In Search of Jack Frost

Jack Frost Design 1_8_2016

Who is Jack Frost?? I've been wondering for some time. A few days ago Jack's first winter paintings appeared on our windows and I marveled at this dexterous and obviously brilliant A.D.D. artist. I began writing about him, imagining his crackly laugh that sounds like the rapid shattering of the delicate ice on deeper pools. I wondered where he lived, what he looked like.

This morning I was rewarded! If I believed in magic, I might say Jack knew I was writing about him!  My car was frost-designed with an intricate flowery pattern while all the other cars were a simple sheet of grey! Ah, Jack! It is going to an enjoyable hunt trying to pin you down!!

In Search of Jack Frost

Library as Labyrinth

Decided to take my own advice on rambling through books to see if fortune and serendipity would smile on me. I was in downtown Boston, so entered the Boston Public Libraries lions and marble staircase up to the research wing of the BPL trying to find my way to the "hidden stacks." The hidden stacks of books that you must call up into the light of day. I've long wanted to peruse the Ethnographic studies of the folktales and folklore of the Native American people- I know they are in the "stacks!" I was sent along from info desk to info desk - like hearing from the Doormen in the Wizard of Oz... deeper and deeper into the heart of the research area and then catapulted out into some other unusual area, led by the whispers of polka dotted librarians, past the research books on folktales and folklore. And finally, after scooping up a travel book that I hope will lead me to the Monarch migration in Mexico I found two writers who spoke to me. Nan Phifer's "Writing your Spiritual Autobiography" (she takes prompts to such an articulate level) and Thomas Moore "The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life."  His writings on sacred space and nature were immediately close to my heart. When a book is well-written it is like meeting a kindred spirit who can shed light on your search and companion you in your work.

New Year's Synchronisity!

A few years ago I had a "First Night" storytelling event where I wanted to tell not just any story but at least one story specifically related to our current New Year's Eve. I had never recalled seeing anything like that and was pretty sure I wouldn't find something old and traditional considering the relative "newness" of this focus on January 1st being the New Year. Still I went in search- the old fashioned way!!
 
Thinking to myself that perhaps I would find the right story if I let my "fingers do the walking," I went over to my bookcase of collections of traditional tales. Ran my fingers over the volumes I had perused so many times, finally lingering over "A Thorn in the King's Foot: Scottish Traveling Tales." I pulled out the book, closed my eyes and opened the book to the story "Auld Father Time and the Henwife" the only traditional New Year's tale I have seen before and since! In it Father Time grows younger and younger till at last he is a baby! Truly a New Year's story with the archetypes we associate with the New Year. The old man and the baby.

Carl Jung said, "The greatest number of spontaneous synchronistic phenomena I have observed have a direct connection with an archetype."



See related previous post on "Soul and Old Wooden Spoons"

Soul and Old Wooden Spoons

At one of his wonderful presentations on poetry and the inner life, Robert Bly once said, "Soul resides in old wooden spoons." And doesn't it though! Soul, character, life, years of being stirred of being handled. As a storyteller in the internet age I say, "Soul resides in books," and I want to encourage tellers to still look for stories there. Grow their collections- don't give up that path. When we search for our stories via internet or through a storytelling email group we are asking for the stories in order to fulfill a topic or a need. Already we have prepared the wrapping, the binding that may keep the story from saying what it truly would like to say to us. In that way, what we find may not give us what we need, even though it is a need-based search! 'I need a story that teaches violence prevention.' or 'I need a story that I can use from the Chinese culture.' The search then takes place with that lens in mind and on internet sites where the stories are splayed and displayed and digitally categorized. If you are lucky, the stories will still have some earth clinging to them, there will be notes about the sources and more variations you can track down. But I still believe in looking for stories over decades, 'book-hunting' in barns, cast-off collections at yard sales and finding stories in random odd places. Turning them over in the hand and then the mind and wondering what they might hold. What they are saying...who warmed them with their breath over time? "Soul Resides in Books."

See my related blog- New Year Synchronicity

Halloween on the USS Constitution!

Had shows at Boston museums this weekend, visiting them for the first time. On the USS Constitution, families scrambled down tiny stairs to the bottom deck (not seen in this photo!) for my Halloween stories where the ceilings were so low I kept catching my witches hat on the beams. Answer: The witch becomes ever more and more stooped!

a golden thread....

My Golden Thread workshops will be drawing on what I have learned in over thirty years of experience working with traditional stories, bringing them to life for a variety of audiences. In the course of this work I've studied a variety of writers and thinkers. Historians of religion, anthropologists, Jungian scholars and whenever possible listening to the voices of the indigenous- those who grew up in the old ways.

By now my approach to traditional tales is deeply intuitive. When I enter a sacred area, like that of myth, I truly feel I am entering a very particular world with certain rules and possibilities of expression. The same is true with fairy tales, animal fables and legends each have their own rules and their secrets are best unlocked by following a certain path.  Their classifications are important only so much as they are sign posts pointing the way to the proper approach. When you revive a fairy tale you do not treat it in the same way as a myth. You would not approach a queen in the same way as a shepherdess!

Now I want to help others discover the unbelievable depth that can be found in these old tales- thus this series of workshops called The Golden Thread: Finding Meaning in Traditional Tales. Each workshop series focuses on a different kind of traditional tale. The first journeys have been into the landscape of fairy tales. To deepen the work with fairy tales I have taken cues from dream analysis, amplification of symbols, Michael Chekov's gestural work and cultural explorations. The tellings that have resulted from the classes so far has been extraordinary.
The newest version of the workshop will begin this October 7th, 2015 on Wednesday evenings. The Golden Thread: Finding Meaning in Traditional Tales: Fairy tales

Training

 

My teacher and inspiration was the late Zbigniew Cynkutis, one of the founding members of the ground-breaking Polish Laboratory Theatre. He once said, "We train so that when the moment arises we can find something new instead of following the path of what we know already." 
 
Training has always been such an important part of my growth as an artist. I believe it is essential to continue to find ways to deepen and further the craft.

In my work on traditional tales, I am doing extensive reading on fairytales. Iona and Peter Opie's "The Classic Fairytales" is my book of choice right now. This book contains "the core of Fairytale literature." The stories within are the carefully researched and hard to find first versions of these tales. This packed volume contains extensive background not only on each tale but on the development of the fairytale itself. All of this is in preparation for my upcoming workshop in re-telling a fairytale, "The Golden Thread: finding meaning in traditional tales," a five evenings series beginning October 7th at Dancing Tree Storytelling Workshop in Needham, MA

On August 29th and 30th I will be taking an intensive two-day workshop in the Roy Hart Vocal Work. It is always a special treat to continue to learn, explore and, in this case, revisit techniques and challenges you have encountered in the past. Link teaching with learning. They go hand in hand.