Cambridge Forum; WGBH Forum Network; Storytelling in the Electronic Era (Part 1)

Thank you and welcome to the Cambridge forum discussing storytelling in the electronic age with odds bodkin and Maria to tar. I'm Sasha helper child psychiatrist and essayist. Nothing gets an audience's attention like those simple words let me tell you a story telling stories is an ancient art a holdover from the pre-literate human past stories passed on a culture's most important expressions and deepest spiritual values. Odd spot can scare voice and music filled storytelling style has been mesmerizing listeners for twenty four years. Mr Bodkin taught at Antioch New England graduate school. He's been featured as a teller at the National Storytelling Festival. He's performed twice at the White House and he's performed at Lincoln Center a company himself on the 12 string guitar Celtic car

piano and other instruments. He's produced 17 award winning audio recordings. I feel like I've known odds for a very long time. When my family was young and we would have long drives we would put in an odd spot can tape the stories were so compelling that if we arrived at the end of our long journey we would stay in the car until the story was over. Maria TAR is the John L. Lo professor of Germanic languages and literature at Harvard University. She teaches courses in the field of folklore and children's literature and in Germanic studies. She is author of two books of annotated folk stories and most recently she's published and chanted hunters the power of stories in childhood. Welcome to Cambridge form. It's an area I'm going to ask to start by telling a story.

Good evening how are you all good. Yes I'll use those words. Let me tell you the story of. An old tale from Sweden. A poor Swedish farmer steward on his new farm. Right there where he stood rode the Barney poster that his new heart and near it the cow shed where the cows slept at night. Now you would have thought. That a poor farmer having just been given a farm would have been a happy man.

But no this farmer's heart was filled with woe and worry because for 100 years the farm he had just been commanded to work by the Lord of the manor and all the little farms that had the bad luck Suzy went out into his apple orchards in September to pick the apples they would shrivel and fall to the ground. The pig looked like Sasha. Some of both and could give no poor bacon or ham. The cows would groan and into the buckets would squirt sour milk and the fields would grow a blight and all the wheat would die off to the earth. One hundred families had tried to survive a harvest and a winter there in 100 years. But they had all been driven off by hunger. The farm would give new food. And so you can imagine when this poor farmer was told that he with his wife and his two young children was the one hundred first to be told to work the unlucky farm he was worried

but he was a good hearted fellow and so as he stood on his farm one summer day he talked to him. Sometimes you talk to places when nobody's looking and he said hope that you don't give a bad look to me among family like you give to all the other farmers who live here. I don't know the farm. Never have I been here in the world in my life but I once heard something going it's going to get up there. Then the farmer jumped up and looked around her. I know who said little but there was no one near him. What kind of a forum is this. Bed. Whoever you are there ever you are. I'M CALLING ALL next spring for my life. I'll be here. Well for some reason that autumn harvest wasn't completely destroyed and was one pig the goof out enough for slaughter was one tree where all the

apples did none rot and they put away a bushel in the deep cellar beneath the planks of the kitchen. There was a cow they gave a few months of sweet milk. So the farmer's wife was able to put away some cheese and butter and one small plot this field did not grow the blight and they milled off a bit of wheat and so it looked as if this family didn't eat very much food each night. They would have enough food to last them the entire long Swedish winter and soon winter came. And the blankets of snow wrapped around his house but save inside he and his wife and his two children had enough to eat and then Yuletide came as it always does in the land of Sweden and since they had a little left over and he needed them badly his wife went out and bought her husband a new pair of boots that would beautiful. They

didn't have a smudge on them no mud no manure no scratches and he put them on and shove them up close to his fire and he realized that they twinkled in the light. And so he decided to wrap rags around his old boots and instead every night. Keeping those boots perfect put them on. Called them his supper boots and watched them twinkle. Would you pass in the world outside his door turned to mud. He threw great planks of oak in the issues of the barnyard and all seemed ordinary until one spring night as he and his wife and his two children were about to have their supper and all at once the door blew open who had been slammed against the wall. The children jumped up there's no they ran and they hid behind their mother's skirt that they're standing in the door was a little me. It's about a foot tall about a foot wide and he walked in and he said then how do you know how do you do it.

Frank did meet me here I am. Farmer looked and said yeah who are you. I'm an elf If you're fine. I thought all. The nice cold coming in the little man pointed to the door and closed by itself again the first time or two would make me appear for you first. The farmer said all of us that it will keep it about to have supper he want to stay for supper. Anybody would think about it much the little man jumped up onto the bench there by the table and began to point at the Food and said What's that. That's the ballpark. Yah you want a piece of the boy. Said the little man but instead of taking the slice is any polite guest will do. Little man took the entire piece for the family's supper and to his mouth like a hungry little man. My love do they have any more over there of that port. Nope no all

nobody. Slid further down in my what's called thought thoughts that loaf of bread. For the whole family. You want some of that for you very much said the little man and he took the entire loaf and crazy show it into his mouth. He's a video I love that we have any more of that do we. When suddenly the little man. Shot for the war and it opened up in court and the little mare flew out into the barnyard. The farmer ran to his door and stopped. He could see the little man. Flying all around his barnyard. Well the farmer said the man with the little man floated up to him and said Come with me. What we are going to do. And suddenly the farmer realized it was. His

farm. Real. Mortals never saw them. And yet. Each farmer in Sweden knew that beneath his farmstead somewhere one lived a small magical person who came up at night. Today about the barn and made things grow and this apparently was his goal no hope. He looked down to realize he was wearing his supper boots both can be the man I'm betting myself but I'm going to put on my ordinary bought books no no no no no no no you don't understand these are my supper boots he's muddy out there and does my Norton one of us more important than your books look at me farmer put little man. Coming so the men reluctantly stepped out onto one of the planks and it sank into the shoes and some of the mud ran up along the edges and almost touched the toes of his boots but didn't.

And the little man. Flew across the barnyard interleague hovered right in front of the cow shed where the cow slept at night. And to his dismay when the farmer saw a great billows of manure steam pouring out into the cool night air. Lit the match. I know you don't find the grey mare do you any of this in the loom and floated into the cow shed the doors put a little mud. These are my good boots there never be the same blue man. You know this is not Apartment man you're. Coming then good bye or dog was a fresh one thought one thing and very unhappily he walked into the cow shed and he followed the little man down the long row of cow rumps until

he saw that the limited stopped a tiny hole in the mud looked to be the barrel of a mouse or a bull perhaps. Here we are here's the door to my tea. I don't think I can feed on the little man even you have the night story in it. The little man put his tiny toe near the mud and. Event asst. Oh you don't. Go to them there. I'm calling the town he flew and he found himself quite unhurt in a tiny key little roots hung from the ceiling just above his head. A fire from the way in the corner but strangely it made no smoke. Was a little table little chair cups and plates and standing in the midst of all

of them was his farms. Welcome to marketing ya very much. You know I never knew this case was on the hearing. Right under the collar you know no one else does either now. You'll see that I'm going to get it for you. Well yeah the gift I forgot about the gift you know that is some board member just listen or I'm sorry why what why do you you know you took your hands I have to clean them. I'm going to do that. Farmer closed his eyes at me put out his hands and felt something warm in a bowl placed in them. He opened his eyes and he looked and all it was was a bowl of porridge. He didn't know quite what that meant and asked footage. He's my gift. You like porridge farmer. My favorite. Yeah very. Thank you very much. Happy spring. You ate my supper. I'll eat your porridge. Have

you got us a bone. The looming given the spoon but just as he was about to dip his spoon into the partridge. Something ripped into. What was that but something deep in here. Yeah all these debt was stupid from the ceiling up and there is. No. Now little money. Do you know that you've got a monoid that have been from your ceiling. The little man looked at him and said straight to the ceiling. They've been on the table and the farmer come when I want to commend you on the sibilant in this case a five hundred eighty one years longer than your lover left me years ago a farmer. Since it has been like it crops up to make the chemical sour

like millet porridge. Farmer looked at him and said. Or a sad story. Or if it a moment that a moment he sees a gift after all. Little man you know there are no buts my father and I do things that I haven't done my farm for the first two minutes to look at their eyes. I move the way I do clean up all the manure either rebuild the building off into the stream so that it no longer come in but I've been in your home anymore. Would that make you happy. Nichol despite not knowing. Well the little man seemed to regard him and then he said he'd. Agreed. I think this is the best gift I had in my whole life. May I go you make the cold there Michael.

I'm done with all the little man and the farmer put his foot on the ladder and. Got the flu and he landed Luckily feet down amongst the cows but he didn't care about his fancy boots anymore. He went running out. He told his wife the good news and true to his word. As soon as the mud dried he moved the cow shed away and according to this old story from Sweden from that day on if you went out into his orchards in September to pick apples they would swell up and grow glossy and fall to your head. The pigs with the bear. In the district the cows gave bucket or one bucket of milk half of which was cream. Some of which churned itself to butter. And the fields were gold. As far as you can see so did any of you train folks from Cambridge ever move into a new place. As a matter of there's never been a place there before. Take a moment to say hello to the earth its its own.

When no one's looking. But you never know who might have been there. Before you. Lord thank you beautiful. THANK YOU THANK YOU GOD. Thanks. OK. And then we'll hear from Maria. OK. Well there are storytellers teachers and enchanters. And it's you know I've been an enchanter tonight and a storyteller and I'm afraid that leaves me as the teacher

which is my role this evening. It was just fabulous to hear you in person and I'm reminded of how stories affect not just the brain and the heart but also that the spinal cord that little spot in the spinal cord. So thank you for a magical story. This is an evening of storytelling and I can't help but feel that the spirit of storytelling is not completely here although maybe maybe indeed Brother Blue whom I think of on this occasion as I hear you is with us tonight and I just want to tip my hat and pay tribute to him. It was always such a supportive warm and welcoming presence on occasions like this and we miss him terribly and I wanted to mention my experience start with my experience

of stories of love which Sasha kindly sent to me which I played in the car over the weekend. This is. Telling the story of Dame Ragnall not a story that I knew but I see some smiles of recognition and I listen to this not just the voice but the sound effects which you heard the music. It's sort of that Wagnerian total work of art and. I am not a fan of audio books so I worried. Oh and I want to love this will I. And indeed I did. And it reminded me of how different the storytelling experience is from the audio book. That is this is you know obviously more than a really it just comes alive you brought the story alive for me. And I was particularly moved by it because I had been teaching beauty in the Beast

stories in my course on the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. And I had challenge the students to go out and find some stories not beauty in the Beast stories but handsome and the Beast us that is stories. Like that wanted Dame Ragnall where you have a very handsome hero and a loathly lady. And just tantalizing I can't answer the question for you because I don't want to give the story away but the question is What do women want. And that question is answered in the course of this wonderful narrative. So thank you for that experience for that enlivening experience. I want to talk about all kinds of different media but I won't talk for too long because it will be wonderful to hear your questions and to talk about the presentation. But I wanted to mention that I bought a Kindle last week. I

took the plunge. I decided I had to know what this was like. And the Kindle came in it. Well actually the Kindle came in one box and then the Kindle cover came in another box. What does anyone else here have a Kindle. Is anyone else reading with a Kindle. Or a new book I shouldn't just refer to Amazon. Well in any case if you buy one you will pull the tab here and unfortunately through the tab away. But the words on the tab are. Once upon a time. And it struck me as so extraordinary that here's this sophisticated instrument for reading this piece of technology that is quite sophisticated. That then refers to oral storytelling that tries to connect with aural storytelling with the fairy tales of olden times. And then I was even more astonished when I opened this and got a definition of

Kindle and we get the transitive verb to set on fire to inspire or stir up. And then the intransitive form of Kindle which is to catch fire and become animated. So again I think really tried to connect with the storytelling experience of Once Upon A Time. What are how our ancestors told stories and how the reading experience to animates you lights you up. Although I don't think I quite see the. Kind of inspiration that breath of inspiration that animating force that we got from from your story. One of the things I also noticed in reading with a Kindle is that the text disappears so it's so different from the reading of a book where you sort of feel just because the material presents of the book is still there that you somehow have

the story and I were talking about how different technologies rewire your brain. And I'm not sure that I'm completely happy with the way my brain got rewired as I was reading the Kindle but. I think we today we have so many so-called delivery systems for stories. I hate that term but it's one that we hear now all the time these different sorts of delivery systems. And we get the flow of content across multiple media platforms. In other words there are many different ways to access a story and we heard one tonight and you have the electronic media at the other extreme. So we're living in this age of transition. And I say that being aware that every age is an age of transition in a way. If you go

back to Plato you discover that there's huge anxiety about print culture about writing not about print culture but just about writing and why. Because writing will destroy memory. That is there are these great advantages to writing. It will help you memorize things. It will give you wisdom but also what is the downside. The teacher will disappear. And also instead of internalizing things you begin to rely on these little black marks on a page. You rely on things that are outside your self. But I think what is really important about Plato's discussion is that he reminds us of the importance of an embodied presence. The teacher the storyteller the Enchanter and how that

experience can become important to us. So there are ways in which of course the existence of many different media platforms has a democratizing effect. And there are many critics like Henry Jenkins for example who will tell us about how all these different forms of new media. Create communities they can be used to create communities that it's not just top down. It's not just corporations that have control of the media but it's also bottom up bottom up being something like YouTube. What I worry about in that context is that there's such an emphasis on monetizing and on creating franchises and on branding things rather than creating a community. So on an upbeat note I'll just close by saying why I think there will always

be storytellers. And first of all human curiosity. We always want to get the story. Our curiosity is aroused with those words once upon a time or. The reasonable facsimiles of Once Upon A Time. And then we take those stories and we fiercely we ferociously repeat them. We're always creating new versions. The beauty and the Beast story. I was so astonished by the fact that you know it seems sometimes the storytellers were so precious and and in certain ways I think they got gender in ways that we still don't get today. That story reminded me of that how how the wisdom of the storytellers is always ahead of the culture in ways. And then the importance of humor of the human presence and I think here in this context a rather unlikely Association

but the giver and Lois Lowry is a novel of that title. Who is the keeper of cultural memory and the last person who knows who has knowledge and who has wisdom. And I think that we always want to have multiple givers not just one giver but many givers who are passing on our cultural stories and giving us the wisdom of past ages. So I think we will open things up for him. I'll sit here and if you want to sit we can have a discussion. Basically when I think about you your opening made me think about bedtime stories and I mentioned odds and you mention in a bedtime story idea in an email so I'll just tell the audience I told odds it's possible he's put millions of children to bed many nights although he was unaware of it because they

had their parents plugged his CD in as they were tucked into bed. It seems to me this is a bonus because they get to hear odds bodkin and go to sleep. The downside is the parent may rush off to the kitchen to do the dishes. Maria mentioned to me that she can't imagine cuddling with a candle at bedtime or giving a child a candle to hold to read and go to sleep with. So I was just wondering about your thoughts about the electronic age and bedtime stories. Oh I think that there is no substitute for a parent curling up with a child and reading a story. There is absolutely no substitute and I think I have a flash of guilt if I've played the role of coming between that that bond. But then again I was a parent and I had three boys and sometimes I was too exhausted to do much of

anything. Having told stories to audiences of children all day and so was happy on occasion to have something another story to tell a Good friends never meet whose CD's we listen to but we listen to other storytellers. The boys did when they sometimes went to bed and sometimes I'd tell them long saga starring themselves in the badly hidden alter egos which they really liked. But there is I don't think a substitute for that parent will bond. Do you think. Well thank you for your willingness to admit that sometimes you were too exhausted to read or to tell a story. And so it's wonderful to have other options. But I completely agree there is nothing like the contact zone created through a story. And certainly one would hope yes. Turn on. Or put that CV in and listen with your child listen to the story because it is in that context zone when you're talking about the tale and about the

perils and possibility is that it opens up about its happily ever after and how that can be refashioned or reshaped that you really get a kind of closeness. As for the Kindle I have to admit I did sort of cuddle up with something as a way. You know it just feels slightly different but it's. Rather like a book in many ways. So on my drive down today I heard a piece on NPR that in another two years there will be new readers that open up like a book and you can actually pull the pages across with the touch screen. So it's there it's there it's they seem to be working toward the book like experience. Right. Within I think the hope is that we can still keep the book that is there isn't a substitute for that that experience you know

exactly where you are. And I think there's something to be said for the materiality of that usually. I mean at one of the things I love about storytelling is that you can make something from nothing that is you know it's just too obviously with you it's also music and sound effects and all of that but. There's a beauty to that. And. I remember my children always love the stories that I made up. They always wanted to hear something that was you know my own story which then became their own story. And ODs I know you teach at St. Anselm's College and you were teaching the Iliad is that right. I performed the Iliad book one each year for the entire freshman class. OK. And it was the goal of that. A performance or for them to learn the Iliad. Well they're charged with reading the Iliad as freshman there.

And for a lot of modern young. Digital Natives to to delve into such a dense epic poetry and to make sense of it is difficult. So my role is simply as a popularizer I have an hour long performance of The Iliad book one the great argument between Agamemnon and Achilles and all the intrigue that goes on and I preface it with the apple of discord with and the Judgment of Paris on Mount Ida. So by the time they've heard this they have characters and they have mental images at work in their minds which some of the students have reported continue to be animated as if they have an inner motion picture going when they delve into the actual text. So it can text to Eliza's it for them to say or catalytic but the book in a way I mean certainly you're using modern language and. And music and character voices you know.

Now you've created a digital game and I know that storytelling is involved. Would you mind telling people about that. And also I'm not sure if Marie isn't aware of it. I think of the different sorts of storytelling that there are. I offered you an oral presentation and that's probably if you look back into into prehistory the earliest form of the telling of the story the idea of course being that you the listener have a chance to create your own mental imagery from the story and hopefully be entertained and then you have you know 5000 years ago you have the first hieroglyphic languages you have that trans formation of the the utterance into the symbol whether it's in Arabic later or or whether it is in cuniform early languages or hieroglyphics and that was this interesting transitional period where the the spoken utterance was made writ. And then of course you had the advent of film which again revolutionized the storytellers

art. Then you have the introduction of the interactive digital game which I would submit to you is even more of a revolution of the storytellers art and I'd love to come back to whether if you play it a digital game whether what you've experience as a first person player is a story or is it something else. I'd be very interested in your opinions on that as well. And so then finally we arrived at a point where what we're trying to do is to create a sort of story game where it's called an augmented reality game where you're not only playing with a guy with something that's coming from a machine that you're listening to you're also imagining a story that you're a part of and you're using your five senses. In this case a fine art museum and examining works of art so that there is another space in which to experience the story

and it's the sort of interesting multiform space where. Part of it is the real world. That's where the augmented reality of the definition of of gameplay comes from and then there's also the learning of fine art and figuring of clues and then the feeling is if you're immersed in an adventure and I don't know whether that is a story or not either but it's certainly a narrative driven experience and this is called the van assures. It's called the vanish for us as well as be across the country museums now. Well we're hopeful of that. We are presenting it to museums we tested it at the Peabody Essex Museum developed it with them and tested it there and it worked quite well. Summary I was wondering from Enchanted hunters if I understood correctly. Marshall McLuhan was worried that print might lead to isolation. Is that right. Or I might have gotten it wrong but I wondered if you thought he might be reassured by book clubs as a social phenomenon.

BI Oh definitely all the communities that are formed around books around reading Harry Potter. Look at that stuff. I mean children talk to each other about their reading experience they. I notice that the freshman in my classes bond with each other by talking about the Harry Potter books or the film set and they go see the films together. So there are these communities created by books and they'll continue to be created. There are Steve Johnson tells us that reading is just such a scripted and choreographed experience and you know it's it in isolation. But it's true you may be alone with the book for a while but then you always go out and talk about it. It also becomes part of your identity. So even if you're not talking about the book there are bits and pieces of it there that you've internalized that you then take to the outside world to your

relationships with real people. I sometimes think the characters I encounter in books are more real more real I know their minds better than the people that I know in real life. Yeah I can read their minds and get inside their heads. And I was thinking about the storytelling vs. book reading that you were mentioning and maybe you could both comment on this but James Dale I think did all the Harry Potter books and he just read the stories but in different voices. And he's very talented and he captures you in a way. But I found my mind wandering when I listened. But I I never found my mind wandering when I listened to a story teller and my OD's has a theory about why that might be. I wonder if you could both comment on why storytelling might grip in a better way like superglue then an actor reading

every word of a text. Well once in a workshop. A teacher told me a story about her students when she had gone from reading a book to telling a story. And they said oh please read another book from your face. And that stuck with me for hearers. I think that there's something about when the storyteller is is bringing forth language. That is an elemental. It's sort of an elemental fire to witness it and hopefully it is. And how many of you can read. I'll ask you a question the audience without hearing a little voice in your mind a little facsimile of your own voice particularly when you begin to read. I mean if you can read without hearing a voice. Right. You you're not alone. And just about

everyone with the small percentage of people who will say I just go directly from those words symbols on the page to mental imagery. I just it's direct projection. But for all of you at least it seems that storytelling needs to be taking place even it's even if it's your own inner voice telling you the story it's taking place even in the act of reading. And my theory is that is that that going back to the advent of language and the utterance that part of our brain the earlier part of our brain is it is wired for the utterance. Even babies in the third trimester in the womb will twitch in very predictable ways when the phonemes of 50 some odd phonemes of language are beamed in to where they are. And scientists have actually watched them sort of hardwiring for the utterances of human speech. Think how many many millennia piled back into time people simply uttered to one another rather than. Had the

written word. So I think evolutionary really it makes good sense that there's an ancient part of the brain that waits for the voice. As as I think all of you might have just attested to by the fact that you're a hero and as you read I think it's just a biophysical fossil sort of way. The fight or flight response might be considered by a physical fossil before Philip Pullman became a successful writer the author of His Dark Materials. He was a school teacher and he used to read to his students what he discovered was that they were all falling asleep and they weren't paying attention. So you started telling them the story of The Odyssey. And it was I think that experience that taught him about the rhythms of words of stories that enabled him to become a writer. So this is an odd way in which I think of Salman Rushdie who tells us that

watching the MGM film The Wizard of Oz made him a writer. And right I do think that there's something extraordinary about Pullman's use of why there is a sense that he is telling you this that you can almost visualize him telling the story. But how much of a role do you think music plays in. Because I think that is so important in your presentation. The not just the acoustical but the visual effect of you applying it. I cannot answer that other than it's the only way that I know how to tell stories I just love music and and find that. Also watching the Wizard of Oz as a little boy I think it made me want to be a storyteller who it added music to the story. I don't know whether I do it whether it's some for some people it's a distraction for others. It's an enhancement and it's an very

individual sort of of of question to ask someone. But I just enjoy running that. The two muses I think will take me. It's really fun. I'd like you both to also comment. It seems to me when reading is taught in elementary school there's no component of storytelling. You know when you start to learn to read in first grade or second year kindergarten or first grade. I wondered if it might enhance learning to read. If storytelling were somehow worked into the educational process and then in thinking about that I wondered if Show and Tell might be children's initiation into storytelling but that that would not then be applied to learning to read but more to perhaps social interaction. Oh well yeah I think I'm a great believer in show and tell and if you don't I. As I heard you speak I immediately thought of that

experience flashback to grade school on the terror of bringing in an object and having to talk about it. But I you know you notice that I did a little show and tell and maybe there is something reassuring. Once you've become accustomed to that mode through the school experience it sort of stays with you. I mean there's. I was just use that phrase making something out of nothing but maybe occasionally you need something to create a story some little talisman or it could be almost nothing like that cardboard box. But it's nice for those of us who are not the professionals to hold on to something. I think there's a great yawning gulf in American education. I think storytelling should be central to the early literacy experience.

I know that I've worked with a lot of people who are in the Steiner schools Rudolf Steiner schools Walder schools and storytelling is and is a key central omnipresent form of education. And I think it is and I don't know if that that would substitute for sort of a broad based American education but I think at some point there would be a place where children if they could learn to stand up and speak and tell a story from beginning middle to the end all through the rest of their lives they would have that. Ability to call forth their thoughts and to imagine particularly we haven't really talked much about the imaginative act and what that may well. Be sort of waffled. Nowadays by a lot by digital experience you see very kindly sent me a very interesting book called I brain lives about the

cognitive rewiring of even people my age who for the very first time have gotten a chance to google something and what they found is that at first it was very odd for them but these would be called a digital immigrants as opposed to digital natives and the digital immigrants or persons who came to the to the computer experience not from birth and where it were a vanishing breed because it will very soon be once this generation is passed that all everyone be digital natives have grown up doing this. Being in constant communication with all manner of people and the world and then you have Kurtzweil in the singularity where we'll have chips in our brain we can be online constantly. But that may or may not happen of but. But I think that there's a question to be asked which is what is the value of natural the natural imaginative act. And is that.

It's I know it's not gone because perform for modern kids all the time and they listen and they're able to imagine. But is it in danger of of just being never accessed and at refining slightly. Just because a month or so the mode in which stories are being delivered what you think. Well I'm right just in that communication issue actually because I think there are you know storytellers it takes a special gift a talent to have that not everyone has that kind of imagination. They may have other types of it of ways of applying their imagination but it seems to me an age of cyber intimacy where so many of your relationships are mediated they're not direct that somehow exchanging stories direct you know learning how to tell your story even if you don't do it with. The kinds of electrifying effects that you use or.

If you aren't the greatest storyteller. It's just so important getting getting to that and the storytellers I think inspire us. But I don't think that you know everyone has that kind of that kind of gift. And it's true that they could develop it but I doubt that they just as you know many people will never learn how to play the harp. And yet it's expected of of all children to learn how to read and to comprehend you know. So I think they're they're they're they're they're close but I agree with you. I'm a very very sort of odd case in this in the storytelling field in that the music is is there but the most most storytellers will not use music. I think that it's just it's just a stylistic approach but let me go back to

back to the nature of imagination particularly in the in the the goup the act of God of Google and the rewiring of the brain. I'm curious what do you think. Does anyone have a have a thought or does anyone really know a lot about this would be willing to work to share their their knowledge with us about it. Because it's it's a question that certainly I have. I think there are people who have studied this and who have who are suggesting that there is a rewiring of the brain when information is accessed in a fashion that is different from the linear narration. When you start from a central point and you can jump out into a variety of different places much like the Google list of that may take you by a circuitous route back to the place you would have got to very quickly by narration or vice a versa. There are

people who are looking at these questions and I think that there is a difference. They they posit that there is a difference. Much like you posit there is a difference and there's probably a lot more research to be done before anybody is really certain what happens. But I'd like to ask you a question both a question and I'm sorry I'm jumping in here but I'm here so I'm going to ask this question. And that is about the satisfaction that narrative provides. There is something very satisfying about hearing let me tell you a story. No matter what you're doing you will sit in your audience's ears will perk up your own ears will perk up. If instead of getting a list of facts you're going to get a story with the beginning as you said in the middle and an end. And even if we can't all become storytellers as hearers as learners as

listeners as readers I think we all appreciate that way of organizing information that narrative provides. And I wonder if you would comment on that. And particularly in light of the way information can be provided in the electronic age which is very different from the traditional ordering that narration provides. While should be good. That's a tall order. I think there's something about narrative. That creates the desire to know more. What happened next. And then if it's a good story why did that happen. And that's why stories seem to be so important for children in many children's books. You begin with the bored child the child with nothing to

do. That's a terrible tragedy the idea that the child is not engaged by the environment and is sitting by the riverbank falling asleep because the book that Alice in Wonderland as the book that Alice is reading has no pictures or conversations. So there's the bored child and. A good story that awakens intellectual curiosity is. So is so import because one book leads to another. And. I should to should modify one thing that I said and that is you know your storytelling. There is a certain content Tahj of quality to storytelling. And when I showed that CD and described the experience of communicating the story that you told to the students in the middle of that I did something I don't I'm not at all a storyteller but I was so inspired by your story that I began to tell it

you know as I say and look what happened. And you know it was almost as if the muse a very weak muse a pale imitation head had inspired me because I had been so moved by the story. So you know it's it's not only that the book's wonderful stories arouse curiosity what happens next and why but also they create a kind of. Memetic to that well I shouldn't call it memetic but the desire to imitate. I want to write something or tell something that is as sensational and that will move you. That will really reach your heart and soul. I go back to the question of whether in this latest story delivery system terrifying words I think. The digital game whether that though whether a story that you experience

as you are playing a first person game of some sort is a story I was reading as refreshing my thoughts about Joseph Campbell the great mythologists tracking of what he called the Mano myth with 17 different stages that seem to inform not so much the will even a fairy tale but but the sort of the more mythic side of stories the Odyssey and the large of Gilgamesh great old ancient ponderous tales. And each of them has you know you have the call to adventure then the hero goes off. Then there are there that there's the descend usually into the underworld or the belly of the beast and you emerge then you you meet the beautiful of the woman who is either the seductress but she's also the earth. And then you move through all these various interesting and wondrous steps that that are part of at least Campbell's sort of

scansion across the mythic. And what I wonder about is whether in modern video games whether the designers have built those sorts of pulses in and I don't I haven't played enough of them to know but I would think that having those pulses built in there would be very very important to to the to the player you have for the first time in history instead of oh I'm reading about this great hero and I'm vicariously identifying with this great hero you have now. I am discreet hero. I am in the eyes of this great hero and I'm being told by the game that I am indeed this great hero. I think there's a very interesting shift there that I don't that I don't know. Is it up has is precedented at all and we'll see what develops. I guess in terms of your idea about teaching or not really

teaching but accessing imagination and maybe helping it develop. And the question would be does everybody have imagination. And if so then how come they're not using it. And I'm wondering then Maria with what you were addressing is maybe the question of why shouldn't be answered. Maybe if the reader is left with an unanswered question then they have to tug on their imagination. So maybe seek will squash imagination. So the giver was followed by two other books and the giver ends with a little boy rescuing an infant. And you don't know if they're going to make it or freeze to death and you find out in the third book. Why maybe you shouldn't. Maybe we'd all be better for using our own minds. Well you can always create the fourth book OK. There's never enough. The great thing

about narrative is there it really doesn't even the happily ever after of fairy tales. There's always a sequel. There is so you know when you add up what happened then and you know if in fact Bluebeard is the story of what happens after the happily ever after. That's one possibility. But then there are other other sequels so I don't worry about that about it and maybe you know in a way we should distinguish between say literary imagination and curiosity and other types of imagination. But I wonder if there are any other storytellers in the audience either.