On Storytelling

Once upon a time in the ancient Greek environment, lived a blind old Guy, named Homer. Theories and legends about his origins, about his name, the real role he’d played in the society or even his health conditions multiplies constantly.

Personally, all I remember from school is that Homer was an epic poet, a legendary minstrel who had never written down a word himself. However, he’d chosen greater and more difficult mission then simple writing. The guy was actually trying to implement his stories into others, so that they could continue these word tradition further, worship ancient heroes for centuries and learn from their adventures some general truths about human behavior. As for me, he did a very good job… but he failed at one point. Who could’ve imagine more than 2000 years ago, that there would be, in the contemporary West civilization environment, a disturbingly good looking guy, named Brad Pitt, who would bravely best-male-performed and lead American Producers to conquer Troy… financially.

What was storytelling itself than and what is now?

In what direction the art of storytelling had gone…

… and what exactly went wrong?

How storytellers transformed, what methods do they use now? For what causes?

Is there any hope to make it as pure and as magical as it was before?

What are the REASONS for storytelling now, and how they are different from those before?

What does Storytelling mean?
Storytelling is a scientific survey/analysis method based on stories told by the
employees of a company.
The analysis shows the deep structure and hidden regularities of the company
“world” – the “Company in the Mind”.
Storytelling provides knowledge of a company beyond its official description of itself
which can immediately be turned into efficient strategies:
•to make internal communication more effective;
•to develop a company culture that will retain highly-qualified employees at the company;
•to take calculated and successful measures in personnel development;
•to target and manage strengths and weaknesses inside the company;
•to plan restructuring concepts that will really change things;
•to optimize co-operation culture;
•to enable post-merger integration without friction;
•to plan successions and management changes.
Based on a storytelling analysis, effective change processes, guidelines, visions,
communication strategies and leadership principles can be developed to suit a
company’s real needs.

The Storytelling Method SYSTEM + KOMMUNIKATION 2002

Storytelling is the conveying of events in words, images, and sounds often by improvisation or embellishment. Stories or narratives have been shared in every culture and in every land as a means of entertainment, education, preservation of culture and in order to instill moral values. (…)The earliest forms of storytelling are thought to have been primarily oral combined with gestures and expressions. (…)The evolution of technology has changed the tools available to storytellers. With the advent of writing, the use of actual digit symbols to represent language, and the use of stable, portable media stories were recorded, transcribed and shared over wide regions of the world. Stories have been carved, scratched, painted, printed, or inked onto wood or bamboo, ivory and other bones, pottery, clay tablets, stone, palm-leaf books, skins (parchment), bark cloth, paper, silk, canvas and other textiles, recorded on film and stored electronically in digital form. Complex forms of tattooing may also represent stories, with information about genealogy, affiliation and social status.

WIKIPEDIA

I am going to broaden this subject during my artistic research, so this short explanation is being made only as a foretaste. What we have above is a compilation of two, more or less general texts regarding storytelling. What we find interesting about them is a comparison between reasons and goals. Dramatic gap between what was then and what is now. Everything gone inhuman and is being defaced … entertainment, joy, education, culture, values, morals, emotions are being turned into efficacy, qualifications, successfulness, management skills, co-operational skills, skills, skills, skills, … please tell me a story about your beloved doggy when You were a child, and I’m gonna tell you if you’re a good keeper, son!

However, there’s still hope for storytelling to re-birth in its glory. Pending my rather superficial for a moment web research I found many, more or less fine examples of people, societies, communities, artistic events etc. trying to get back to the storytelling roots.

From: http://www.storynet.org/index.html

I mean, I know this is pretty cheesy, especially those “key tools”, “power”, „storytelling transforms lives” expressions. I guess it is pretty lame, but we cannot argue that this is a complete waste of time. Each such initiative generates both weak and shallow, but also good and positive attitudes and changes. Probably we can even estimate that probability of distribution of storytelling movements’ effectiveness is more or less close to the normal distribution in terms of Gaussian theory … so it has its strong points too.

Well, maybe this NSN isn’t the best example after all. As I’m looking now at costs of such splendid experience as organized by them Conference called “Many Stories – One world” with the main goal : To make this the best investment of your story-dollars this year! I feel like I’m cheated again. Seriously, how naïve could I be?

But then again it reminds me this cool conversation on Facebook I had with young artists from Greece. It considered Alain de Botton - mentioned by me in the “the Good life” part.

We don’t need messiahs. I think we need reasonable people.

This guy actually has a point.


Should we move on to another, maybe more artistic examples?





From: http://www.themoth.org/

Here we have something from the other corner of invented, for a reason of this part of my deliberations, Gaussian function. Here we have 5% of, maybe too sophisticated even, hope. Celebrities hand in hand with “ordinary people” (not such ordinary if they chose this type of entertainment and can appreciate it, but still way far from being a celebrity) share their life stories, anecdotes, jokes, day to day dramas etc. Pretty amazing show. Someday, if I have a chance to go to NYC for the second time I exactly know how I’ll spend my evenings, but still it is not what I am looking for in this “me wishing” re-birth of storytelling. I’m rather aiming in the leftover of 90% . What should we do with that?

This is the place where all youtube fans and youtube creators can shake hands. This is the place where Douglas Coupland shares with us his visions of the last day on earth in Generation X or presents to us sad and moving stories of piece of toast in The Gum Thief. This is the place for the real ordinary people to share their lives with others and learn, entertain, spread individual and collective culture and enjoy the great feeling of relief afterwards. This is even a place for shallow inspirational speeches! (like this story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McvCJley78A Remember The Good Life post?)

But most of all, this is a place for such characters as this amazingly talented kid - Cosmo Jarvis (http://www.myspace.com/cosmojarvis)

My personal favorite is his short movie about scissors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtwEZWONl8M

Not only he is able to create a great plot, full of suspense and diabolic humor, but he’s presenting it in very unconventional style. And how many more such impressive kids exist nowadays? And moreover, what they have to say?

This scissors story reminded me one interesting exercise we had, back at the Psychology Faculty. I don’t exactly remember the general theme of those classes, but I will always keep in mind the task we were asked to fulfill.

“And now please chose one object from this classroom. It could be anything – a pencil, chair, wall… whatever you want. Write a short story about its future. What, in your opinion, would happen to it?”

After couple of minutes devoted to careful looking around the room I’ve chosen a small round yellow magnetic thingy hanging on a white board. It supposed to detain papers, brochures, flyers to the boards, but instead it was just holding itself all alone in the corner, forgotten by everybody. I felt sorry for this poor little yellow fellow, so I dedicated him my story. I don’t remember all the details, but according to my vision, this little thing would have eventually lost all its magnetic skills and felt down completely unnoticed on a floor. Someone, probably a cleaning lady, would have thrown it out, with all the classroom dirt, directly into the trash container. Finally, it would have somehow finished his journey on the dump, where it would have lie on rotten corps of his organic friends for the eternity.

I was so proud of my horrible story. I wrote it on purpose to disturb my friends and show them how shocking I can be. I was really proud until I heard the second part of our task:

“I can see that you’ve finished your writings, so now please read them out loud but in the first person.”

…

Till this day I’m keeping this little yellow guy in my wallet. I won’t let anybody hurt him!