The Stories We Tell Are The Stories We Need by Sherry Lovett

Why do we tell what we tell? While there are probably as many answers to that question as there are storytellers, I believe there is a common thread to the answer: we tell what we need to tell. On a conscious or unconscious level stories mirror our lives, help us move through them, heal, and grow. 

I have several examples of this reality from my own story selections.

Some time ago I was drawn to tell Dame Ragnell, also known as Sir Gawain and the Loathly Lady, a King Arthur tale. I had heard Donna Washington’s phenomenal version and Gwenda Ledbetter’s classic rendition, and I felt this pull, this undeniable, unquenchable desire to learn this story. I was in love with it!

At the time, I didn’t think about “why” I wanted to tell it so badly, I just knew I loved it. I began to research the story, and after reading many, many versions, I crafted my own. What was this mirroring in my life?

My mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, a long, slow, heartbreaking journey.

 I moved her in with my family, so I could care for her. This was as difficult a time in my life as I have ever had, and at every turn I felt imprisoned - by a disease, by helplessness, by caregiving - I was feeling a desperate need for ‘my own way’; for control over the circumstances of my life. So… I told that story over and over, and through it I found my voice during this hard, time.

I tell a story called Courageous Clare. It is based on an old folktale.  Initially I was drawn to it because it has a tree as one of the characters. I love trees. I started talking the story through, and it morphed into my own creation, which I told at every opportunity.

During the time when I was crafting this story, I was starting to face adult audiences more often.  I feel at ease in schools and library youth programs because that is my background, but I find that my nerves rise to a high tempo when I am performing for adults. I was in need of courage as I branched out and left my comfort zone. Courageous Clare was giving me that courage, urging me to do what I am called to do.

A long time ago I learned Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ story, Sealskin, Soulskin. It is an exquisite tale about the selkie fairy folk who can remove their sealskins, and walk as humans.  If their sealskin is taken, they must remain a human.  They lose an essential part of who they are.

source

In the story a woman selkie has her sealskin stolen, and grows sick when it is not returned after seven years. Only when it is returned to her, and she has gone back to the sea, does she get well. Recently I decided I wanted to create my own version of this story, so, again, I researched, finding lots of versions to read and information to study. I began to imagine the story I wanted to tell, and to talk it into my being.  

All the while the story, which I call “Isla’s Love” was telling me, “You must follow your heart, and you must be your authentic self.  That’s the only way to succeed.” This at a time of transition for me, of coming to the end of homeschooling my daughter, and moving toward… something that is a continuation of what is authentic for me: my own storytelling business.

I am currently working on two stories: one, a personal piece called Kisses Remembered, inspired by a workshop with Regi Carpenter, and a folktale called, The Leaves That Hung But Never Grew, from a collection by Daniel Morden called Dark Tales from the Woods.

With my new eye for why I am telling a story, I can see that both of these stories are about my mom and her continued journey through Alzheimer's. “Kisses Remembered is a tribute to my mom as well as a journey through my life in the form of memorable kisses.  “The Leaves That Hung But Never Grew” is about the magic of having someone help you remember who you are, which is my job now with my mom. These stories comfort and inspire me. They give me hope.

I don’t think I will ever look at stories the same way again. There is no way for me to not know that every story I tell connects with my life in some way, so I embrace this knowledge and use it to inform my work.

When I am drawn to a new story, when I fall in love with a character, and when I find myself telling a piece over and over, I surrender to the pull, open my eyes and see why I tell what I tell. 




So… why do you tell what you tell?

For mor information about Sherry, just click the link!

Sherry Lovett!

Alive...Mostly also, Sherry Lovett Is On Deck!

Well, it is done.  Both of my children are flown from the nest.  My daughter is safely ensconced at boarding school.

My son is in college.

I'm at home with this guy I married almost twenty years ago.

The week before my children left, I posted a number of stories about them on Facebook.  Once I wrote them out and posted them I could laugh, cry, and enjoy snatches of memory, and share them with others who know them in person, or watched them grow up online.

Here is one of the tales.

Surrounded by Angels

Darith 3 Devin 5

Devin was learning about beginning and ending sounds to work on his spelling. He was saying things like, 'bird begins with 'b' and he'd make the 'b' sound, and ends with 'd' and he'd make the 'd' sound. Darith found this annoying, because she wasn't learning this in her class. So, she jumped in with her own word.

Dar - 'My name is Darif. It begins with 'D' and ends with 'F' and she made the sounds, but didn't say the letters.

I considered letting it go, but decided not to. "Actually, honey," I told her, "your name is Dari-'th'." I made the 'th' sound very hard. I figured that if she couldn't make the sound of 'th' then we might as well begin to work on that now, helping her hear it. 

She sat in the back seat for a few shocked seconds. Then...

Dar - My name is Dari-'th'? (She made the sound perfectly)

me - (surprised) Yes.

Dar - Dari-'th'?

me - Yes.

In the days to come it was obvious she was annoyed that we hadn't corrected this error earlier. She would come to me every now and then with a word that ended in either 'th' or 'f' and demand I make sure she was saying it properly. I should have realized she was an unusual person at that point. Parents are slow learners.

As I've said more than a few times this summer, the transition I've been dealing with has been challenging.  Not for my kids, no, they are ready to go, but for me.

If you do your job right, they leave.  That doesn't make it any easier.

It is, therefore, only fitting that my next guest blogger is none other than the lyrical Sherry Lovett.  

Sherry Lovett

If ever there was a teller who told from her heart, and moved through the world with story, it surely must be Sherry Lovett. 

 She is an active member of the North Carolina Storyteller's Guild, organizes the Toe River Storytelling festival, and is helping organize the Heart of North Carolina Storytelling Festival.

Sherry also writes a blog called Life...You Gotta Lovett about raising a precocious homeschooled child, being married to the caretaker at the beautiful Wildacres Retreat in Little Switzerland, NC where the North Carolina Storytelling Guild holds its annual retreat, caring for an elderly parent, and telling stories in her free time!

By the way, if you are interested in more information about the retreats with NCSG, then just click the link!

Here is her official Bio for those of you who have not been lucky enough to encounter her.

Sherry has been a storyteller for twelve years starting when she was a middle school teacher. She quickly discovered the power of stories within a classroom to create enthusiasm for learning. She began to explore the craft in earnest after the birth of her daughter, when she became a stay-at-home mom and a professional storyteller. The thing that draws Sherry to storytelling is the magical ability of stories to shine the light on our interrelatedness – the connection of people with people and people with nature – and by this awareness to create more harmony in the world. Sherry Lovett tells a variety of stories including folktales, Native American tales, scary stories, and fairy tales, using precise language, eloquent movement, and dramatic voices to bring the stories to life.

Sherry's piece entitled: The Stories We Tell Are The Stories We Need is a look at how our pursuit of certain stories mirrors what is happening in our own lives.

I certainly lived that out over the last few months!

Stop by next week and enjoy an interesting perspective on how we end up building the stories that resonant in our souls.

(I don't know where this storytelling took place, but the 'audience' seems to be a roving type situation.  Ignore the noise and let the story take you where it will!)



Happy Telling!

Dragging performance into play: a quick look at storytelling games by Kevin Kulp

 

You probably haven't heard of the many rules-light, storytelling-heavy card and roleplaying games that hit the market over the last decade. There are lots of them, and some are incredibly good. 

If you want to get three or four friends together to create communal stories from scratch, or stealthily get teenagers hooked on storytelling, these games are the way to go.

Here are three of my favorites.

ONCE UPON A TIME.

(3rd edition, Atlas Games, $25; http://www.atlas-games.com/ouat3/ or http://www.amazon.com/Atlas-ATG1030-Once-Upon-Time/dp/1589781317/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8)

Best for: families, kids, and those who love fairy tales

In this fast collaborative family game the starting player builds a fairy tale, playing plot elements from the cards in her hand and creatively guiding the story towards her own Ending card. Other players use their cards to steal the story's narrative, changing it a little or a lot to fit their own cards instead. The winner is the player who uses all of her cards first. The result is a wonderfully disjointed fairy tale created over 30 minutes, built communally and full of unexpected turns.

THE EXTRAORDINARYADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN.

(James Wallis, $17.95; http://www.amazon.com/The-Extraordinary-Adventures-Baron-Munchausen/dp/1906402159)

Best for: adults, the quick-witted, and those who love outrageous lies

Designed as a drinking game and written in the Baron's own inimitable voice, this is a light and fast role-playing game where you try to out-do each other's astounding accomplishments and legendary feats of derring-do. The rules replace pencils and dice with money and fine wine. The idea here is that you sit around bragging, telling fantastically exaggerated (but completely true!) stories. ("Let me tell you, m'lords, about the time I escaped death by guillotine only by seducing a dyspeptic Bengal tiger.") Other players attempt to derail your story by wagering a token and making an objection ("But surely this was the year of the great Bengal exhibition, when no tigers were to be found in all of Europe? Perhaps it is your dotage, but you clearly must be mistaken.") You either respond with an excuse and by wagering a token of your own, or you swallow your pride and include their objection seamlessly into your story. The game is won after everyone has told one story, and delightfully, each player in turn gives all their tokens to the person they think told the best story. That means that it's the best story that wins, but collecting the most tokens helps you pick the winner.

FIASCO.

(Bully Pulpit Games, $30; http://www.bullypulpitgames.com/games/fiasco/ or http://www.amazon.com/Bully-Pulpit-Games-BPG-005/dp/1934859397/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=0AJ1TXM2ZJKD33BD9P53

Best for: creative adults, people who love improvisation, and those who put a great story ahead of trying to win

My rich and crazy aunt is willing her vast fortune to 100 feral cats, but I need the money now; my clown nose manufacturing business is in the toilet and I owe the Mafia a boatload of cash. They're sending a hit man to take care of the problem, but I need to convince her to change her will before she gets taken out. And oh yeah, that so-called "hit man" is a brand new, wet-behind-the-ears assassin who my aunt used to babysit for, and whose older sister I dumped for a floozy half her age.

Honestly, this seemed like such a good idea at the time.

I think of Fiasco as your own Coen Brothers movie in a game. The author describes it best:

Fiasco is inspired by cinematic tales of small time capers gone disastrously wrong – inspired by films like Blood Simple, Fargo, The Way of the Gun, Burn After Reading, and A Simple Plan. You’ll play ordinary people with powerful ambition and poor impulse control. There will be big dreams and flawed execution. It won’t go well for them, to put it mildly, and in the end it will probably all go south in a glorious heap of jealousy, murder, and recrimination. Lives and reputations will be lost, painful wisdom will be gained, and if you are really lucky, your guy just might end up back where he started.

This game is played with 3-5 people in a few hours. You play very human and very flawed characters, each with a powerful need ("the need to become famous;" "the need to get even;" "the need to keep your secrets") and strong relationships. During the game you all work together to come up with and play out completely hilarious, disastrous scenes of greed, desire and ambition.

I once played a game of Fiasco where someone laughed so hard they threw up. Plan accordingly.

----------------

Kevin Kulp is a Boston-based storyteller, game designer, and (weirdly enough) expert on shiftwork, fatigue and alertness. A board member for LANES, the League for the Advancement of New England Storytelling (lanes.org), he's a huge proponent of introducing youth to storytelling via great games. He can be reached at @KevinKulp or at kevin.kulp@gmail.com.

Stories Entwined With Life: My first Guest Blogger of 2015 - Kevin Kulp

Last night, I laid out under the stars after midnight with my husband, my eighteen year old son, and my fifteen year old daughter.  We were looking for meteors.  We saw a couple.  Last night was one of the moonless evenings when the Perseid Meteor shower was putting on a show.  It was just happenstance that I realized we could watch it.  I'm glad we did.

I'm hyper aware of how we spend our time together right now as both of my children prepare to go off to school.  My son is going to RIT up in Rochester, New York, and my daughter is headed to NCSSM, the North Carolina School of Science and Math.  It is a boarding school.

Sparklers on the fourth of July

I am finding that with all of the change going on this summer, it is hard to focus on my non-fiction writing.  I've spent lots of time submerged in reading fiction, and even reading non-fiction.

I highly recommend Salt: A World History

I've had some pretty great experiences this summer.

I worked with a small company using storytelling as a team building exercise.

I gave one of the keynotes at the National Storytelling Network annual conference.

Gwenda Ledbetter and Dr. Milbre Burch

Charlotte Blake Alston and Queen Nur

Queen Nur, Me, Lynette Ford, Diane Ferlatte

Michael McCarty and Joanna Demarest

I did some fun work with the dependents at Pope Air Force Base.

I did a lot of Summer Reading all over the east coast.

As much fun and challenging as my summer work has been, all of it was framed against the background of knowing that both of my children would be leaving within days of each other.

My equilibrium is always a bit shattered when there are huge life transitions going on around me, and when I am right in the middle of them, it is much, much worse.

I am both incredibly proud of my children, and sad that this part of our lives together is ended.  Oh, they will come home, I will see them, we will spend time together, and who knows, they might actually choose to come home a couple of summers in the future, but it won't ever be the same.

That's good, of course, because our stories have to grow and change.  Our children have to grow up and move on in their lives.  That's how stories work.

I knew I would be consumed with all of the transition this summer, but I didn't realize just how hard it was going to be to carry on with my work...especially the writing.  I'm in knots when it comes to writing and despite having things to say, I haven't been able to write a thing.

This weekend is going to get dicey!

My daughter moves into her dorm on Saturday morning at 9 am.  

I will be performing at United Arts at 11:50 am.  It is in Raleigh, about 45 minutes from my daughter's school.

When we get back from United Arts, we load up the car with my son's things.  Sunday morning we head to Virginia to spend the night with my parents, and then we head to upstate New York on Monday.

My son moves into his dorm on Tuesday, we have two days of family orientation, and then we drive home.

My summer will officially be over then, and I will begin working feverishly on all of the projects I laid out for myself over the last few months.

As for this space?  Well, I have good news.

For the next three weeks, I will have guest bloggers while I readjust to my new situation.

August 20th, Kevin Kulp will be in the driver's seat!

Dragging Performance Into Play: a quick look at storytelling games

Kevin Kulp is a Boston-based writer, game designer, and storyteller who develops both video and pen and paper games. He helps run the independent RPG site enworld.org under the username Piratecat. His recent work includes the TimeWatch RPG (successfully Kickstartered through Pelgrane Press), Disruptor Beam's Game of Thrones Ascent on Facebook, and the fantasy western game Owl Hoot Trail from Pelgrane Press. He can be found on Twitter at @kevinkulp.

Kevin uses storytelling to create interesting family games, and video games.  He also reviews games. 

His piece is for anyone who likes game nights with family or friends, or anyone who works with teenagers, and would like to trick them into learning story structure, vocabulary building, and writing while they are being distracted by having fun.

So, off to have one of the craziest weeks of my parenting life, afterwards I will surf through the fallout, but you who come here will be in capable hands.  

Happy Telling!

Kansas City, Mo Bound!

Practicing my speech, working on getting my pieces for Race Bridges under ten minutes.

One Week from today I will be giving the opening Key Note at the National Storytelling Network Conference.

After that, I will return to my regular schedule of posting things on this site.

Promise.

Happy Conferencing!

Summer Reading

Time For Summer Reading!

The libraries in out of the way places!

The excited, overworked, underpaid librarians.

The children.

The parents.

Telling to two people.

Telling to one hundred fifty people.

Getting lost in strange places.

Two hundred miles on the car in one day.

Kids who are so into the tales they laugh, jump, and talk to the characters.

Kids who sit completely silently, stare at you for forty five minutes and never saying anything.

Adults who take phone calls in the middle of your set.

Adults who have conversations, but tell their children to be quiet.

Two year olds at sets that are clearly marked five years old and up.

Great librarians.

Excited readers.

Kids announcing they are going to go find that book in the library.

Kids asking if I will come back every week.

Adults announcing they've never had such a good time at the library.

Librarians laughing with their patrons.

Teenagers pretending they are not actually watching, but watching anyway.

Elders telling me they haven't heard a good story told in a long time, and they were happy.

Grandmothers dragging their grandchildren to a show, and then being forced to drag them away afterwards because they want more stories.

Kids pitching a fit when a parent tries to make them leave early.

Kids arriving for the last story and asking if I will just stay and tell one more.

Adults demanding to know how come they didn't know about the show as they stand right next to a giant flier with the date, time, and a huge image of me.

Summer Day Care Groups.

Discovering new things about old stories.

Amazing Questions.

Interesting Answers.

Adults who assure me they had more fun than the children.

People telling me stories after hearing my stories.

Summer Reading.  Always an adventure.