In Teapot: Existential Angst & the Search for Purpose at the Dawn of the Millennium, the one-very-human journey (my different way of saying “one-woman show”) I’ve been developing / performing for a minute now, there’s this moment where I celebrate the fact that I’m a “proud Gen-Xer.”
“There are certain cultural markers,” I say, “that come squarely from within my generation.” I go on to list a few of them: The More You Know Star, Choose Your Own Adventure Books, and A Very Special Episode. Many of us would love and lay claim to these earnest signposts. Far less appealing, far more cringe-worthy, was the moment Vanilla Ice captured the classic rhythm of Queen’s Under Pressure to make Ice Ice Baby. A song, no doubt, we’d all love to forget.
Howsoever, I begrudgingly love the opening line: “Alright, stop, collaborate and listen!” I use a slide in my storytelling workshops that refers to this for a little humor break as we launch into a module on deep listening.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of listening in our storytelling. I go all over, helping people tell their stories, and I host a monthly storytelling event here in Atlanta, Carapace. (Just celebrated our 15th anniversary with a lovely special event actually!)
The more I study and deepen my practice as a storyteller, the more I’ve come to appreciate the importance of being a good listener in order to be a good storyteller.
I know, for me, when I go to a storytelling event and throw my name in the hat to tell a story, until I get to go, I’m not really, completely listening to anyone else. I’m just waiting, practicing my story, rearranging the bullet points inside my head.
When my name isn’t in the hat, I can really pay attention. Notice how others are constructing and delivering their stories. The better a listener I’ve become, the better my storytelling has become. It helps to be a story connoisseur in all the ways.
Spoken by a participant in one of my workshops.
And how much are we like that in life? We can see it, feel it, talking to someone who has that glazed over, 27-tabs-open-behind-the-eyes feeling. They’re not paying attention. Maybe we are that person half the time. How often are we just waiting for our turn to say what we need to say, or thinking about the grocery list or where else we need to be?
This world is not getting any easier where this is concerned. We live in a constantly increasing distraction machine, with dings and whistles, bleeps and sirens galore. It’s part of what’s pushing us apart, leading us to distrust each other, so we’ll buy more things, stay home, and disassociate while we disappear down our phone screens.
On a personal level, the better we get at listening to ourselves, which also might mean turning off those bleeps and whistles, and yes the podcasts and such that interrupt our internal landscape, the better we might be at hearing the stories that need to emerge.
With organizational and community work, I often think back to Vanilla Ice. Perhaps it should be: Alright…Stop. Listen. Collaborate.
A montage of people in various deep listening exercises I’ve led over the past few years…
