Telling Stories · 6:20am Feb 15th, 2015
(Brace yourself, this is going to be a long one).
I am a fellow who comes down firmly in the camp that oral traditions should be continued. Naturally anyone would concede that reading silently increases speed and more learning can thus be achieved within a given time-frame. Also if you are reading to yourself, you are able to go back over passages, pause when you want, engage in active memorization.
But consider what we social creatures do. We do it all day with everyone we meet and especially those we know well. We tell each other stories. About what happened last night, this morning, five minutes ago, about what I am thinking right now. It is how we live.
Your inner monologue is a story, your memories, most of how you perceive the world, all are stories of course but when we exchange ideas with people, aloud, we connect with them. We share moments that way, in ways we cannot do with the written word. Language comes alive when spoken, in ways that speak to our primitive brains, the way it was used aeons ago when we were a young culture. The complexities of speech help us to flesh out our theory of mind, its nuances let us empathize and become part of the feelings of others.
After fully a lifetime of doing this naturally I have come full circle to its formality, the reading of written works aloud. I did this as a child, at school and at home; later in college we read works aloud as part of a learning process, the appreciation of literature. But never for fun. There just was no natural setting for me to read aloud or be read to aloud.
Then this internet thing happened.
One makes (hopefully) a considerable number of friends on the way through life. I have made my share, mostly back when I was young and in a more social setting. Gradually that moved to a more business and family setting. Friends got their own lives, moved away, passed from this life. I seem to have outlived my very best friends. Then the kids grew up and out, wives... found other pursuits (we won't go into that). And so I found my life to be a more quiet, pensive setting. I do not miss the noise, not in the least. My business gives me quite enough of that and I am more than content to find peace when I am away from there. But peace (for me at least) needs to be moderated. I have no wish to become a hermit and I have thoughts I wish to express, ideas I wish to share, questions I wish to ask (and have answered), jokes I wish to tell (and have laughed at) and camaraderie I wish to engage in.
I am SO glad that the style police no longer insist upon sentences without prepositional endings.
So there's this internet thing.
Some of my closest friends these days are business associates, and that is very well and good because we have no wish to see each other at the end of the day (except on rare occasions) and so my evenings go untrodden. The people I hire are much younger than me for the most part, which is good because I would not want a bunch of old geezers hobbling around on canes trying to get things done. This makes it easier for me to stay in touch with what might be going on in the younger world ordinarily outside my purview.
And so a few years ago someone suggested I take a look at Second Life. A nice little virtual world where you can interact with people (sorta) and push an off switch when you wish to be away from them. Very convenient. I used to spend quite a lot of time there. Not as much any more as I have other things which need doing, but if I am on you can find me gadding about as Morgan Freepony. I need not tell you which animal's avatar I wear.
Experiences vary I am sure, but I have found Second Life to be a wonderful place to hang out and conduct a social life. I could never be convinced it can serve in the place of a flesh and blood one since some skills need a physical presence to hone properly. But it is a nice adjunct. I have met many people in Second Life with whom I have gone on to have very good First life relationships with. I have driven hundreds of miles to visit with them and they have driven hundreds of miles to visit with me. Even had one of them fly across the pond to visit for a few months. Some of them I will never meet, particularly one with whom I could almost swear I share a soul; we have spent so many hours in rapt deep conversation, but whose privacy I would never dare to violate.
The internet is amazing
I have several social venues less sophisticated than Second Life which I employ to one degree or another to chat with friends as well as conduct business. I understand (but will never have the time to comprehend) that there are hundreds if not thousands (or millions) of such services out there waiting to be used by the assembled masses. I do not know whether to be frightened for the young people growing up enmeshed in this cacophony of existential weltschmerz or to be awed by their ability to take it in stride. We move on....
The internet contains much revelatory experience.
So, there I was, in Second Life, plowing through a new Pony sim and I came upon a library. I had seen such things before, empty buildings like you find everywhere in SL with digitized bits of things to read scattered about. But this was a grand affair, a castle with lots of nice bits to explore and things to discover. And there were people. Okay, they were Ponies, but they were people. Do the math.
I know lots of folks have found a lot of obnoxious dullards in SL but I have always had the opposite experience. Like First Life you simply discard the weeds and keep the flowers (unless you like weeds. Then you keep the weeds. And become a weed). The folks I found in the library were of the good sort; I made a number of friends there. And lo and behold there were Ponies reading books there... aloud.
Now at first I just stared and listened. I am old enough that I do not, and probably may never get a firm grasp on the things, the content that people on the internet are willing to give away for free. Hell I do it every day and I do not understand it. Things are virtual now and it is acceptable. That was not the case when everything was accompanied by or contained in a physical object. So it still catches me off guard a bit. There was somepony standing up in the library and just reading to people out loud. I remember I was SO proud of that person for doing that. You just had to be there, to be me, to be happy that stories were being spoken aloud again, a phenomenon I had not been witness to in many years. It was touching to hear I swear. I knew at that moment that I wanted to do THAT.
So I began to read at that library on a regular weekly basis in Second Life. Somepony liked something I had read (The Raven, I think) and asked me to make him a recording of it. So I did. It was so much more fun than doing ad copy. I wanted to do more of that. I had recently discovered Pony fanfiction and so I looked for a book to record. I found "Eternal" Actually I considered doing "Past Sins" first and had discussed it with Pen Stroke but then I had to have surgery on my vocal chords and that put me out of commision for a few months. I discovered "Eternal" while I was convalescing. I still do not believe I did it justice as it was my first long recording but I had a ball doing it.
What does it say, that I heard stories being spoken aloud and I was thrilled by it? Perhaps it says I am a goober; I am no cosmic everyman, after all.But I would like to think it is because it touches a place in my soul long left untouched, a yearning for stories told aloud, the oral traditions of our forgotten past.
There is a lot of crap on the internet, and a lot of really good stuff.
I love the way you write, Illya, it flows so well. Thanks for sharing a bit of yourself by blogging.
And I agree with you that stories read aloud provide a much richer experience. It's a slower method of reading the story, but done well, it can make the story that much more powerful.
I always feel awkward when I see people extolling the virtues of oral tradition, because I long ago came to the conclusion that I am a writer, not a storyteller, and thoroughly inadequate to keep that tradition alive.
I once dated a woman who asked me to tell her a story. This ended up turning out well in the end (the stories, not the dating), but it just reinforced this idea that I write things down for a reason: I can't remember very well. So if I tell a story with my mouthwords, eventually I will think to myself, "Oh, I should have said that" or "This turned out good, I should write it down for later", because if I don't, it will be gone. And I often wonder what's to be gained from oral storytelling when so much stands to be lost, but I just have to remind myself that other people have these things called "memories" and they actually work and stuff.
So I gueeeeess my point is a roundabout way of saying I'm jealous? :B I dunno. I do okay with the penwords. Or the computerwords. That's all I ask for.
I tried Second Life, once. I walked along the beach in my white t-shirt for a while, then got bored and never went back. Is your YouTube channel artwork a screenshot from the library?
I do love your blog, Illya. Please continue.
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Thank you very much Neighrator. I had no idea running off at the keyboard could be such fun. I shall indeed endeavor to continue doing it. Yes, it is a shot of me reading in A library in second Life. Not the one I mentioned but a very dear one, yes.
Second Life is best introduced to you by friends whom you already know, showing you around. It can be lonely and dull without that to get you going. I do understand.
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Oh, please do not feel awkward. Without you writers I would have no stories to tell. I am not certain a purely oral tradition would serve much purpose in a literate society, I was not advocating that as such. I merely meant that I think it is good to hear (written) stories read aloud because of the intimate connection it provides with the work.
Well, not necessarily you must be guided to your "second life" by someone. When I started playing Gomoku online, I never could have thought I would end up traveling abroad and playing live tournaments or meeting lots of people and making several friends. Well, not entirely true, my university mate showed me the place to play, but then wheel got rollin'. Although, it is much simpler to get involved into the internet thing when you are younger.
The amazing thing about "pony life" is how does this fandom inspire so many people to create. Art, animation, writing ( reading :) ), singing, programming, etc. It strongly infects your mind with the idea to produce and share, and there seems to be no other cure but to give in. The idea to try writing my own fanfiction and share it with the community heavily sits in my mind and I don't know what to do about it :).
You know, I am a writer (computer program writer), so writing several tens thousands lines doesn't scare me that much (especially having framework ready.. ehm, I mean main plot elements figured out). But my laziness, bad english skills, constant struggling for words and flow stop me. No pains, no gains, I guess. Either I try or move my creativity towards something else.
You are blessed to have necessary skills just when you felt an urge to share something you marvel with the community.
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And I didn't mean to suggest that you were, either. :) Such conversations tend to come off that way, though, I'm just venting at the wrong person. :B