Years ago (2001 or 2002), before I had children or a house payment, a storyteller came to town and offered a workshop.
Turns out I had an aptitude for Storytelling. I thought I’d found the medium to change the world.
Then I started having children (three between 1/03 and 5/06), and while I continued to read and love folktales (and their creators), the opportunity to share them orally was distressingly rare.
Primarily because the stories that wrapped up my heart were not (to put it carefully) children’s stories, I had to create any opportunities to share, and part of that challenge was convincing adults the value of listening to stories after a certain age.
Storytelling is an activity our culture ties to pre-literacy, and because so many define that mathematically, the under-five crowd and their parents are the only listeners who automatically assume storytelling is for them.
Leaving (formal, call-it-what-it-is) storytelling behind is sometimes treated as a mark of maturity, and that disappoints me, because there are stories that older children and adults should hear.
Several months of the original (written only) Tuesday Tales are available at my personal blog, Untangling Tales.
The Violinist and the Master is an example of one of those “not for [little] kids” stories, and you know why in the first line:
“In a concentration camp in Poland…”
It is the first in a collection of short stories by Gary Schmidt titled Mara’s Stories: glimmers in the darkness.
I found the book at my local library, and (perhaps especially because they are framed as though they are being told aloud), I felt a deep affinity to them, and contacted Gary to ask if I could perform them. He graciously agreed, later affirming his permission to record them as I tell them (modified for oral presentation) and share them on my blog.
Thank you so much, Mr. Schmidt!
Of all the stories, this is the one I probably have the deepest connection to. I am a musician, and interact with many musicians. More than once I’ve asked for 10 minutes to do a spontaneous sharing of this piece, just because I sense it will be appreciated.
Thank you for listening to a new breath of Tuesday Tales.