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Talk to Me! Storytelling and Social Engagement…

Prepare for a reactive post, no, an interactive conversation, about social engagement.

But first, what about that photo? Bam! A powerful graphic. Except for the middle word…

I’d prefer “Talk with me.” Because social media is all about with. Old school, top-down, one-way, pump-it-out, force fed broadcast media was all about to. Do you follow me?

Engaging Storytelling

Media has evolved. Most of it. Not all. There are still a few knuckle-draggers lurking in the shadows!

Which is why storytelling – in it’s simplest, purest and most engaging form – trumps old school broadcast media. Storytelling in its oldest form. Pre-books. Pre-TV. Pre-movies.

Storytelling is about social engagement, author-audience engagement. Storytelling is about relationships. It’s about with. Not to.

Social Media

Which brings me to Randy Thio (@ideabloke), the founder of ideabloke, “a personal digital media agency committed to 100% organic social media practices.” His post, The Endgame Of Social Engagement provoked my curiosity because I don’t consider social media to have an endgame. Not in the conventional sense. At best there’s no final stage. No end of the process.

Social media is about building relationships, about engaging and maintaining communication, about interacting, about author and audience evolving together.

Social Engagement

But Thio is focusing on the initial social engagement, not social media in general. The objective of engaging an individual through social media, he proposes, is to provoke (and then hopefully extend) a response.

In it’s purest sense, engagement is the ability to cause another person to respond… using any (or a combination of) the following methods:

• Comments – In response to a status update, tweet, or blog post.
• Shares – Includes linking/mentioning on a blog post they wrote.
• Likes – Includes +K’s, Kred, etc.
• Retweets – Whether native or via a tweet button
• Mentions – Includes Follow Fridays, etc.
• Favorites – Anytime your tweet/update/post is faved on any platform
• Pins/Repins – Pinterest specific of course.
• Tags – Whenever a user is tagged on pics on any platform.
• Hashtags – When ppl begin to adopt & share a hashtag you created.
• Pokes – Yes, I did just put that on there.

Whichever method the audience chooses to respond, it’s critical to acknowledge and capitalize on the opportunity to have a conversation… geared to get to know that particular person… which hopefully leads to a relationship. ~ Randy Thio (ideabloke.com)

Social Media as Storytelling

Short of wandering village to village like Mario Vargas Llosa’s storyteller, social media offers raconteurs of all stripes ideal audience interaction. Ideal global audience interaction. With no end game. Except building a rich and enduring relationship. Social engagement is the first step, the wink, the handshake of social media. Social engagement is the open door behind the well worn welcome mat.

Unlike broadcasters, live storytellers understand this intuitively. Initial social engagement is the spark of interest, the pause long enough to listen, a provocation, an invitation. But storytelling itself, live storytelling, is the original social media. Live storytelling is an interactive relationship, and the story evolves accordingly, being shaped collaboratively by author and audience. The storyteller listens and watches and feels, tailoring the narrative to the appetites and needs of the audience. Sometimes abbreviating; other times inventing extemporaneously.

Kenton Grua, Rudi Petschek, and Steve “Wren” Reynolds… embarked on [an adventure] in late June of 1983, when they defied common sense and the National Park Service and set off, at night, to attempt a record-breaking speed run down the Colorado River in a 17-foot wooden dory called the Emerald Mile… To get from A to Z, they figured, would require roughly two nights and days of furious rowing. That is, assuming they lived through it… (OutsideOnline.com)

The Emerald Mile, by Kevin Fedarko

This attention-grabbing introduction to Kevin Fedarko‘s “Rocketing Into the Great Unknown: The Emerald Mile on the Colorado River” appeared in Outside Online in conjunction with the launch of the author’s nonfiction account, The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Though the Heart of the Grand Canyon.

Yes, the title’s looong. But if you’re chronicling a hair raising, adrenaline pumping, teeth rattling, skull crunching story about three intrepid watermen’s conquest of the Colorado River during impossibly furious conditions, I suppose you can wrap your title up and down the spine as many times as you can fit. At least if you’re a virtuoso storyteller. And Kevin Fedarko is nothing less.

I had the good fortune of listening to him read from The Emerald Mile a couple of nights ago at Collected Works in Santa Fe, and I can vouch for his storytelling. Top notch. I bought four copies, three as gifts, and one to read aloud to my bride. We. Will. Enjoy.

Kevin Fedarko

Here’s the skinny. Fedarko has intertwined two stories, one about a rare (and really scary) confluence of events in the Grand Canyon in 1983 and another about the natural wonder itself. The Glen Canyon Dam (and the perspectives of those who created and manage it) offers a sort of corollary tale as riveting as the three dory men’s once-in-a-lifetime daredevil escapade.

I’ll update this post once I’ve finished reading The Emerald Mile, but until then I encourage you to visit Fedarko’s Emerald Mile Facebook page to learn more about his hydraulic adventure. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s the Kirkus Review:

Man’s indomitable need for adventure is the only thing more impressive than the awesome power of nature and the brilliance of technology described in this lovingly rendered retelling of one of the most remarkable events ever to occur inside the Grand Canyon. (Kirkus)

Intrigued? Let me know what you think.

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back — Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”

~ W. H. Murray, The Scottish Himalaya Expedition, 1951

Murray’s passage has occasionally been maligned because he erroneously attributed the following couplet to Goethe.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!

It strikes me as a bit petty to toil in criticism in the face of useful motivation and beauty. Besides, boldness does pack plenty of power under the hood. And — whoever we credit with the seed that grew into this passage — the most important message is shoehorned into the last three words underpinning all commitment. Begin it now. What will you do?

Faust: Begin it Now

And, by the way, if you’re feeling persnickety (or just curious) here’s Goethe on the matter of dallying, boldness, commitment and action.

Enough words have been exchanged;
Now at last let me see some deeds!
While you turn compliments,
Something useful should transpire.
What use is it to speak of inspiration?
To the hesitant it never appears.
If you would be a poet,
Then take command of poetry.
You know what we require,
We want to down strong brew;
So get on with it!
What does not happen today, will not be done tomorrow,
And you should not let a day slip by,
Let resolution grasp what’s possible
and seize it boldly by the hair;
it will not get away
and it labors on, because it must.

~ Goethe, Faust I, Zeilen 214-230 (Goethe, Faust and Tricky Translations)

Now are you ready to begin? Begin it now!

Related articles

• Goethe, Faust and Tricky Translations (incli-nation.com)
• Want to Be a Successful Author? Burn Your Ships (warriorwriters.wordpress.com)
• How Goethe can change your life (romankrznaric.com)
• The power of commitment (habitguide.com)
• 18 Inspirational Quotes for Spring (inc.com)

Fantastic news from Addison Mehr and the Fort Apache team. Film editing is in the final stretch, trailers out (and slick, slick, slick) and their reaching out to film festivals looking for opportunities to share their finished work. So proud!

Here’s the Fort Apache news:

I am thrilled to announce we have a picture lock for FORT APACHE… It’s been a wild ride and over a year in the making… We have been deep in post production for the last couple months working with the amazing editor Joanna Naugle and were able to do our sound design at C5 the leading audio post-production facility in New York. (HUGO, Life of Pi) We are still finalizing color correction and sound but we hope to roll out with the finished film… by Mid-March. We will keep you updated on screenings… in February or March… and we hope you enjoy the teaser! (Kickstarter)

Congratulations, Addison Mehr. Great trailer. Now we’re ready for the big screen!

Fort Apache: The Story

Not to be mistaken for the Fort Apache (1948) directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, Henry Fonda and Shirley Temple, Addison Mehr’s Fort Apache is a coming of age story based upon the short story by Alan Heathcock.

Fort Apache” is the story of Walt Freely, a fourteen year old who lives in the small town of Krafton, and is emerging out of the naive world of children and into the savage world of adults, a world of indifference, sexuality, and destruction. (fortapachefilm.com)

Fort Apache Predecessors

If you can’t stand waiting another minute for Fort Apache to open in a theater near you, there are a couple of online videos by Addison Mehr that you can enjoy in the mean time.

• Firecracker! “A vibrant tale about star-crossed lovers and their eccentric families… dominated by hyperbolic storytelling riffing off the timeless feel of early 1900’s silent films and the mad style of Guy Maddin.” (16mm, Sight and Sound Project. NYU Tisch 2010)
• A Sociological Guide to the Adirondacks Described as a “short short film”, Addison Mehr’s video collage juxtaposes multiple images from the Adirondacks’ Champlain Valley, set to a driving rock rhythm. And it’s short!

Related articles

• Addison Mehr’s Fort Apache (virtualdavis.com)
• Fort Apache Trailer (kickstarter.com)
• Film student chooses home town for movie’s back drop (denpubs.com)
• Making a movie in Lake Placid (adirondackdailyenterprise.com)

Storyteller, Nuala Hayes
(Photo credit: Peter Dibdin)

A good story brings you somewhere that you hadn’t intended to go. Something happens, and a transformation takes place. It can be imaginative; it can be terrifying; it can make you uncomfortable. But a good story will always bring you safely home. ~ Nuala Hayes (The Irish Times)

Nuala Hayes is a Dublin based actor, storyteller and broadcaster. She founded Scéalta Shamhna, Dublin’s Storytelling Festival, and directed it for a decade. In anticipation of the Yarn Festival 2012 in Bray where Hayes recently performed, The Irish Times challenged her to explain how to tell a perfect story.

Hayes emphasized the importance of observing the audience because “the storyteller’s chief skill is to be tuned in to the emotions of her audience.”

Festival audiences are, says Hayes, a doddle; they come with an open mind and are already in the mood for a story. Faced with a room full of sceptical teenagers, on the other hand, she needs to work a bit harder. “If they’re used to all their imaginative experience coming from television or DVDs or film, which is often the case with kids, I explain to them that if you’re listening to a story, you’re part of it, and the story won’t work if you don’t take part. Once you explain that they’ll see the pictures in their minds, they get it.” (The Irish Times)

Hayes tidily illustrates the collaborative relationship between storyteller and audience which hinges upon deep listening and opens a narrative doorway. Behind the doorway lie mysterious adventures into which a good storyteller immerses you and then transports you safely back again.

Related articles

• Storytelling, Stillness & Deep Listening (virtualdavis.com)
• Storytelling: From Ira Glass to Benedictine Monks (virtualdavis.com)
• The Wonder of Storytelling (virtualdavis.com)
• No Ur-Text in Transmedia Storytelling (meanderingmargaux.com)

What is Edupunk? (image from NYTimes.com)

In my perennial quest to expose the most innovative digital storytellers plying their crafty art I recently happened onto Amy Burvall (@amyburvall) via a history-forward reinterpretation of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” (watch the video below).

A what? Yes. Five minutes of totally subversive history teaching. Guerrilla pedagogical genius!

I challenge you to watch/listen to all 299 seconds without thrusting your hips and grooving along. But beware that groove will be with you when you finish. It’ll reprogram your brain.

Amy Burvall’s reinterpretation of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”

Convinced? Amy Burvall is to teaching what MTV was to the radio star.

“But I can’t stand Lady Gaga,” you say.

Really? If Lady Gaga — or better yet, Amy Burvall — had been your middle school or high school history teacher I’m willing to bet you’d remember a little more about the French Revolution. And The Trojan War and The Crusades and The Spanish Inquisition. It’s just a hunch.

History for Music Lovers

Amy Burvall, a full-time Humanities teacher at the Le Jardin Academy on Oahu, and Herb Mahelona, the choir director of the Kamehameha Schools Hawai’i Campus, teamed up about four years and fifty some odd videos ago to refresh their classroom bag of tricks. The duo, History for Music Lovers, (aka @historyteacherz) has inspired teachers, students and innovative digital storytellers around the globe to re-imagine what’s possible with digital stories as pedagogical tools, especially when you cloak knowledge in catchy, familair rhythms. By harnessing the sometimes edgy, always addictive energy of pop music videos they’re leading an exciting edupunk revolution.

What is Edupunk?

Back in the digital dark ages (ie. May 25, 2008) Jim Groom birthed the term “edupunk” on his blog which quickly polarized his enthusiasts and critics.

Edupunk is about the utter irresponsibility and lethargy of educational institutions and the means by which they are financially cannibalizing their own mission. ~ Jim Groom (Fast Company)

A style of hands-on self-education that benefits the student without concern for curriculums or the interests of schools, corporations or governments. In other words, an autodidactic approach that spurns commercialism, mass-market approaches and top-down goal-setting. (NYTimes.com)

“Edupunk” is an educational approach that combines creative drive with a maverick attitude, celebrating a kind of cocky, do-it-yourself confidence in which the educator—or possibly the student—designs the tools for teaching and learning. It speaks directly to the corporatization of education—and doesn’t say nice things about it. (elearn Magazine)

Edupunk n. Avoiding mainstream teaching tools like Powerpoint and Blackboard, edupunks bring the rebellious attitude and DIY ethos of ’70s bands like the Clash to the classroom. (Wired.com)

[Edupunk is] a new instructional style that is defiantly student-centered, resourceful, teacher- or community-created rather than corporate-sourced, and underwritten by a progressive political stance. (guardian.co.uk)

Edupunk, it seems, takes old-school Progressive educational tactics — hands-on learning that starts with the learner’s interests — and makes them relevant to today’s digital age, sometimes by forgoing digital technologies entirely. (BlogHer)

All well and good of course, except if one considers, along with blogger Ken Carroll, that the concept of punkoid profs might also not be a little ridiculous… (guardian.co.uk)

Am I the only one to find this Edupunk meme ridiculous? The adolescent ethos, music, etc, are matched only by the adolescent narcissism,  anger, wilful non-conformity,  sanctimony, and tirades against authority. Fine, except this is all coming from teachers!…  These guys look intellectually and emotionally indistinguishable from their students…  Allowing Edupunks to define themselves as agents of humanitarian uplift is absurd. Forty year old tenured men in hoodies, talking about revolution is no more than perpetual adolescence and self-indulgence… I would not recommend that we politicize learning 2.0 and certainly not by reducing it to the level of  of DIY culture. (Ken Carroll)

Edupunk Video Star

If Jim Groom is edupunk’s apparet progenitor, then Amy Burvall is edupunk’s uncontested poster girl!

TEDxHONOLULU: Amy Burvall and Herb Mahelona

Although I’m more sympathetic to the edupunk enthusiasts quoted above, I haven’t yet attempted a true deep dunk in the debate to opine intelligently. But I taught middle school and high school students in my twenties long enough to recognize that

1. kids are naturally curious, hungry and capable learners,
2. teachers, curriculums and schools often stifle students’ native aptitude,
3. innovative, flexible experiential learning trumps the alternative,
4. kids crave energized, smart, creative, risk taking teachers,
5. and students learn more (and better) when their teachers are passionate and invested.

So rather than wrangling over the pedagogical merits of edupunk, I suggest more teachers learn from Amy Burvall. And once your kids have sung and danced their way to college, let’s start generating some real data based on these students’ experiences. Is the video star teaching them better than the stuffed shirt across the hall who trots out the same old dusty pedagogical playbook year after year? My guess is yes. Let’s find out!

And in the mean time, I tip my Napoleonic bicorne to Ms. Burvall. For teaching in the first place; for taking risks in the classroom; for creating wildly creative teaching tools; for unleashing passion, passion, passion; and for top notch digital storytelling, Ms. Burvall, you are my hero. Consider me one of your newest and most enthusiastic students.

Related articles

• Pirates and Edupunks Stick It to Big Education (educationinnovation.typepad.com)
• Week 8 Post : LMS vs. Edupunk (ethanud.wordpress.com)

Welcome to Pine Point, innovative digital storytelling by The Goggles

Much of the innovation driving digital storytelling is still half-baked. Most storytellers are just beginning to fathom the riches of this new frontier, and for many of us it means learning (and inventing) new storytelling techniques to effectively leverage the cross-platform capabilities of digital storytelling.

And yet inspiration is every day more abundant. Recently I discovered a digital story so innovative and compelling that I looped it as soon as it ended. Even though the subject interested me very little (at least at first), I dove in again and again devouring the recipe and savoring the experience.

Welcome to Pine Point by Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons (aka The Goggles) is an interactive, short format documentary about an erased industry town in Canada’s Northwest Territories. It’s incredibly clever, all the more so because it conjures a compelling, captivating narrative experience out of rather grotty 1970s and 1980s miscellanea.

I’ll pass the baton off to Dan Blank (@DanBlank) who already reviewed “Welcome to Pine Point” nimbly on his business blog, We Grow Media back in March 2011. (Yes, I’m late to the Pine Point party!)

The documentary tells the story of this town – through photos, interviews, videos. How it came to be, what it was like to live there, and how it came to its demise. Literally, the town was torn down, and left as a barren wasteland with no signs of its previous existence except for some crumbling pavement. Wiped from the planet.

This film came about when it was discovered that a former town resident, Richard Cloutier, had created a website where he was cataloging the world that was Pine Point. He was collecting and sharing photos, stories and other updates. It is called Pine Point Revisited. (We Grow Media)

Welcome to Pine Point is an illuminating example of digital storytelling’s potential. I take notes each time I wander through its nostalgic messiness. A truly enticing messiness, I should add.

It’s part film, part photo album, and completely fascinating. (Deirdre Foley-Mendelssohn)

They’ve made an homage to memory, at once linear and exploratory, unraveling through a poetic collage of writing, image, video, sound, voice and music, all in service of a story. (transom.org)

Despite the rough, hand-animated photo-collages and humble lettering, Welcome to Pine Point achieves sophisticated and haunting effects as it chronicles a small Canadian town that was literally wiped off the map… (Scott McCloud)

Mike Dormuth and Richard Cloutier

But no matter how much Webby-winning awesomeness is packed into Welcome to Pine Point, it would not (and could not) exist but for Richard Cloutier’s Pine Point Revisited. While Cloutier’s Pine Point memorial/tribute is basic — its vintage turn-of-the-century navigation and style emphasize content, not aesthetics — it is a deep, dusty archive. It’s a museum. Or a warehouse. It’s a digital reunion for neighbors, friends and colleagues torn apart by time and chance. It’s a surrogate or a facsimile for a place that no longer exists.

But Pine Point Revisited also offers the inspiration, the skeleton and much of the source material for Welcome to Pine Point. In a sense, the documentary is a remix of Cloutier’s website permitting him to play one of the starring leads, though you don’t fully appreciate this until the end of the video.

While accolades aplenty have rightfully rained upon Shoebridge and Simons for their groundbreaking digital storytelling, Cloutier’s digital storytelling is the underlying source and inspiration for The Goggles’ mashup. While recognizing and celebrating this does not diminish Shoebridge’s and Simons’ accomplishments, it does award Cloutier for his less flashy, but hard earned accomplishment. I tip my hat to all three!

Related articles

• The Wonder of Storytelling (virtualdavis.com)
• Storytelling: From Ira Glass to Benedictine Monks (virtualdavis.com)
• Storytelling, Stillness & Deep Listening (virtualdavis.com)
• Transmedia Storytelling and Documentary Filmmaking (meanderingmargaux.com)

Ed Rondthaler (1905-2009) was a typographist and the co-founder (with Harold Horman) of Photo-Lettering, Inc. A man of letters. A man of words. And, it turns out, a man of spelling…

Ed Rondthaler was an advocate for “simplified spelling“.

This creative video intrigued me both for the obvious logic and appeal of a simplified spelling which Ed Rondthaler cultivates with his clever flip cards, and for the innovative storytelling technique.

Although suffering from a late Autumn cold, a the always gracious Ed Rondthaler spent a day with us and our film crew on rainy, cold November afternoon. Framed by the muted surroundings of his Croton-on-Hudson Sears and Roebuck kit log house that he purchased from a Naval Commander in 1938, Ed talked about his years running Photo-Lettering Inc. and the surrounding developments with remarkable precision and clarity. A lifetime proponent of spelling reform, Ed was gracious enough to state a compelling case with a well worn flip chart. Ed would live on another two years before finally giving way to the Twenty-First Century at the ripe young age of 104. We cannot begin to express our gratitude to Ed Rondthaler for his time and effort in helping us preserve the Photo-Lettering legacy, but we hope to perpetuate his passion for spelling reform by showing this short film. (Ed Rondthaler on English spelling)

Ed Rondthaler (Photo: Wikipedia)

According to Ed Rondthaler’s 0bituary in the New York Times on August 29, 2009, he “Edward Rondthaler was one of the 20th century’s foremost men of letters — actual, physical, audible letters.” (NYTimes.com)

He advocated phonetic spelling in order to “vanquish orthographic hobgoblins, promote literacy and make accessible to foreign readers English classics…” (NYTimes.com)

Although his dream of a transition to English written as it sounds was not realized during his lifetime, his legacy was secured long before his quest for SoundSpel.

Mr. Rondthaler had already established a national reputation by helping usher in the age of photographic typesetting. Phototypesetting was for decades a vital bridge between the hot-metal days of old and the digital typography of today. (NYTimes.com)

The Huffington Post’s Alastair Plumb featured Rondthaler’s zany video last January with this perfect introduction.

Displaying astonishing verbal and mental dexterity, he explains via a miniature flip chart just why English as a language makes no sense at all. Sounds a bit boring, doesn’t it? Trust us, it isn’t. (Huffington Post)

Trust me. It isn’t!

Related articles

• A Call for Spelling Standardization (or Is That Standardisation?) (theatlantic.com)
• Spell It Out: The Singular Story Of English Spelling (morningstaronline.co.uk)
• 11 Weirdly Spelled Words – And How They Got That Way (mentalfloss.com)

Life can become so very hectic and full of movement that we can forget what it is to be still and have nothing to do except to be still. (Abbot’s Notebook)

Before joining Mary Beth Coudal, Joanna Parson and Kathryn Cramer for a thoroughly rejuvenating Adirondack Memoir Retreat at Skenewood I posted a wandering rumination on storytelling. It connected dots. Loosely.

During the retreat I presented to the group on storytelling in the digital age, emphasizing the importance of — and increasingly abundant, powerful and affordable/free tools for — good storytelling. While the tools are many and evolving daily, the keys for good storytelling are few and enduring.

• Listen Suspend noise, distraction and judgment.
• Wonder Become curious and receptive. Ask questions.
• Distill Strive to “unpack a narrative in its purest form” ~ Bob Davidson
• Plot Sequence the scenes: beginning, middle, end.
• Revise Trim the fat. Focus the narrative. Polish the delivery.
• Practice Discover the narrative’s energy, pauses and cadence.
• Share Relate interactively with your audience.

Although the last tip might vary depending on your storytelling medium (ie. print and video, for example offer minimal interactivity between storyteller and audience), I believe that “sharing stories” remains a superior goal to “telling stories”. After all, the story exists not in the words, images, etc. of the teller. The story is conjured up in the imagination of the audience. Whether oral story, book, movie, cartoon, it is the interaction of teller and audience that breathes life into a narrative.

For this reason, the best storytellers remain receptive, listening deeply to their audience even while relating their stories. Listening, revising, improving their narrative(s) for the current audience.

Mary Beth Coudal’s post-retreat reflection reminds us to listen and discover.

I’m finding benefits to being still, keeping quiet…

As we walked in the Adirondacks, the other writers and I stopped talking for a little bit. We said nothing.

When I wasn’t talking, I could listen. I could hear our footsteps, our breathing, a bird on the lake. I could hear a breeze through the leaves of grass. (To Pursue Happiness)

Abbot Philip Lawrence’s quotation at the top of this post, excerpted from “Storytelling: From Ira Glass to Benedictine Monks“, was in my mind as I spoke with the retreat attendees about storytelling in the digital age. Today storytellers are blessed with ever richer storytelling tools and platforms, but their audience is drowning in distractions. It’s a noisy, hectic world, and it is more important than ever to cultivate stillness and quiet in order to listen.

Another conference attendee, William McHone, is setting off in pursuit of stories following the retreat.

As I head off on Wandering III, the people, places and events I come upon will inevitably remind me of the many wonderful people, places and events that have shaped my life thus far. I am hopeful, over time, the recording will become both something of a travel log and memoir… (Wandering With Moe)

As a fellow wanderer, perennially swaying to the siren song of adventurer, I envy McHone’s walkabout. Such sweet seduction!

And yet he must cultivate stillness as he wanders. He must be curious and receptive in order to discover the stories lurking in the people and places and events he will encounter. He must ask questions and listen deeply to the answers. He must distill the essential scenes and weave them into intoxicating narrative adventures. And he must share them. Again. And again.

And if he does, when he does, we will be listening.

Related articles

• Storytelling: From Ira Glass to Benedictine Monks (virtualdavis.com)
• The Wonder of Storytelling (virtualdavis.com)
• Adirondack Memoir Retreat (virtualdavis.com)

At its best life rhymes. Like yesterday. While tuning up for a pair of Storytelling in the Digital Age workshops, two rhymes tumbled out of the interwebs and landed at my feet. More accurately, kindred souls reached across space and time to help me prepare for my storytelling workshops.

Yesterday I gushed about the wonder of storytelling, courtesy of Bob Davidson and Ira Glass. Though I’ve never met either of them in the conventional handshake “Let’s have coffee” manner, I consider them friends, inspirations, mentors. I might miss either of them in passing on the street, but I know Ira Glass’ storytelling voice, cadence and delivery instantly. And Davidson, though a newer “acquaintance” is familiar too. We share the same penchant and respect for wonder, as if our inner compasses orients to W instead of magnetic north.

And then this timely smoke signal from Linda Hollier (@lindahollier).

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/lindahollier/status/261048167527743488″]

Six  monks get their Gregorian groove on? That could only mean one thing!

A group of six monks stop by Studio 1A, proving that they don’t just spend their time reading and praying. They perform the song “Alleluia Lustus Germinabit” off of their new album, “Monks in the Desert.” (NBCNews.com)

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Aside from the unlikely venue, it was the most welcome of surprises to see (and hear) Abbot Philip and Brother Christian, Brother Caedmon, Prior Joseph Gabriel, Brother Pierre and Brother Francis chanting on the Today Show. I think the chant is actually “Alleluia Justus Germinabit” which the Abbot translates in the video as “The Just will Flourish”.

Although I’ve returned from Christ in the Desert with a stash of CDs after each visit, hearing the monks chanting on national television—and receiving the heads-up from a friend who knows my connection to the monastery—resonated deeply.

All the more so when Hollier directed me to Abbot Philips notebook/newsletter yesterday. I’d like to share a few excerpts that rhyme with yesterday’s post about the wonder of storytelling.

In New York, one of the insights that came to me one morning was the absolutely necessity of knowing how to be still inside oneself and to be aware of God’s presence. Life can become so very hectic and full of movement that we can forget what it is to be still and have nothing to do except to be still. Wherever we are and in whatever situation, we can move to this inner space of peace and quiet and refreshment. It takes a discipline to be able to do this… I also begin to consciously relax my whole body. I do this by being aware that I want to do nothing other than relax and still be alert… (Abbot’s Notebook)

The singing underneath. Storytelling springs from silence. This is more important than ever amidst the digital din. And good stories are likewise all the more powerful when they take us by the hand and lead us away from the digital din. Even when they leverage digital storytelling tools to connect with their audience.

Last but not least, I’d like to close by asking you to consider the monks’ exemplary storytelling. Despite the irony of monastics deploying effective transmedia storytelling, the Christ in the Desert monks are master storytellers. Even Ira Glass might be able to learn a thing or two! :-)