and it can be really costly – I know in my heart, of all those things, love is certainly worth it. Love is worth it.
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Our stories tell our history. We all have stories within each of us.
What story are you telling?
I love this line:
“There are so many stories that exist in the silence and spaces between our words.”
I wonder sometimes if I will look back on this blog and see a cohesive story. Is that what my daughter will find if she ever chooses to read through my archives? Knowing that I will have such an amazing record of these years is so inspiring, but I rarely stop to think what story I’m telling. I wonder if will become more clear the longer I write.