Travels to the Dream World

It had been a long day already, I'd traveled out to the far west side of town for storytelling at the Brazilian Club. It had been an honor to tell traditional Brazilian folktales to the next generation. It's times like that when I feel like what Norman Kennedy describes as “the link in the chain”. It's not important how I tell the story as much as that the story gets told, that the story gets passed on to the next generation. If I don't do it, who will?

I was at my friend Don's house. It's more of a complex rather than a house. He's a part of Project Row Houses. It's a non-profit organization that had taken some old shotgun row houses and converted them into art installations in one of the poorest and oldest parts of Houston. Don lived in a one of the row houses on another location that had been donated to the organization. He'd renovated his house and the one next door. He'd made another house an art room that housed free art lessons for the neighborhood kids. With a slower pace, he'd been renovating one of the other houses on the site. He'd torn down the fences between all of the houses and created a fire pit between the houses. It was shaped like a spread out frog with a fire in its belly.

Don has held many parties at his house. Sometimes, he invites people from the intentional community email list. Other times, it's fellow members of the Houston Blues Society. One thing that is always true is that he has music. Sometimes, it's singer-songwriters like the fellow called Southpaw Jones who plays a right handed guitar left-handed with a string missing. Other times, it's a modern blues band. On special occasions, he invites out some of the old-time blues players, fellows who describe themselves as “one day older than black pepper.” People who sing songs about showing up late to the ferry that will take them across the river on Friday night to see their lady friends.

He also invites me to tell stories. I'd been out several times for a variety of functions. I'd already gathered somewhat of a reputation with the kids. They remembered me as “that man who tells them jokes.” That's close enough for me.

He threw this night's party for a group of adolescents who participated in a drug and alcohol rehab program. I'd told for a smaller group of them before. They came mostly from middle and working class families from the south part of Houston. Some had done their using while still at home. Others had left home and were just returning home. Still others had lived on the streets and had worked on both ends of the drug trade. I don't drink alcohol or use drugs. Not for any moral reason, mostly because my life is strange enough without them. A history of alcoholism in my extended family and a large group of friends in AA had made me painfully aware of the trials that folks undergo in wrestling with these particular demons. I knew that I had to pick some special pieces for this group. In many ways they were much more mature than me, and in other ways, they were still kids wanting for something to take them away from the mundane world.

I had arrived late to the party. Outside, small lamps and tiki torches gave everything a flickering glow. The band played full throttle. The lead singer blew his harmonica as though he were breathing a new world into existence. The sweat streamed off his freshly shaved head. The drummer knocked out a beat on a stripped down drum set. A guitar player rounded out the trio. They looked as though they had been etched out of the peeling white paint, as though they were substantial spirits invoked by the house, the darkness, and the flames.

Don welcomed me and pointed to the coolers full of soda and the table laden with stacks of pizza boxes. I scarfed down some pizza and cooled myself with a cream soda. After a the brief respite, I sat in one of the many fold up chairs. I looked at the audience. Many of the girls were watching the band and nodding their head to the base line. Other mixed groups sat about a table slapping down the bones, playing dominoes and talking the trash that arises from such competitions. The sounds of a basket ball's dribble across the street echoed the game between local neighbors and the south side kids.

What should I tell? Something gruesome and disturbing to get their attention? No, little kids were running around and parents were present as well. Something that would appeal to a group of adolescents who recovering from various addictions. Something that would acknowledge the darkness they'd been through, but also give them hope a sense of something on the other side of the darkness. Still, I needed something to capture their attention, a good opening story. Something unlike anything they've heard before, but something that they can relate to.

I talked with Larry, one of the local kids. He would start seventh grade the following week. He told me his school and I remembered passing it on the way out here. I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. His face lit up, “An engineer.”
“Do you want to design your own car?”
“No, but I want to machines.”
“That's great. Are you good at math and science?”
“Pretty good. I'm best at spelling.” his eyes beaming with pride.
“I didn't know they still had that in schools.”
“It's pretty easy.”
“What kind of stories do you want to hear tonight?”
“That one about the hairy man and the one about the spider and the scary one with the cats.”
“How about something new?”
“OK” It's times like this that I wish that I could stay for hours telling the same stories over and over until he'd had his fill.

The band had finished and were clearing the equipment off the porch. When they finished, Don introduced me. He had rounded the rest of the youth up and they sat in chairs around the porch. Some of the boys were still sweaty from the pick-up game and the girls lounged around smoking cigarettes.

I started with the Jack Zipes version of Little Red Riding Hood. It starts off fairly similar with notable exceptions. The wolf's name is Bizjou and it's a werewolf instead of a regular wolf. One of girls with red and black hair makes comments out-loud occasionally. She stops when the story arrives at the part in which the wolf saves a part of her grandmother's meat and a bottle of her blood in the cupboard. The crowd is quiet after the little girl eats the meat and drinks the blood upon the prompting of the wolf disguised as her grandmother. In this version, the erotic overtones are more pronounced when the wolf tells her as she's taking off her clothes, “throw them in the fire, you won't need them any more.” In the end, she saves herself rather than having a woods man save her and her grandmother. The Grimm's Brothers and Perrault both changed the story to fit the cultural values of their time.

By this point, the youth are pretty interested. I tell a version of “Like Meat Loves Salt.” So many of the girls in the audience are often times dealing with issues around food and weight, as well as issues of separating from their fathers that I think it's an appropriate story. After that, I tell Jack O'Shea. It's a silkie story about an ugly man who steals the seal skin coat of a woman and eventually marries her. She leaves him when she finds the coat. He contemplates drinking again, but is reminded of the importance of his children. The last story is a short on about Nazrudin. He is set at the end of the table during the feast when he arrives in dirty clothes, but when he returns home and changes, he is welcomed at the head of the table. He pours hummus on his clothes and says, “Eat my clothes, eat.” When he's questioned about it, he replies, “When I first arrived, I was put at the end of the table because of my clothes, but when I returned I was at the head of the table. My clothes deserve to eat and not I.” Clothes and the status associated with them are good for adolescents to hear.

When I finished, I received a round of applause. The teens and parents worked together to pile the coolers into the SUV's crowded on the small neighborhood streets. The remaining pizza was distributed to local kids and neighbors. Some of the adults approached and thanked me for the stories. One mother said, “You tell some interesting stories.” I told her that I was going to tell one that was more disturbing than the ones that I told, but I refrained because of the younger children. An occasional teen thanked me for the program as well. I knew that regardless of their initial reaction, that I'd planted some seeds that night. These stories were based on the old stories that had survived for hundreds of year, partially because they were entertaining, but also because they spoke to people. They spoke to people's struggles, aspirations, and dreams. Youth yearn for a connection to this dream world. They get this connection through music, movies, sometimes church, sometimes chemicals, and occasionally stories. Maybe that's why people keep telling stories, because the stories themselves need to keep going on and young people need to travel to the dream world and to return changed repeating the story when they are old someday.
- posted by Brian Herod @ 3:33 PM