YARN 2

So I went to the second edition of Yarn last night. Naturally I got a bit excited, talked an excessive amount of ridiculous and unfathomably stupid shit and made very inappropriate jokes. And of course I had my camera with me to document what a complete douchecanoe I am. (See below).

WEIRD

I was a bit weirded out by coming — just cause I had over-shared so, so much last time. And almost immediately people were coming up to me and saying how much they liked my story from weeks before. And that was really sweet, but just a bit horrible cause, well, just CAUSE.

GOODNESS

And last night was really, really good. I think all the stories were fantastic and much, much better than last time. And yes — in saying that I will be putting down something a bit controversial. But I am a straight-shooter. I think “story-telling” is an art that is a whole lot different to writing. And writers who attempt it need to realise that.

Public story-telling is a “performance” rather than a “production”. And just quietly, you can be an awesome writer, but a horribly awful performer.

Essentially what you are doing up there is a powerpoint demonstration without any pie graphs or sweet transitions. Science tells us that you can hold someone’s interest for about 20 minutes before they switch off. Perhaps less.

There were lots of things I noticed, but the biggest was the fact the story-tellers launched into their story straight away giving very important, crucial details right at the outset before everyone in the audience had realised they had started and had finished their conversation.

And also there were sometimes too many characters in the story. In such a short space of time an audience can only get to know 2 or 3 characters. Just saying.

But yes — it was great and it is fantastic to see people share like we were all around a camp-fire. It’s a very primal thing story-telling. As humans, this was our first performance, before music and dance had any structure or meaningful context. And so story-tellers were our very first rock-stars. And it is an art that needs cultivating, respecting and practicing — cause it is pretty, pretty damn cool.

I thought this photo was so perfect I needed to do it twice. But in reality Sarah was like — “there’s no light! Take it again over here!” LOL

And then I stumbled home and had my camera and just took this imagining I was the only one left in the entire world. I’m a dreamer.