I began my recent creative journey, when I fell in with a group of extremely talented authors and poets, and their "open mics." As I listened to their marvelous stories, my contributions would be to get up and through "word jazz", improvisation of words around a pre-constructed plot structure, I would tell stories; these stories were from life, inspired by life or cosmological physics, or conjured wholly from coarse cloth on the spur of the moment. As the months dragged on, I contemplated what it meant to be a storyteller amidst all these writers. The following piece... let's called it "prosetry" is the result.
What does it mean to be a storyteller in a room of writers? Is it the cheat of knowing that inflected pause, or rising pitch can deceive in the place of incomplete rhetoric or juxtaposition of phrases? Is it knowing that words are less important than the rhythm and cadence of language, syncopated steps that hop and bounce from one syllable to another, a poetic flow that flies off the page, only because it cannot live freely on the page. It is meant to be heard, not to be read.
It is the beauty of French spoken with Sam Beckett’s Irish lilt… and, especially, Irish.. Sensibility (Is it the Fin de Partie while Waiting EVER for Godot?).
But it is not a play… a storyteller is a poor playwright; characters are not the teller’s trade. Malformed personae loose in preoccupation of sound. NO verbal jousting in the streets of Verona, no light breaking over anything here nor yonder, as a prelude to romantic declarations
The teller declares all
The teller does not speak with or to.. but AT. A one way street of words delivered at yonder audience, with all the cheats of the clever, or devastating thud of those less so.
The long pause,
The deep stare
The emotional inflection meant to cause emotional infection.
The one man (or woman) teller show, an egotistical indulgence by those unwilling to share a stage
Perhaps, I am too harsh
For after all, the storyteller stands alone, the focus of the eyes, the ears, the hopeful anticipation of a shared experience
Without the page, the words do not speak.
The teller speaks words into existence, as the words are not there to speak for themselves
The word became sound, and all who beheld it were amazed And such an ephemeral existence
Floating in the air, existing but a moment, and then nothing but a memory
Tellers must read while they tell, though not the page, the faces
Cannot hide face in words or paper
No editorial feedback as words spill from mouth,
A deluge of assembled sounds meant to inform, inspire, intertain.
The Trick is the stick
How to make words stick
How to move ideas inwards
How to make oh so mortal words into immortal memories
How to move those words from sounds spoken to feelings felt
From teller to listener
It is the music of the word, the improvisational jazz of linguistic creation
It is a blurry plot of hazy details, a unique experience in a shrouded bar
It is standing exposed in instantaneous creativity
Like the unclothed king before his subjects
It is a tension on a knife edge
One point, one face, and a collapse of the entire facade
It is giving over into the memories of others, a printing press of memory
Wherein each lays a different typeset
The story is born and dies each night, with each telling,
Spending its Phoenix-like existence to move into memories
To move spirits and minds To be conjured anew that all may hear and feel A new formed act of creation
A newly formed generated generation
Successor to the first, of one ephemeral, changeable body
The teller conjures impermanence and casts it into the world
A changeable experience in a changeable world