Ponytail Picks #40 - Storytelling
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LISTEN
The stories of Andy Shauf
Andy Shauf is one artist who has made a name for himself (and many others—Jeremy, Judy, and Jenny, to name a few) by making moody bard-style songs and albums rich with storytelling details and drama. Here are a few of my favourites:
Hometown hero flexing his charm
With a borderline joke to the guys at the bar
And they slap their knees like they’ve not heard it before
Thirty-five years old wearing his badge
Nickname for life on the shoulder of his bomber
That he wears as the coach of the high school team
He lights his cigarette
And says, “Man these things will kill me someday”
Raises his glass and says, “Here’s to hoping”
One day he found a letter that I wrote for her
On the top of her dresser and in his winter mind
He heard the voice of God say:
”My son, my son, she is the devil’s child
Won’t you save her while you can
Cut down the other man”
With the voice of the lord ringing in his ears
And the note to his wife that confirmed his fears
He sat down on the edge of the bed
Read the letter again to see who’d sent it
But it was signed “forever yours”
Alexander all alone
’Till the neighbour caught a glimpse
Cried out for his wife
To call the ambulance
Alexander all alone
Felt them check his pulse
He heard them pronounce him dead
And I can see it in my mind,
Those flames reaching so high
Into the night, and that poor family
Standing on the front lawn watching.
And for some reason, I remember that feeling
Being almost jealousy
For a new beginning, but I should have known
That I was already burning it to the ground
I started my car and as I did
I wondered if I’d locked the house
Walked back and found that I hadn’t
But now my keys were in the car
Walked to the car pulled the handle and it snapped back
At least I’d locked one door
Reached my hand through the open window
Pulled the lock, forgot about the house
And drove to the Halloween store
-JB
WATCH
The story is in the telling
I love me a meta-narrative, but these five films take self-reference to the next level.
The Truman Show
Written by Andrew Nichol. Directed by Peter Weir.
“We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented.”
Adaptation
Written by Charlie Kaufman. Directed by Spike Jonze.
“I’ll tell you a secret. The last act makes a film. Wow them in the end, and you got a hit.”
Stranger Than Fiction
Written by Zach Helm. Directed by Marc Forster.
“If I go through the door, the plot continues—the story of me through the door.”
Synecdoche, New York
Written and directed by Charlie Kaufman.
“Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true.”
Ruby Sparks
Written by Zoe Kazan. Directed by Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton.
“I'm not writing about you. I wrote you. I made you up.”
-AK
READ
Stories about storytelling
I did my master’s thesis paper on the power of storytelling and I took a giddy sort of pleasure in using stories themselves as most of my main sources in place of stuffy old academic tomes. I mean, it was kind of one of the big points I was trying to emphasize: that it is story and not doctrine or rational argument that is best able to communicate the deep truths about the world and how we engage with it.
Anyways, here are a few of the stories about stories that I used in my paper (spoilers probably ahead):
Green Grass, Running Water
If I had to choose a favourite book, this might be it. It was actually a Ponytail Pick already, way back in #2 - Borders. The stories in this one are everywhere, like water. We like to draw a border between truth and fiction but Thomas King’s wily narrator breaks down that particular dam:
“There is no truth… only stories.”
Life of Pi
King’s provocative statement gets some backup here. The big story in Pi Patel’s life centers on his time shipwrecked at sea. When he’s finally rescued after months out on the ocean, he’s interviewed by two insurance investigators who want to know what happened after the ship went down. After telling them his fantastic story—included being lifeboat-mates with a tiger for 227 days—one of the agents say, “for the purposes of our investigation, we would like to know what really happened,” to which Pi replies, “So you want another story?” Weary, the agent repeats himself and Pi offers another response:
“Doesn’t the telling of something always become a story?... The world isn’t just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no?”
Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture & Generation A
Two sister stories of a sort, each one following a group of peers taking turns telling each other stories for the benefit of themselves, each other—and maybe the whole world?
Generation X’s Andy recalls a man who describes the cathartic experience of story-sharing at AA meetings (“How are people ever going to help themselves if they can’t grab onto a fragment of your own horror?... [It] makes their own fragments less scary”), remarking, “I’m still looking for a description of storytelling as vital as this.”
And, in Generation A1, the fragments of Harj’s life are certainly scary. He talks of the need for story in his life:
Without stories, our universe is merely rocks and... lava and blackness. It’s a village scraped raw by warm waters leaving not a trace of what existed before… Imagine a space alien is... with you... What would they say to themselves to plaster over the unexplainable cracks of everyday existence, let alone a tsunami?
-JB
You reached the end of this tale. Next time, go full-Goldilocks with us as we explore everything
medium.
Another repeated pick.
Great choice, Joel! Favourite Shauf stories (not already mentioned):
"Jerry Was a Clerk"
"Quite Like You"
"Thirteen Hours"
"Living Room"
"Wasted On You"
Shauf is such an amazing storyteller. I’ve not explored much of his earlier work, but The Party was an incredible album and made my top 20 of 2016 (how can it possibly already have been seven years since that was released?)