Bring On The Stories

Last week, I participated in a night of storytelling at a small-town venue with two other presenters, the fabulous Sue Turner-Cray, an actress and activist for good causes, and Jerry DiPego, an acclaimed screenwriter and genuine local treasure.

“How many people do you think might attend?” I was asked again and again. I had no idea.

It turns out, a lot. We had a full house. Nearly one hundred people came out on a Sunday evening just to listen to stories. Who knew?

I’m not a writer of fiction, unlike Jerry, who spins cinematic tales from his endless imagination, so all of my offerings were of the memoir variety. Three of them were from long-ago chapters of my past, and it was interesting to bring those vignettes into the room of the now. Somehow everything came full circle, the stories merged into a river that flowed into the present, and we were carried away together.  

It was fun too—the pure childlike fun of dressing up and putting on a show. Sue and I wore variations of velvet, and Jerry a dapper dark jacket, and at the last minute, I put on a vintage rhinestone necklace that had belonged to my beautiful sister Marlene. She wore that necklace with a slinky red dress on New Year’s Eve 1974, and I think some of the glamor and confidence she possessed in those days still clung to it and seeped into me.

We stood in the spotlights…there were actual spotlights…and I suddenly didn’t feel shy. Our sound guy, Tyson…yes, we had a sound guy…played mood-setting audio clips at the start of each story and made sure the mics were working right.

The lights dimmed, the room grew quiet, folks settled in to listen, and there was a kind of magic…

So it’s done. That happened. And now it has made its way into yet another blog post, and I know it’s time to move on to other topics. But I wanted to document it here once more because it turned out to be such an unusual and affirmative event. It was a night of time travel, community, and stardust, a validation of the hunger humans have for stories and connection.  And it’s hard to describe how embraced and lifted and loved I felt afterwards.

I’ve gotten so much better lately at being in the present and, as I have often said in this blog, I’ve learned the trick of letting myself feel joy. But I have also begun to realize that those stories and memories I seem to have so abundantly on tap are resources too, and my propensity for time travel can be more than self-indulgence.

So I’ll keep on tapping and talking and trying not to tumble.

The week that followed our event was a fine one for wandering among the remnants of old stories and tending to the seedlings of new ones. I rode my bike with Monte and a friend on a rural road that was closed to motor vehicles, and although my glasses were fogged with rain, intermittent bouts of bicycle bliss came over me. I also hiked in the mountains with the Santa Ynez ladies on winding paths through tall yellow grass, looked out upon the threads of blue-green serpentine rock, paused by the sparkling Birabent Creek, and saw wildflowers with vernacular names like wine cup and farewell-to-spring.

Monte has been ripping up tiles and stucco to get to the source of the damage that the recent storms unleashed, and it’s a job that is expanding exponentially, but it is a truth in any context: one must find the root of the rot and fix it. We have become spigots through which money flows, but we are making meaning along the way.

And a little boy in England turned three years old and told us we were poo-poo heads, but he said it with affection.

My friend Diane sent me the following quote by George Bernard Shaw, and I decided it will be my credo henceforth:

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

I shared that passage with a few select others, and one of my Besties, upon reading it, said, “I’m too protective of my time to be the flaming torch, but I am going to try to show up more often.” The truth is, this friend does show up often and makes good things happen all around her, but I think it’s a very nice reminder to keep on trying.

Yes, I am proud to be a charter member of the Tribe of Those Who Try. Feel free to join me. There’s work to do and wonders along the way.

If we lift our heads, we see there is a kind of continuity to life, a shared humanity. It’s a privilege to be here. Pass it on. Bring on the stories.