Tell you what

BY MICHAEL FALLOW

Michael Parent reckons the quintessential question, the one that pierces most deeply through our defences or distractions, and impels us towards discovery, isn't half as high falutin' as "what's the meaning of life''?

 It's ... well, we'll get back to that.

Parent is a storyteller of Franco-American heritage who has told his tales and sung his songs to audiences ranging from attention-challenged kids to diffident teens to the sedated occupants of locked geriatric wards.

So the 64-year-old former teacher has learned a thing or two about what works, even in this day and age.

"If you can keep them 15 minutes, that will be fine,'' one school principal murmured going into a rare assembly that had been rather forced on him by the parent teacher association.

But the programme was 50 minutes.

"Fifteen will be fine. They can't listen for more than 20 minutes. They're no good at assemblies  ... we don't have `em because the kids are no good at `em.''

The storyteller turned to him.

"Are you going to cancel math for the kids who are no good at that?''

Parent has a slingshot ready for those who maintain the mass media Goliath has bashed kids' attention spans all to bits, and that there has to be a lot of fireworks to get their attention.

 TV is no competition for one person telling you a story straight to your face, if they do it right, he says.

"Mass media basically deadens the imagination. Storytelling enlivens the imagination. And in a way it is

David and Goliath. All it takes is one well-aimed stone to counteract all that supposed power.''

A stocky young man  in Charlottesville, Virginia, collared him once and commended him for his performance  15 years earlier. Gratifying, in itself, but then the guy elaborated.

"First you sang that song about the pig ...''

He went on to give not just a summary of the programme that day; nor even just a highly detailed summary; but one reflecting elements of the actual performance.

You get that, apparently.

Why?

The power of narration has a lot to do with it, says Parent.

Seriously, how often in our daily life do we speak narratively? Heaps. First this happened, then that happened and then, get this ...

You can't live on this planet without some use of the narrative form, he says. The momentum of a well-told story holds our imaginations and memories aloft.

To people who might say leave that to the experts, Parent begs to differ. Those who might tell stories around the table, but believe could never bring themselves to stand in front of an audience, should understand how far along they are already.

"It's not as though this is something you've never done in your life. It's not like 'here, play this cello'.''
It comes naturally. Certainly for him it did.

Parent's French-speaking grandparents in New Hampshire loved to go to the movies, many miles away, but could not afford to take their seven children.

So his grandmother would tell them the movie when she got back. The grocer would take to calling around in time to  hear it too.

"I don't need to go to the movies,'' he'd say.

"With Mme Fournier it's better than going and it saves me 15c.''

Weirder than that, the Fourniers' neighbour across the fence would delight in the stories, though she was German.

``My grandmother will tell  it in French, she'd listen in German, but still get it, somehow.''

It mattered that the telling was so expressive.

His family stories are a vivid part of his repertoire. People tell him it must have been delightful hanging around with his grandmother.

"I never did,'' he says.

"She died five years before I was born. But they told stories about her.

"I feel like part of what I do is tell stories of people whose stories would otherwise not get told.''

Couldn't we all?

In his more academic moments, Parent  the man who through instinct, education and experience knows how to make children giggle  has written a fairly scholarly piece on  his father's role in passing on the tale-telling tradition.

Gerry Parent's perception of himself was not that he was a ``literate'' person, so his attempts at self-expression  were invested with only a private value.

He was a factory worker whose struggle to make ends meet ruled out the leisure time necessary for written artistic expression.

So, as with so many other families and cultures, the oral tradition grew strong.

And rewarding. Parent has studied the writings of Joseph Chilton Pearce on those oh-so-formative youthful years when the imagination is most primed to be worked and developed, almost like a muscle.

Develop their imaginations with tales that get both sides of the brain working, so more synapses and connections are made, and those kids not only become more competent readers, but they love it.

It's one thing for a storyteller to calibrate his performance off the unmissable reactions of a youthful audience, but what of the apparently sedated residents of a fairly dismal, and locked, geriatric ward in Virginia? They sat inert, unconnected and unresponsive, lost in their own heads while Parent tried stories, juggling, songs.

"They didn't even shift in their seats. I was wondering  how drugged-up are these people?''

He had recently learnt the not-widely-known extra verses to ``Down By The Riverside'' and was stretching through them when he noticed a tiny old woman tapping her foot.

He'd speed up, slow down, and she'd follow the beat. Something had stirred there. Afterwards he went up to thank her, touched her shoulder, and ``her tiny birdlike hand comes up and grabs mine. It was a powerful grip''.

She held it, letting go only when she was ready.

It left him to wonder the last time she'd been touched.

"Every now and then it is nice to have a clear affirmation,  but I do believe I have survived as long as I have in this strange profession because I believe in the invisible tapping foot.''

Truth to tell, for all that his upbringing fashioned him as a storyteller, for all that he has studied and experimented to find what works and why, most of what makes stories work remains a mystery, he says.

He's OK with that.

Einstein believed the pursuit of science should increase our sense of wonder. True scientists will never run out of mysteries; nor storytellers of tales.

As Parent sees it, there's something innate in us, drawing us into stories.

This, right here, is our quintessential question. What happens next? We ache, we just ache, to know more of a story.

Not even just the most well-told stories, either. Parent reflects on all  those not-so-good films so many of us have sat through because of our intrepid nature when it comes to stories that we've started.  And starts can happen quickly.

You ask someone how a trip went, and they reply ``Worst flight of my life''.

How would you feel if that's all they say. You want to know more. You just do. What happened?

Because something in you knows there's a story in it.

NOTE: Michael Parent and Anna Jarrett will give a concert at the Invercargill Working Men's Club on Friday, March 12, at 8pm. It's billed as "sophisticated storytelling'' by world class tellers.

As well, in events organised by the Southland Council of the New Zealand Reading Association, Parent will hold a workshop for teachers, librarians, storytellers and an interested adults, on developing oral language skills through story at the working men's club on Saturday, March 13.

Jarrett, will hold a workshop on creative storytelling with children,on Sunday, March 14.

They will also be holding children's concerts at Donovan Primary School.

Concert tickets, information and registration packs are available from Young Reflections, in Tay St.

- © Fairfax NZ News