Category: Storytelling & Culture

  • Heart-Lifting for Disheartening Times – Storytelling Cultivates XENOPHILIA

    Heart-Lifting for Disheartening Times – Storytelling Cultivates XENOPHILIA

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    It’s all so overwhelming and it seems everyone is tired, discouraged, maybe angry or cynical or depressed, maybe confused or disheartened…just weary. Each day during this April A-Z Blogging Challenge I’ll offer a short musing on an aspect or two of the many ways the ancient-yet-very-contemporary experience of storytelling – both listening…

  • Heart-Lifting for Disheartening Times – Storytelling Uniquely Helps Us REMEMBER

    Heart-Lifting for Disheartening Times – Storytelling Uniquely Helps Us REMEMBER

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    It’s all so overwhelming and it seems everyone is tired, discouraged, maybe angry or cynical or depressed, maybe confused or disheartened…just weary. Each day during this April A-Z Blogging Challenge I’ll offer a short musing on an aspect or two of the many ways the ancient-yet-very-contemporary experience of storytelling – both listening…

  • Heart-Lifting for Disheartening Times – Storytelling Presents QUESTIONS

    Heart-Lifting for Disheartening Times – Storytelling Presents QUESTIONS

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    It’s all so overwhelming and it seems everyone is tired, discouraged, maybe angry or cynical or depressed, maybe confused or disheartened…just weary. Each day during this April A-Z Blogging Challenge I’ll offer a short musing on an aspect or two of the many ways the ancient-yet-very-contemporary experience of storytelling – both listening…

  • Heart-Lifting for Disheartening Times – Storytelling is NEW

    Heart-Lifting for Disheartening Times – Storytelling is NEW

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    It’s all so overwhelming and it seems everyone is tired, discouraged, maybe angry or cynical or depressed, maybe confused or disheartened…just weary. Each day during this April A-Z Blogging Challenge I’ll offer a short musing on an aspect or two of the many ways the ancient-yet-very-contemporary experience of storytelling – both listening…

  • Heart-Lifting for Disheartening Times – Storytelling for ESCAPE, and EMPATHY

    Heart-Lifting for Disheartening Times – Storytelling for ESCAPE, and EMPATHY

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    It’s all so overwhelming and it seems everyone is tired, discouraged, maybe angry or cynical or depressed, maybe confused or disheartened…just weary. Each day during this April A-Z Blogging Challenge I’ll offer a short musing on an aspect or two of the many ways the ancient-yet-very-contemporary experience of storytelling – both listening…

  • US vs. UK Storytelling

    US vs. UK Storytelling

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    Some of them just didn’t believe me. “An American storyteller telling folktales? Don’t they all just do autobiographical stories?” Let me tell you part of a story…

  • Oral Tradition – Plus Let Me Tell You Another Story…

    Oral Tradition – Plus Let Me Tell You Another Story…

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    A little mouse told me?  Well, not exactly…but somebody did! [This is longer than my other A-Z posts…the musings plus the story…grab a cuppa maybe?!] By definition, personal stories (that is, first-person personal-experience narratives) are not transmitted to the teller through an oral tradition: they happened to the teller. So,…

  • Narcissism?

    Narcissism?

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    I’m afraid it must be addressed. Elephant in the room, you know… …the feeling that all this personal, first-person, “me, myself, and I”-ness of story slams is, well, at its root narcissistic. And that’s not generally considered a good thing. It is a suspicion, sometimes an accusation, among some storytellers/folks…

  • Heritage

    Heritage

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    Heritage: Something transmitted by or acquired from a predecessor: legacy, inheritance; tradition Oh-so-very-much could be written on this, but for today just a brief consideration of a very large difference between traditional storytelling and story slam storytelling – and while I’ve so far written more about process and form, this…

  • Beer and Books

    Beer and Books

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    To tell the truth, in all my 27 years of professional storytelling I don’t think I’ve personally experienced or witnessed beer being available at “traditional” storytelling concerts / conferences / festivals / shows… Yet beer is available and enjoyed at both of the local story slams I’ve gotten myself to…