Really, what’s the point?
What’s the point of telling your story to someone else? To a big group of strangers, no less?
Turns out there are myriad points for the storyteller, for the listeners, and, ideally, for the greater community. They were revealed at the inaugural Raven Narratives: Stories from the High Desert, a production of KSJD Dry Land Community Radio in Cortez.
An event and podcast similar to the Moth Radio Hour, the Raven Narratives got some initial momentum and input from members of the Four Corners Storytelling Collective, a group that’s met regularly in private homes for years. Check out this introductory podcast on iTunes here.
This first event, held at the Sunflower Theater and two weeks later at the Durango Arts Center, featured four men and four women between the ages of 20-something and 60-something. Their eight-minutes stories were, according to guidelines: true, told without notes, free of ‘rants, raves, and endorsements,’ and met the theme of “Wild Places.”
Kellie Pettyjohn recounts her time in Afghanistan
Okay, so nearly everyone was white. (Ami Nathwani told a story at the Durango event. She is Indian-Canadian.) But aside from the uniform skin tone, the stories and their tellers were remarkably diverse. We heard of experiences in Africa, Afghanistan, of the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction, and of intimate experiences with wild plants.
The storytellers were delightfully unprofessional, but they knew their stories well and told them with warmth, humor, and retrospection. If storytellers can sometimes be self-absorbed, these folks were not. The audience seemed to root for them.
Tom Yoder, Raven Narratives’ co-producer with Sarah Syverson, said the events serve many functions.
“Socially, our culture now is so locked down,” said Yoder, also KSJD programming and media director. “Storytelling is a way for us to soften up, to be less certain and allow that there are relative truths. Maybe I don’t know and maybe I shouldn’t judge. How comfortable can I be in the grey area. I think there’s a real function in storytelling there.”
Each story will be available on iTunes soon. Yoder and Syverson plan on producing the events quarterly with the next one scheduled for May 20th. Its theme is “Baggage.” Hmmm. I think I got some of that. You?