Storytelling in the digital age
Sep. 24th, 2020 08:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thanateThe year that I was in fourth grade my parents took me to the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, Tennessee. (This happened many years; it involved missing a couple days of school and a long drive there and back, but storytelling was their thing, and moderately educational. The year previous I had stayed up late to go to Diane Wolkstein's telling of Inanna, even at age 8 fascinated by ancient myths translated from forgotten languages.) Anyway, that year I was the year that Robin Williamson was one of the feature tellers, and he was one of the people we followed from stage to stage trying to make sure we heard as many of the stories he had to tell as possible.
According to the internet, Robin Williamson more known for being a folk musician, but in my idiosyncratic orbit he was a harper and teller of myths and legends from the British Isles. We bought his story tapes and a couple years later when I had a tape player in my room, those were some of the things I listened to most. Not quite to the extent of my child's audiobook fixation, but enough that phrases and cadences are part of my background context.
So far as I've been able to determine, none of his story tapes were ever digitized. Some of them are in his book, alternately called The Wise and Foolish Tongue or The Craneskin Bag depending on which side of the ocean it was printed on, but I quoted Michael Scott's demon to my child the other day ("Give me work, or I will rend thee") and then couldn't remember the wording of the anecdote beyond "Michael Scott summoned a demon once..." When I went to look it up, I discovered that the story as included in the book is missing a whole bunch of middle bits, the demon included. Possibly some day in the post-pandemic world I'll be able to use my mother's stereo set-up to bootleg digitize any of the tapes that haven't died yet and share them with my kid.
But. Well. She got her autoplayer (Alexa) confiscated for the rest of the week for problematic behavior, and so had to resort to a CD for bedtime, and she's picked her favorite of my father's storytelling CDs to listen to. So that's probably ok, too.
According to the internet, Robin Williamson more known for being a folk musician, but in my idiosyncratic orbit he was a harper and teller of myths and legends from the British Isles. We bought his story tapes and a couple years later when I had a tape player in my room, those were some of the things I listened to most. Not quite to the extent of my child's audiobook fixation, but enough that phrases and cadences are part of my background context.
So far as I've been able to determine, none of his story tapes were ever digitized. Some of them are in his book, alternately called The Wise and Foolish Tongue or The Craneskin Bag depending on which side of the ocean it was printed on, but I quoted Michael Scott's demon to my child the other day ("Give me work, or I will rend thee") and then couldn't remember the wording of the anecdote beyond "Michael Scott summoned a demon once..." When I went to look it up, I discovered that the story as included in the book is missing a whole bunch of middle bits, the demon included. Possibly some day in the post-pandemic world I'll be able to use my mother's stereo set-up to bootleg digitize any of the tapes that haven't died yet and share them with my kid.
But. Well. She got her autoplayer (Alexa) confiscated for the rest of the week for problematic behavior, and so had to resort to a CD for bedtime, and she's picked her favorite of my father's storytelling CDs to listen to. So that's probably ok, too.