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All posts for the month July, 2012

Love and Fear (Part 1)

Posted by geoffmead on July 27, 2012
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“What is love?”
“Love is the total absence of fear,” said the Master.
“What is it we fear?”
“Love,” said the Master.
(Anthony de Mello)

Earlier this month, the Centre for Narrative Leadership held a summer gathering entitled Love and Fear at Hawkwood College, Stroud. 24 of us spent two days exploring how these phenomena manifest in our lives and work as storytellers.

The idea for the event came from a conversation with my partner Chris Seeley who had previously met and worked with professional mediator, Michael Jacobs whose MA dissertation had looked at some of the ways that we are entrapped by the stories we tell ourselves.

The more I thought about the theme in the run up to the event, the more I realised that love and fear are inseparable: a polarity of opposites. Fear contracts and diminishes our capacity to love (ourselves, other people, and the planet) whilst love is what it takes to dissolve fear.

On the first day of the gathering, Chris and Michael facilitated a session in which we discussed our personal relationship to the theme. Small groups were then asked to make some kind of image to represent their individual and collective understanding of love and fear – not as abstract entities but as concrete declarations of who and what they loved and of the fears that sometimes got in the way of manifesting or enacting their love. Here are a few examples from the image we made:

Joy – I don’t deserve this/ it won’t last
Brilliance – know your place
Art – I am too small to have a voice
Body – self-loathing/ it hurts
Friends – why would anyone like me?
Dancing – everyone will look at me and think I’m stupid
Stories – no-one will want to listen
Singing/music – I’m tone deaf

It was a simple (though not easy) exercise but it evoked a significant insight for me: whilst much of what we loved was shared and some of what we loved was almost universal, the fears we identified were quite particular. Behind every fear lay a story: a fragment of our personal history; an experience of being shamed that had somehow diminished our capacity for living and loving.

Holding on to such stories stops us living in the present moment: the embodied memories I have of being shamed as a child (for example, as I wrote about in the previous post, of being told that I was tone deaf) relinquish their grip when I begin to see them as stories from the past. The choice is stark: either we have our stories or they have us.

As Robert Sardello says in his excellent book Freeing the Soul from Fear, our task is not to abolish fear but to find the inner resources to face our fears. If we can do that then we can also develop our ability to distinguish between fantastical fears and genuine threats (such as climate change) about which we should indeed be concerned.

These few words have just scratched the surface of love and fear. I shall continue inquiring into the relationship between these two existential states in future posts. If you would like to contribute your views and ideas to the inquiry as it develops then please comment below.

Choir of the Damned

Posted by geoffmead on July 16, 2012
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There is a Zimbabwean proverb: “If you can talk you can sing.” It’s usually told to non-singers by those whose mellifluous voices burst confidently into song at the slightest excuse. Those of us for whom hell is a karaoke machine, know that the proverb is simply a lie uttered to make us feel even worse about our lack of vocal talent. I cringe with embarrassment, self-loathing and impotent rage every time I hear it – and I am not alone.

Last week at a seminar in the Netherlands, I told the story of how Miss Pendlebury – my music teacher at preparatory school – would prowl up and down the ranks of us small boys listening to our efforts with a critical ear:

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all.

My seven year old heart swelled with pride as she came closer to where I stood singing lustily in the back row. I took in an extra large lungful of air so I could belt out the verse.

Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colours,
He made their tiny wings.

She stopped in front of me. A word of praise, perhaps, poised on her lips: recognition for my natural ability to harmonize with the pure treble voices on either side of me? Maybe some token of encouragement for the enthusiastic volume of my descant? My moment had come.

“Mead. You are tone deaf. Go to the front row.”

The front row was reserved for boys with attention deficit disorder, a tendency towards random violence, and/or speech impediments. In the front row, you were given a triangle to hold silently while the middle row shook their tambourines and the privileged prima donnas of the back row fired off salvos of sound on drums and cymbals. The front row was where you learned for life that you could not and should not sing.

After I had told my story, I asked the audience how many of them had also learned as children that they could not sing. About half of them held up their hands and in that moment the seed of an idea was sown. There was to be an end-of-course cabaret the following evening: a chance for all us non-singers to roll back the frontiers of shame; to take revenge on the Miss Pendleburys of this world; to stick it to the smug bastards who spout Zimbabwean proverbs.

And so the Choir of the Damned was born.

In the picture above, members of the choir (apologies to those not in the frame) can be seen performing the “Little Green Frog” with unrepentant gusto to the astonishment and delight of the other members of the course. Our audience burst into frenzied applause and we took several curtain calls to spontaneous cries of “Bravissimo!” “More! More!” and “Time for a beer!”

Shame is a cruel and effective teacher but, as the Choir of the Damned proved decisively, nothing that cannot be overcome (albeit 55 years later) by a stubborn refusal to be silenced and a bold disregard for conventional harmony. It was indeed, a night to remember.

And it is in this spirit that I invite you now to watch this short video of a young girl doing her bit at the school nativity play. Never, never tell her that she cannot sing.

Ask me. Go on, ask me.

Posted by geoffmead on July 11, 2012
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Ha! I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist.

I was passing through Bristol airport again this week; how I love that place (see blog Don’t Get Me Started, 4 April 2012). This time the Jobsworths stopped me carrying 100ml of fresh air on to the aeroplane. Our exchange went something like this:

“You can’t take that on board. We’ll have to confiscate it.”

“It” was a half-empty 200ml glass medicine bottle containing rather less than 100ml of Honey and Lemon Throat Balm. “Why not?” I asked. “It’s medicine. I’m a performer and I need it for my throat.”

“I can see what it is,” replied Junior Jobsworth. “Do you have a prescription for it?”

“It doesn’t come on prescription. You buy it over the counter.”

“No prescription, no medicine.”

“But it’s less than 100ml. And it’s in a polythene bag of the correct dimensions. I measured it. Am I not allowed 100ml of bottled and bagged fluid?”

“It’s not the fluid that’s the problem. It’s the bottle. It’s a 200ml bottle.”

“Yes, I know. That’s why I made a point of having it less than half full.”

“You can’t take it on the plane.”

“This is ludicrous. What difference can it possibly make if it’s in a 100ml or a 200ml bottle. The difference is approximately 100ml of air. I would like to speak with your supervisor please.”

Actually, I didn’t use those precise words. What I said was: “This is f***ing ridiculous. Give me the bottle and I’ll drink the medicine right now.”

At this, Junior Jobsworth, still clutching my bottle of medicine, marched off to consult Senior Jobsworth. I saw them conferring earnestly for a minute or two before Senior Jobsworth came over to me, bottle in hand: “You can’t take this on board. It’s 200ml.”

“No,” I said. “As you can see, it’s less than half full. It’s not even 100ml. If you really won’t let me take it on board then let me drink the medicine now.”

“You can go back outside the security area and drink it.”

“What! What conceivable difference does it make where I drink it?”

“That’s the rule.”

“Then the rule is ridiculous.”

He walked off with my bottle of medicine which I presume found its way into a waste bin. “Imbecile,” I muttered sotto voce, with just enough self-control not to get arrested for breach of the peace. I picked up my laptop, repacked my bag, put my belt back on, and made my way grumpily towards the departure lounge.

What is it about the word “Security” that engenders such rigidity and lack of discretion? Somebody please tell me how either employing morons who cannot think for themselves or (equally bad) employing intelligent people who are obliged to act like morons, makes any of us one jot safer. The Jobsworths were not impolite (though, admittedly, I was). They were merely stolidly intransigent and lacking in any sense of complicity with me in the face of arbitrary regulation.

I didn’t want them to break the rules. I didn’t even mind very much about the loss of my half bottle of throat balm. I would have been happy if they had just said something human, something  like: “Yes, I know it’s ridiculous but we don’t have any discretion at all. Sorry about that.” I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

Here’s how it’s done: later the same day, at Schiphol Railway Station I went to buy a train ticket and asked if I could have the advertised senior’s discount. The Dutch woman behind the counter smiled and shrugged. “Sure,” she said. “The discount is only 50 cents though. It’s so small it’s crazy but what can we do?” I smiled back at her, enlivened by our brief contact and delighted with the – albeit miniscule – saving I had just made.

There are good airports elsewhere in the world, even some great airports. Munich, for example is a veritable cathedral of understated, friendly, efficient service. But UK airports seem determined to inflict all manner of pettifogging restrictions on travelers whilst trying to fleece them at every opportunity: an almost unique combination of institutional stupidity and corporate greed.

Thus, at Bristol Airport (which my partner continues to insist is convenient whilst I maintain it is merely close to home) once through Security, there is only one way to the departure lounge: running the gauntlet of the obscenely consumerist Duty Free Zone where one is urged to purchase large quantities of what appear to me to be dangerous flammable liquids in the guise of perfumes and spirits which, ironically, one is quite free to take on board the aeroplane of one’s choice.

“I wonder what would have happened,” I thought, fighting off the semi-hypnotic urge to shovel assorted travel goods into a basket, “If the Jobsworths had paid for pints of beer in a pub and had been given half pints in pint-sized glasses. Would they have accepted the argument that it’s the size of the container that counts? I don’t think so.”

Raising the Bar

Posted by geoffmead on July 6, 2012
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This is a picture of Swiss couple, Martin and Nicole. They are – believe it or not – storytellers, albeit storytellers who bring an extraordinary range of acrobatic, clown, and mime skills to their storytelling. I had the great pleasure of seeing them perform The Handless Maiden and The Fisherman and His Wife last weekend at the Welsh International Storytelling Festival: Beyond the Border at St Donat’s Castle in the Vale of Glamorgan.

Judging by the standing ovations they received at every performance and the length of the queues to get in to see them, I was not alone in the delight and wonder I felt at their unique brand of storytelling magic. There was much to enjoy during the festival: two and a half day’s of storytelling with somewhere in the region of 50 performers and 120 performances spread over 8 venues.

It was an amazingly rich and varied feast of stories with some of the most talented professional storytellers from around the world. There was nothing I saw that was not worth seeing, nothing that was not well-rehearsed and technically proficient, but not everything touched me and I fell to wondering what makes the difference between good storytelling and great storytelling?

I think it has something to do with the extent to which storytellers allow themselves to become vulnerable. Miracles of composition, masterfully told, are not to be sneezed at but neither do they guarantee the kind of peak experience that we crave.

Unless storytellers are willing to join us in the worlds of the stories they are telling then they are – in a sense – telling their stories at us. When they find the stories in themselves (and themselves in the stories) as, for example, Cat Weatherill did with her magnificent How To Be Glorious and Dan Yashinky did with Talking You In, then we are truly blessed.

As storytellers, we do not need to risk life and limb (as do Martin and Nicole) but we do need to risk the heart. At its highest level, storytelling requires courage and generosity of spirit as well as technical accomplishment. It is a lot to ask, particularly of professional tellers who perform night after night, but I believe that really great performances leave neither listener nor teller unscathed.