I have not yet, in my lifetime, had the honor of listening to any of the genuine native storytellers firsthand. My only experience with native myths and legends has been through books, some much better than others, but regardless, I was spellbound. I have been drawn in similarly by some novels, movies, plays, and other forms of entertainment, but the oral history and myths passed down by the native storytellers particularly fascinates me. I believe this is largely because these fantastic images are conjured from memory and imagination, rather than anything permanent.
I find that my attention span for remembering details in prose is very short. The longest poem that I’ve been able to memorize and recall has been The Raven, which is not insignificant, but it hardly measures up to traditional native stories or the Odyssey. I don’t like to scapegoat modern living, but I feel that the overabundance of information and entertainment has perhaps led to oversaturation and laziness through the years.
My question is this: How does one re-learn to become a storyteller? I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who has lost these skills, and I imagine that if they were regained for many or all of us, rewilding would gain a powerful weapon in its arsenal against boredom. I roleplay online sometimes, stories of were-beasts and vampires, but it’s not quite the same thing, as it requires multiple people to come up with. (I imagine if I tried this in the wild, it’d be more like LARPing.) Even storytelling techniques aside - how does one regain that attention to detail? And what to craft stories about? Surely not every story has to be a parable. Could we use these stories as a way of remembering our history, to pass down to our descendants? How would we craft these stories?
(I apologize if this has been brought up before, search did not find it.)
I have been studying this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_Palace for awhile now. I cannot even attempt to say I have the system down or am an expert, but it seem slike this could be very useful.
I roleplay online sometimes, stories of were-beasts and vampires, but it's not quite the same thing, as it requires multiple people to come up with. (I imagine if I tried this in the wild, it'd be more like LARPing.)
What’s LARPing?
Language Arts Role Playing?
The concept of storytelling has been swirling around in my mind recently as well. I started playing Anthropik’s RPG called The Fifth World with some friends. I like how story-related it is, but you’re right in that RPG story-weaving doesn’t compare to indigenous stories.
I took a stab at a story in my songlines post. I think the potential of stories and poems and songs to help us retain knowledge–of primitive skills and history–is a deep well waiting for someone to drink.
I think it stands for Live Action Role Playing. Folks getting into costume and character, in a non-theatrical setting. Something seen in primitive tribes worldwide in one form or another.
www.SCA.org world’s largest Live Action Role Playing association.
I have been invovled with them off and on since I was 18. really really cool org, and their events are nothing short of amazing. Every year I go to Gulfwar ,www.gulfwars.org, and I have a blast.
500 on 500 feild battles of guys in full armor smashing each other with 1 inch thick rattan swords, castle assaults, medieval artillery(catapults trebuchets, etc), archers, guys having heart attacks on the feild, all kinds of cool stuff. They also have artisans and workshops on just about any crafting, music, dance, that is period(1650 or prior). Blacksmithing, fletching, drumming, cooking, dancing, alcohol brewing, pretty much anything they did before 1650.
I was a fencer, b/c the armor was too much for me. When I found out it was legal to kick blades out of people’s hands, it was on pecan.
If you can handle extreme geekiness, this org is fantastic. They have groups in pretty much every city in the US, tons in Europe, and even some in Asia. check em out.
Even storytelling techniques aside - how does one regain that attention to detail? And what to craft stories about? Surely not every story has to be a parable. Could we use these stories as a way of remembering our history, to pass down to our descendants? How would we craft these stories?
In my experience, stories are easier to remember if the details came from an important event in my (and my people’s) life and/or are useful and relevant to my (and my people’s) continuing life. Information needs to either be relevant to everyday life, or it needs to be particularly emotionally heavy. Such as the stories told by indigenous people that enabled them to escape the tsunami in southeast asia – they featured the sea getting hungry and eating people…kinda a hard detail to forget!
Ultimately, stories relevant to re-wilding are not going to be easy to remember unless people are re-wilding. And people will only know what stories are relevant enough to remember and continue to tell the deeper they go in the process. On top of that, the stories simply need to be told regularly so the details and themes get reinforced. Our storytellers need spontaneous regular practice with us around the fire.
Our society works against this in a number of ways, but mostly by making most of our culture’s stories into meaningless entertainment used in an addictive way to alter people’s moods (give them an emotional high) when they’re bored or uncomfortable with themselves (living bland emotional lives). Also, the fact that our culture’s stories are nearly always other peoples stories makes a big difference as well. We need to spontaneously come up with our own stories that apply to us and the land we live in. The more we can decline to use our mainstream culture’s media, the more we open the possibility of conditioning our brains for real stories.
This is very interesting, and it reminds me of the mental workshop I built when I learned the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silva_Method. I had never thought of building temporary structures to house ideas before. Hmm.
While I might be able to use this to store facts, lists, and prose… it seems like using it to store basic plot points in order and then weaving a story around them ad lib would still be quite difficult. Have you tried using it to do this, yet?
Kaliverdant is quite correct, it is Live Action Role Playing. I apologize - I am used to dealing with folks (geeks!) used to roleplaying terminology.
Hey, that’s a great start! That’s part of what I was thinking about, myths as meme propagation, although I think that the more complex (to a degree) and entertaining these stories get, the more likely they’ll stick in an audience’s mind, because in being entertainment they also serve a basic need, boredom. The audience will want to come back for more, and they’ll learn more. How awesome would it be if schools 50 years from now were nothing but small clusters of children listening to the stories of their elders, and maybe going for a medicine walk?
I agree that it is a very deep well.
Waves to fellow geek I’m not an SCA’er, but I have friends who are. I tend towards the World of Darkness kind of roleplay more than SCA, though. LARPing for those guys is a bit more ridiculous… some guy wearing a Halloween wolf mask, saying “RAWR I AM A 10’ TALL WEREWOLF! I eat you! (roll for evasion)”
I’m not trying to belittle the use of costumes or roleplay one bit. I love costuming, and feel that it really helps transform the worldview of a receptive audience to be better attuned to whatever the story is trying to impart. My problem is with the stories themselves that most roleplay garners. I can tell you stories about my werecat character prowling through the darkened alleyways of a major city, scheming with her cohorts about how to take down the great industrial evils, but it doesn’t really impart much. You’ve got the costume, but without a guiding point, all you’ve got is a character, or a persona, and a litany of imaginary deeds. There are valuable things, very valuable, to learn via roleplaying, such as impermanence of personality and being someone new, but I don’t think that the stories are the same.
[quote=“RedWolfReturns, post:6, topic:234”]In my experience, stories are easier to remember if the details came from an important event in my (and my people’s) life and/or are useful and relevant to my (and my people’s) continuing life. Information needs to either be relevant to everyday life, or it needs to be particularly emotionally heavy. Such as the stories told by indigenous people that enabled them to escape the tsunami in southeast asia – they featured the sea getting hungry and eating people…kinda a hard detail to forget!
Ultimately, stories relevant to re-wilding are not going to be easy to remember unless people are re-wilding. And people will only know what stories are relevant enough to remember and continue to tell the deeper they go in the process. On top of that, the stories simply need to be told regularly so the details and themes get reinforced. Our storytellers need spontaneous regular practice with us around the fire.
Our society works against this in a number of ways, but mostly by making most of our culture’s stories into meaningless entertainment used in an addictive way to alter people’s moods (give them an emotional high) when they’re bored or uncomfortable with themselves (living bland emotional lives). Also, the fact that our culture’s stories are nearly always other peoples stories makes a big difference as well. We need to spontaneously come up with our own stories that apply to us and the land we live in. The more we can decline to use our mainstream culture’s media, the more we open the possibility of conditioning our brains for real stories. [/quote]
Ah, but there’s the tragedy. By the time that people begin rewilding in any number, they may have already lost the access to that information, especially those who were getting their information on the internet, a very fragile creation, all things considered. By the time it’s relevant, it may already be too late. I possess what I like to call a near-photographic memory for things which are irrelevant, song lyrics, bits of trivia, but am almost incapable of remembering dates, names, or locations. I think that I might have a bit of storyteller in me, and it seems like even if I don’t, there’ll need to be some of us who see this coming who can remember the information so it’s not lost entirely.
Major cataclysms are of course, important. How will we tell the story of the collapse? What amount of history is valuable to remember so we don’t have this sort of thing repeating again, for example, Hitler and Nazi Germany? What parts should be remembered for their aesthetic? We have to keep in mind that there will come a generation that has never so much heard of a pirate or a ninja, or a fairytale princess. Will Santa and the Easter bunny make the cut?
I think that creating our own stories from our own experiences is very important. However, some thought needs to be given to the cultural mythology, fairytales, and history that we bear now, and have learned from the past. There will come a day when such things breathe their last in their “permanent” book forms, and I doubt any of us is going to be lugging around a backpack full of books to remember them by.
I apologize - I am used to dealing with folks (geeks!) used to roleplaying terminology.
lol. no worries. i am quite geeky but pretty new to the rpg world. i got hooked with some MMORPGs, but have little to no non-computer rp experience.
Ultimately, stories relevant to re-wilding are not going to be easy to remember unless people are re-wilding. And people will only know what stories are relevant enough to remember and continue to tell the deeper they go in the process. On top of that, the stories simply need to be told regularly so the details and themes get reinforced. Our storytellers need spontaneous regular practice with us around the fire.
i think a good story is a good story and will therefore be memorable, regardless of it’s discerned relevance–for me, anyway. i agree, though, that determining a relevance in terms of applicability is something we civies will have work out over the long haul. in indigenous cultures, that working out process already happened in the tribes distant memory. we will be forging the distant memories of the future, so the road will be a lot bumpier for us.
i agree that repetition and regularity will make everything more present in the mind. it will not only help the stories that get told come to mind more easily, but it will also foster an undercurrent of storytelling that resonates throughout the people that hear them. the more stories you hear–and especially the more you tell yourself–the better chance you have of the storytelling becoming honed, of knowing what makes a good story and what makes a good telling.
Our society works against this in a number of ways, but mostly by making most of our culture's stories into meaningless entertainment used in an addictive way to alter people's moods (give them an emotional high) when they're bored or uncomfortable with themselves (living bland emotional lives). Also, the fact that our culture's stories are nearly always other peoples stories makes a big difference as well. We need to spontaneously come up with our own stories that apply to us and the land we live in. The more we can decline to use our mainstream culture's media, the more we open the possibility of conditioning our brains for real stories.
but i think stories–even the bland shit of our culture–can still have a resonance. imagine if there were a blockbuster movie that showed real primitive skills. granted a movie like that would have little to no chance of becoming a blockbuster. but if you could present quality information in a way that reaches the emotional lives of this age’s audience, i think it would resonate.
maybe i’m just a weirdo and a huge exception, but i’m always grasping at every piece of indigenous thought that flies by me. read my blog post about The Importance of Being Ernest Goes to Camp for an example. I’ve had a concept of the wrongness of ownership rattling around inside my civilized soul for decades because of that movie. whenever i have been confronted with the absurdity of civilized ownership, i would always think to myself “who can own a rock? who can own a tree?” i didn’t even remember that i got that concept from that movie until i saw it again recently with my son.
likewise, stories like Waterhship Down and The Last of the Mohicans resonated with me. I see Efrafa in the civ all around me all the time. And when and Chingachgook prayed the spirit of the deer they killed at the beginning of the movie or grieved the loss of his son Uncas, even if it was only Hollywood pan-indian crap, it still resonated with the animist spirit within me.
my wife is really into video games, and she used to play Animal crossing on Gamecube. i saw her fishing on the game on day, and the fish that she pulled up looked just like blue-gill. “wow, you caught a blue-gill” i said. she was shocked as to how i could know what kind of fish she had caught when she had to look it up in some guide. “well, it looks just exactly like a blue-gill.” there was also a Coelacanth in the game and years later when we were at the museum of natural history, we both recognized the coelacanth exhibit from a distance because of that game.
nowadays my wife spends all her time playing world of warcraft. i almost wanted to play it really bad until i saw that all the herbology and the like in the game is completely made up. but just image if the game graphics and mechanics worked around depictions of real foraging. that the elderberry flowers on the elderberry bush looked like real elderberries. and you could pick and eat the flowers now or come back later and get the berries. but if you ate any of the wood pith, you’d get really sick.
or imagine if shrek sat down in a swam and pulled a cattail up from the root and said “i love cattails, just this little white part on the end here. it’s so delicious.” kids everywhere would then have that knowledge. they may not do anything with that knowledge unless they were really adventurous, but it would be there, waiting in their minds to come alive.
