Storytelling Is A Thing

The security guard at my local grocery store: Hey! How have you been?

Me: Fine! How are you?

Guard: Can't complain. I haven't seen you around lately.

Me: Work takes me out of town sometimes.

Guard: What do you do?

Me: I'm a storyteller.

Guard: A what?

Me: A storyteller. I travel around and tell people stories.

At this point, I'm waiting for one of the common answers.
1. I used to tell stories when I was a kid
2. I'm a storyteller too, just ask my wife
3. I was taught you weren't supposed to tell stories
4. Some clever oneliner about telling stories that I've heard lots of times.

I didn't get any of that. He looked at me funny and started laughing.

Guard: You aren't serious.

Me: Yes. I am a professional storyteller.

That's when he said something that most people mean when they respond to me about being a storyteller, but have never put so succinctly.

Guard. That's not a thing.

I started laughing. He laughed with me, and then we got into a conversation. I'm pretty sure he wasn't guarding anything for the next five minutes. He was fascinated by the idea that you could be a storyteller. When I tried to explain what it was, he had other names for it.

Guard: So, you're a speaker?

Me: Yes, but that is only part of it.

Guard: So, you're like an actress on stage?

Me: Sort of, but I am not playing a single character. I have to do all of the parts.

Guard: So, you're like a stand-up comedian?

Me: I suppose some of what I do can be funny.

Guard: I had no idea this was a thing.

One person at a time is an exhausting way to let people know that professional storytellers are a thing. Luckily, I get to go into schools. Exposure to our work on the front end of a person's life is critical to building audiences in the future.

As I was leaving the grocery store, I thought about a packet of cards I just got from some middle schoolers. Two of them stood out for being amusing as well as reaffirming.



First, I was chosen over music and a nap.

The second was a confirmation that there are adults who know what storytelling is and are doing their best to share it with people.

So, yes, storytelling is a thing.

We are part of a continuum that has been moving through people as long as we have been able to communicate.

What I find is that many people have no idea how listening to a story can be all that engaging.

Newspaper and radio interviewers look at me in a perplexed manner as they ask how I think what we do is relevant or interesting in the age of video games and electronic media.

I always answer that people need stories even if they don't know they need them. I explain that we are an animal that has a highly complicated communication system and that stories and storytelling are an intricate part of that. Sharing stories face to face makes a difference.

The thing storytellers do is built into every single human being. We evolved to communicate by listening to each other's voices, watching body language, reading facial expressions, and feeling the tension in the air. Telling stories with each other builds social bonds and feeds our brains.

There are some biologists who believe that one of the reasons our brains evolved as they did was so we could figure out how to deal with each other.

"Human brain size evolved most rapidly during a time of dramatic climate change. Larger, more complex brains enabled early humans of this time period to interact with each other and with their surroundings in new and different ways. As the environment became more unpredictable, bigger brains helped our ancestors survive."

The language of how we move from one generation to another is all expressed as story. Whether we know it or not, storytelling with a living, breathing human is a thing all of us crave. Storytelling is present in our families whether we think about it like that or not. We all have those tales everybody tells about their uncle or sister or cousin.

What we do, as professionals, is combine all of that essential sharing and bond-building, and take it from family to community. That is what our role has been in societies since the first bard, Jeli, minstrel, hakawati, or purveyor of pingshu stood before a group of people and tried to bring us together, or shock us into action, or call for justice, or any other thing that storytellers do.

So, as we head into 2020, there will be many opportunities to introduce thousands upon thousands of people to storytelling.

We will take folks on tours through the universe, into herbal lore, back and forth through history, into the sea, through magical worlds of talking animals, gods old and new, through heroic journeys, into the hearts of our families and friends, on ridiculous adventures with completely made up people, through tall tales, true stories, and any other type of journey we can devise.

We will make thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people laugh, cry, think, hope, dream, dread, deny, remember, and argue. Some people will be furious with us for what we say. Some people will be shocked. Some will be content. Some will decide they want to be storytellers, and their journey will begin. Some will walk out and swear to never see another storyteller! Some will be amazed.

Someday, I hope that a friendly security guard, upon hearing I am a storyteller, will say:

"Cool. I like storytelling."

or

"Cool. What kind of stories do you tell?"

or

"My favorite kind of stories are..."

or

"I don't like folktales."

or any other thing in the world except the equivalent of - That's not a thing.


Happy Telling!