Rambling, and a Story

70°f/21°C, cloudy and humid.

 

Yesterday's project. Much sanding had to happen to smooth out 4 layers of paint. Then paint, distress, sand with fine grit, wax warmth clear wax, then dark wax, and add new knobs.

Not much doing around here of any interest, really, just the usual gardens, stringtrimming,  painting, etc. Larry went out yesterday to pick up our milk and butter, get a haircut, and pick up hardware and stuff we need to work on some furniture pieces. He enjoys getting out alone sometimes, and I enjoy the time alone here at home. Are you the same? 

It seems like since we retired, we are together pretty much 24/7.  When I was working, I had an hour commute both ways to my job, and I liked that time for thinking and planning. Sometimes I listened to audio books, or to my story practice tapes, but often I just thought.  

About what, I wonder now. I know that I often composed poems during my drives, which I would hurry to jot down when I got home, or I would come up with new story ideas. Those would percolate in my head as I worked out the telling; I seldom wrote down the stories I told. The tale would eventually emerge at a performance, fully formed---or as fully as it was possible to get it before giving it voice. I used to say that I never told a story the same way once, and that is pretty much the truth. The telling varied with the audience, the time I had, what the performer before me, if there were more than one at an event, did, etc. Sometimes I would think of a new twist to add, or take out or add details. It seemed to me thst once a story was written down, it was carved in stone and I couldn't change it. That's not true of course, and eventually several of my stories were published, but still it seemed like committing them to print kind of sucked the life out of the oral tale.

And I think that's true, to a point. When telling, I could use body language and vocal inflection to enhance the words. I needed eye contact with listeners because to me the telling wasn't so much performance as shared experience. Stage lights? Please, no, I needed to see people! Often I could react to some external event---like the man who farted, or the one who threw up, or a passing truck or train--in a way that added humor or compassion and still kept the audience engaged. So many little nuances are part of oral storytelling. How could one possibly capture those in print?

This was not at all what I meant to write about today! How one's mind does wander down unsuspected paths sometimes. Now, I must get back to doing some uninteresting thing, or maybe I will make pickles. Yes, I think that's what I will do. So to wrap up this meandering post, here's a link to one of my oral stories. And I should say, committing the story to audio felt almost the same as writing it down, like I was carving it in stone. And I did eventually get over that too, for the most part. 

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.