Last summer I gave a keynote at the National Storytelling Conference in Cincinnati sponsored by the National Storytelling Network (NSN). For various reasons (which I’ll go into in another post), I’ve held off on making it available until now – apologies to those who asked a while ago. The wheels grind slow, but they do grind.
I know that NSN is planning on making the audio of this available, as well as other sessions at the conference. You can look at their web page (www.storynet.org/)
Because it’s a long talk, I’ve embedded it here as a pdf you can download. There are probably typos and grammatical errors in it – it’s a draft of the talk I gave and I went through it, but I have a noticeable inattention to detail on things like this. I’ve already gotten a bunch of comments from people after the speech, and there are things to quibble about in it – but I’m including it warts and all.
In the talk, I challenge all parties at the storytelling table to do a better job – our national and regional organizations as well as individuals. I do believe we are at a crossroads in how storytelling as an art form will be viewed in this culture, and we can make choices about how we want things to be. I’m particularly interested in how storytelling is viewed in the arts world, and propose that we see storytelling as a “seed art” and make an attempt at defining what that means more clearly. Were we to gain some recognition by arts organization about our value and legitimacy, I think it would really help in the development of storytelling excellence.
I’m not going to write anymore here – there’s enough in the speech. Enjoy.
Click Bill Harley Keynote NSN 2012 for pdf of speech
Thank you for sharing this as I’m fascinated with the art of storytelling. I will listen and hopefully learn from your speech. Then I will take a nap.
Hi Bill, I’ve heard about this talk although I wasn’t present in Cincinnati; thank you for uploading it here. Read through, couldn’t agree more than I do already. Chapeau, although I’m not sure it’s enough if storytellers won’t start acting towards these ideas.
Regards,
Bill, I was struck with your statement that storytelling is “an intimate response to an impersonal culture.” Particularly in the United States, as a society we crave that intimacy but seem to have forgotten how to achieve it. We splash the basest details of people’s personal lives on TV and movie screens, in magazines and across the web, and we consume those details in the hope that we’re making intimate contact with others. But we’re not. It’s a bastardized attempt to feel closer to one another, but it fails miserably, because there’s no content; no closeness; no real intimacy. Like food with empty calories, we consume more and more of it, because we’re not getting what we need. So we scan the TV and jump from website to website in the fervent hope that the next mouse click will provide the missing pieces that will help us make sense of everything.
Storytelling is an antidote to this kind of false intimacy. Just as humans need physical touch to thrive, we also need the intimate closeness of community to thrive. Study upon study has shown that those of us with that kind of ”societal touch” live longer, healthier, happier lives. Storytelling is the means by which we are touched by words. And that’s valuable for at least a couple of reasons.
First, storytellers bring us physically together, in a sacred space, to remind us of our common humanity; to offer insights into other lives; and to help us find the context that is so necessary to happy, healthy interaction with all those different people we bump into every day. During a story, that disparate audience, whether it be a few people or a thousand, shares laughter and tears—real human feelings–which brings us closer together. And those feelings carry over into our everyday lives.
Second, at the same time, the story is touching points of our own experience that are unique to our own unique private lives—raising long-buried memories, challenging prejudices, tickling funny bones, and exorcising demons. If the storyteller is a keen observer, a practiced presenter, and brave enough to be honest, audience members will go away changed. Maybe a little, and maybe a lot, and maybe just for a time, but changed. In a culture that’s slipping ever closer to a steady diet of bread and circuses, that’s a radical and valuable thing. It’s what moves us forward as a society together, instead of slipping into complacency.
So yes, storytelling provides a great deal of value to us, both as a society and as individuals. However, as you mention, the recognition of that value and the legitimacy that you discuss seeps away as the definition of “storytelling” becomes diluted by cable networks and websites that simply need “content” to bring users to sites so they can sell them things.
So how is the value of storytelling restored in the public consciousness? It’s a big challenge. Recognition by large arts organizations (with commensurate funding) would certainly help to legitimize the art form in the eyes of a broader society, but it’s important that the lone wolves practicing it remain lone wolves.
Your idea of a storytelling school, is also intriguing. In keeping with your idea of storytelling being a “seed art,” how about having the school be part of a larger art school, where storytellers interact with painters, musicians, writers, sculptors, as well as other storytellers? The state of many fiction writing schools, where fiction writing students talk with other fiction writing students and fiction writing professors about fiction writing and then write similar fiction, should be a cautionary tale. It might help to talk about not only the turpentine, but also the rosin and the blowtorch.
Thanks for your speech, and for continuing to practice, explore, and support storytelling!
Thanks Mark. Well said!
Nice work, Bill. As someone in a related industry, I particularly resonated with your comments on the digital revolution–the forces behind selling platforms devalue content. You express that cogently and concisely. Thank you for all the food for thought.