The Multicolored Diary

Grimm Year 2012

2012-01-21T18:35:00.002+01:00

Guess what? Project Grimm is officially online!

Check out our brand new blog here:

Project Grimm

for videos of European storytellers performing Grimm tales in various languages!

Happy Grimm Year, everyone!

MOTH Story Slam - Creative Competitive Narcissism

2012-01-07T21:52:00.002+01:00

After we bounced off the three-blocks-down queue waiting for the last Moth Slam in New York City in December, we smartened up and reserved tickets in advance for the first one in January. I only had two weeks to spend in New York, and I was not going to miss the Moth twice. We have heard and talked so much about it in class, I owed my inner storyteller to go when I had the chance.

The first MOTH Slam of 2012 was titled "Rebound" - my friend Kata and I braced ourselves for a healthy dosage of breakup stories. And the cold. Having tickets suddenly felt like an extremely good idea the moment we spotted the long line of people waiting to get in - and the much shorter line for smart (paranoid?) people like us.
The venue was a nice bar called Southpaw in Brooklyn; by the time everyone filed in, it turned out to be able to house about 300 people, and some of them even had a place to sit. The best part? The whole audience seemed to be the exact age group that is almost impossible to lure into a storytelling event under normal circumstances: young people between 18 and 35(ish). Everyone was loud, cheerful, excited and very, very hip (in fact, the whole setting looked like a hipster bomb had just exploded in it, which is probably not all that surprising in Brooklyn). Everyone got drinks, settled down, and many even dropped their names into the bag, including yours truly, who did not buy a ticket to the event to not get a chance to tell.
Finally, the host of the evening showed up on stage; veteran MOTH-fans probably know him by his name, which we did not manage to catch, so we cheerfully nicknamed him Hagrid, and decided after 5 minutes flat that he was the best part of the show. Loud, sarcastic, wicked, and a lot of fun, he carried the whole thing successfully through the evening, being a jerk equally to everyone when he needed to be and being nice when we were not looking.
The slam works pretty much how slams usually work: you put your name in the hat (bag), ten names are drawn, and you have five mintues to dazzle the audience with a 5-minute true(ish) personal story connected to the theme. Three goups of judges were hiding in plain sight in the audience with big scoring tablets to reward you points for the experience. They had funny names.
It soon turned out that we were right about the theme: it did bring in an awful lot of breakup anecdotes, as well as a few stories abour dodgeball, go figure. It was abundantly clear after the first two tellers that we were dealing with professional slammers here: the stories were well told, hilariously funny, unique in their own way. The audience cheered and applauded whenever there was a pause (and not just because Hagrid bellowed instructions to them to go "batshit crazy", please). Also there was no filter on whatever one wanted to talk about; we were all grown-ups there, and far, far away from the delicacy of the fairy tale world (insert air bunnies there).
When the third slip of paper was drawn from the bag and Hagrid's face grew long with alarm and confusion, I was already half out of my seat. When it comes to reading names out loud, "What the f***" usually translates to "Csenge Zalka"
And I was right.

Slamming stories is a lot of fun. Especially to an audience like that. 300 people well into their first drink, instructed to go batshit crazy; a reflector in my face (I could do without that, but oh well) and no clue what I want to talk about. Yup. Personal stories have never been my forte, since I have only started telling them a few months ago, and I have performed a total of 3. Rebound was not an easy topic either; I did not want to talk about breakups (nothing funny there), and had very little else to talk about. But I was on stage, and it was already fun before I opened my mouth.
I ended up talking about how you sometimes need to spend time away from home if you really want to appreciate your own culture. It was kind of a rebound for me: when I get fed up with stupid things and stupid people that are probably the same everywhere in the world, I go abroad, and from there I only see what's cool about Hungary. So I told people a few little anecdotes about how people react when I say I am Hungarian; and then ended up talking about how the kids I tell stories to showed me they are cool and exotic from their point of view. It was over before I relaized what was happening, and I was ushered off the stage, with more clapping and cheering.
I got the lowest scores of the evening (6.8, 8.0, 7.6), but it didn't really matter; the point was standing on stage and being part of the MOTH experience, and mainly having the guts to do it. Now the only thing that was left was to sit back and enjoy the rest of the evening.

Hagrid labeled story slams with the award-winning expression "creative competitive narcissism". Truer words have never been spoken. All the stories were fun, and the overall atmosphere of the event made us forget about time, and the cold outside. We enjoyed tales about boyfriends, breakups and booty calls; traumas from elementary school (who doesn't have those) and kickball. Our favorite (as far as Kata and I are concerned) was a guy called Bernie, who told us an adorable story about trying to sound smarter than his ex-girlfriends new guy. He almost won the slam, and we cheered our throats raw at the end. He was the best of the evening. The worst (apart from me with my scores, heh) was a woman who told us about her time as a teacher in Europe; somehow it just sounded... wrong. Her story came down to "European people are weird and they do things all wrong... everything is about Christmas with them, can you believe it?! And at Christmas, they sing songs about Jesus. How depressing. And they said bad things about Russians, which upset me, because I am Russian, my great-great-grandparents came from the Ukraine. I am proud that I am an American." Maybe she was doing it for purpose, but no one was entirely sure about it. Or maybe Europeans are just too sensitive about that stuff. Still, we had a great time quoting her as we walked home.

All in all, the whole Slam was an absolute success; at least now we know why people talk about the MOTH all the time. And why they stand in lines in the bitter New-York-in-January weather, and catch a cold and go back to Tennessee with a head full of snot. (Oh, maybe that's just me)
This was the very first event of the 13th MOTH year. Here is to hoping there will be many, many more, and that we will get to go to a whole bunch of them!

Happy New Year, everyone! :)

Dragonspotting

2011-12-29T03:53:00.003+01:00

This might have been the most fun I have ever had in a museum.

Today I took the effort to crawl out of bed early, and show up at the Met for opening. I have been there three years ago and spent 8 hours in awe; I went back again this Monday to see the Storytelling in Japanese art exhibition (excellent exhibition! And great publication too!). But going back for a few hours just made me realize I have not seen nearly enough of the museum's collections; I decided it deserved another day - six, eight hours maybe. And, because this was the first time my friend Kata was not coming with me, I made up a little game to make it more interesting.

It's called dragonspotting.

The difference between dragonspotting and dragonhunting is, as you can probably guess, that in the former the dragon itself is not harmed. Which is just as good, because no one wants to get kicked out of the Met for smashing five hundred years old Chinese porcelaine.

The game is simple: you only need a camera (and possibly a museum map)

The mission: find as many dragons as you can, and document them.

The rules: there are only two.
1. If it is called a dragon, it is a dragon. Even if it does not look like a dragon. Even if it looks like the love child of a rabbit and a spoon.

2. If it looks like a dragon, it is a dragon, unless specified otherwise. "Zoomorphic symbols" are fair game.

I ended up spending 6 and a half hours in the Met. I covered most of the collections, except for photography (not many chances there) and modern art (gotta leave something for next time; also, it was horribly crowded).

The results:
I have documented 126 artifacts with dragons on them. Because many of those artifacts have multiple dragons, I would estimate the dragon population of the Metropolitan around 200 or more. That is a decent number for any museum.

The good things about dragonspotting?

1. It is a lot of fun. Every new dragon you find bring a sense of achievement. And there is ample space for leveling up. Ha-ha.

2. It keep you focused. One thing about the Met: you get lost and confused very easily, and there is an overload of information one needs to process. Going through the collections with a specific purpose makes you look at everything, but filters out the objects you are looking for.

3. I quickly developed a sixth sense for spotting dragons and dragon-like shapes. You'd be surprised.

4. It teaches you a lot about different cultures. I expected a stray dragon or two in the Ancient Near East, but I was surprised by the numbers. There was a decent number of them in the Medieval section, but not as many as I expected. I had to use an educated guess to seek them out at Greeks and Romans - where the is Jason, there shall be a dragon (it was quite a skinny one though). The Asian Art gallery was no surprise - dragons great and small, blue, read, green and yellow, prancing around on every possible surface. But no matter where I went, I could always find at least one of the critters, if I looked hard enough. Sometimes only the label told me it was one; other times I was certain, but the label only said "bronze object" or something of the sort. In those cases, I used my authority as a storyteller to declare them dragons.

Until you start looking for them, you never realize how many dragons lurk around in an art museum. The Metropolitan Museum is overrun by them. Japanese dragons, Greek dragons, French dragons, Italian dragons, Central Asian dragons, Chinese dragons, Korean dragons, Persian dragons, Scythian dragons, English dragons. Dragons on banners, on arrowheads, on swords, on plates, cups, bowls, vases, bottles, carpets, hangings, boxes, chests, tapestries, axes, rings, bracelets, belts, armors, helmets, gemmae, sigils, walls, ceilings, spoons, roofs, tiles, flags, shields, illuminated pages. Crouching dragons, hidden dragons, coiling dragons, stretching dragons, biting dragons, roaring dragons, dragons spitting fire; sleeping dragons, eating dragons, playing dragons, marching dragons, flying dragons, swimming dragons, and dragons hopelessly tangled. Dragons on samurai blades, dragons on Buddhist temples, dragons on the banner of King Uther Pendragon; dragons embriodered onto cloaks, perching on helmets, disguised as handles on a vase or a pitcher, hiding in the Chinese zodiac, under and over saints and gods, decorating all kinds of deadly weaponry and fragile pottery, and of course, dragons galore in the gift shop.

Here. Be. Dragons.
(Sorry, I had to.)

Of course, every once in a while you run into some other fantastic monster that is distinctly not a dragon, but you add them to the collection anyway.
But that will be the topic of another post.

Happy dragonspotting, everyone!
...
Oh. Right. Pictures.

Project Grimm - the numbers

2011-12-27T21:55:00.003+01:00

Now that there are only 4 days left of 2011, and, incidentally, also 4 days left before 2012, the YEAR OF THE GRIMM TALES, it is time to take a quick glance at the Project Grimm, the collaboration of many excellent European storytellers. Since there is no official website yet, I decided to summarize the statistics here, to give you an idea of what will await audiences all around the world next year.

So, here come the facts:

As of today, Project Grimm has exactly 65 participants; some of them are individual storytellers, and some of them are duos or groups.

Each participant has 4 Grimm tales: two chosen by the participant, and two assigned by luck. 151 of the 202 tales on the list have been assigned.

The three most popular tales are the following:

Rapunzel (KHM 12) (6 participants)
The Three Spinners (KHM 14) (6 participants)
Mother Hulda (KHM 24) (5 participants)
Rumeplstiltskin and Cinderella both have 4 participants assigned.

We have participants from 11 European countries:

Spain (33) - including storytellers from Catalunya and the Basque country, more than half (!!!) of the Project Grimm participants! Go Spain!
United Kingdom (11) - including tellers from Wales and Scotland!
Germany (7) - the home of the Brothers Grimm. We are looking forward to hearing the tales in their original language :)
Netherlands (3)
Austria (3)
Norway (2)
Italy (2)
Hungary (2)
Switzerland (1)
Ireland (1)
Denmark (1)

With as colorful a group as this one is, we will hear Grimm tales in more than 11 languages!
(Catalan, Spanish, English, French, Norwegian, Basque, Dutch, German, Hungarian, Danish, Italian - and whatever the tellers decide to surprise us with)

The first videos are already trickling into my mailbox. I will do my best to compile and share them as soon as possible. Numbers and facts may change as more information comes in. Or a few stray storytellers. You can never know with our kind. There are still a few tales up for grabs!

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Let the Grimm Year begin!

All I want for Christmas is BOOKS

2011-12-27T19:43:00.002+01:00

I am spending the holidays in New York City. My friend Kata, who was my roommate back at Trinity College, invidited me over, to spend Christmas together. I feel like the Country Mouse, and in a way, that is exactly what I am, for now.

I have a love-hate relationship with New York. I would not live here even if they paid me, but wandering the streets for a few days at a time can be tons of fun.
(A T-shirt I saw on a girl who pushed past me in the crowd at the Union Square market kind of sums it up: "Go [heart] your own damn city.")
I have a three-day limit on Manhattan. Three days of awesome fun and miles and miles of walking and shopping bags, and then I kind of curl up on Kata's couch and refuse to face the crowds and the noise and the crazyness for a day or two. Repeat as necessary.

But. No one can deny that the holidays in New York offer a lot of opportunities. Instead of targeting specific places, I took tours: walked down Broadway from Union Square to Bowling Green; walked up 6th Avenue from 14th to 42nd; walked across town randomly, stopping whenever I found a shop, a building or an event that looked kinda interesting. I nerded out in all the comic book shops I could find; bought dice for the gaming class; poked at bones and stuffed animals in the Evolution shop; hunted up and down the Holiday Market (The Unemployed Philosophers' Guild takes the cake!). The weather was kind to us this year: sunshine and no snow, and just a sprinkling of rain. Since, according to my experiences, "white Christmas" in a big city quickly turns into "grey, kinda slushy Christmas", I didn't really mind.

Long story short, I ended up in the Strand.

It is a cruel, cruel place. You get lost in there for long hours, and when you finally defeat the dungeon, you leave your money behind. I kid you not, I strained my shoulders going home from that place, carrying bags of books.
Of course, it is everything a bookworm can dream of. Even with the pre-Christmas last-minute-shopping crowd, I wandered around sqealing like a happy mouse. I would stop randomly in corners and aisles, and stare at the rows and rows of books without actually reading a title. I would drag ladders from one shelf to the other and climb them to perch on the top, balancing the books I already had in my hands and the ones I wanted to flip through. I would seek out the names of my currently favorite authors and find long rows of their books. Mark Twain, Mary Renault, Gerald Morris. And of course, the Myths & Epics section. Oh, that section. Yeah, I was the girl who blocked the aisle with her back against the Fiction section, sitting on the carpet, pulling out one book after another.

And boy did I find cool things! Unfortunately, I did not have money for everything. For one, I tried to avoid big and heavy books, because there is no way I can take all of them home; with a heavy heart I had to leave all the Fairy Encyclopedias and the Arthurian Albums and the Dictionaries of Monsters and Imaginary Places. But, of course, I did not leave the place with empty hands.

So, without further ado, here are my picks for the holiday season:
(None of them are holiday-related, as you will find, but that was never the point)

The Green Hero (because I can never leave behind a book that has Finn Mac Cool written on it)

Parsifal's Page (another great Gerald Morris book I have not read yet. I don't know what I'll do when I run out of them. Write fanmail to the author demanding more, most likely.)

Tales of wonder (Mark Twain meets steampunk, your argument is INVALID)

Tom Sawyer abroad (no one ever told us in school Tom Sawyer has a sequel. Duh.)

Digenis Akritas: The two-blood border lord (Byzantine-Arabic half blood hero fighting everything that moves? sign me up! Every day you find an epic you have not read yet is a good day.)

King Harald's Saga (because it is one of my ever favorite sagas. Hands down.)

And now comes to the curl-up-on-the-couch reading séance. See you all next year!

Storytelling is like roleplaying...

2011-12-14T17:50:00.004+01:00

So, posts have been few and far between. I apologize for that. Believe it or not, Storytelling students do have a lot to do around the end of the semester! Like, writing papers on werewolves. And sirens. And the lost oasis or Zerzura. And Aicha the demon-hunter. And... stuff. Not to mention gigs and performances.
Anyway. Semester is officially over now. It was great, and a lot of fun! And there is another one coming up, right after the holidays...

Here is the big news: during the Spring semester, for the first time in its history, the Storytelling department is starting a course in Collaborative Interactive Storytelling.
Which, ladies and gentleman, is a fancy name for roleplaying.

Yup, that's right. Time to break out the dice and the character sheets, storytelling students are taking over the gaming world!

(Nerd alert, read on at your own risk)

It kinda, sorta, started with me. *toe kicks dirt* We played Changeling (what do you mean which one? Lost doesn't exist in this universe. No sir. Duh.) with my classmates, and had tons of fun doing it. Have you ever played any roleplay game with professional storytellers before? It was a blast! We are living it, and doing it, why not play it? Changeling (the Dreaming) is the perfect game for storytellers.

Well, some time later, going home from a gig, we started talking about it to Dr. Sobol in the car. We brought it up as an example of storytelling improvisation, and mused about the Jungian implications of Changeling (believe it or not, there are quite a few. Not a die-hard Jung fan, myself, but it does fit the shape we have been wrestling with all semester). Anyway, conversation went on, and we ended up with "hey, we do need a special topic for next semester's Storytelling Performance class..."
And the idea was born.

Basically, the class will look like this: we will talk about roleplaying as a cultural phenomenon; we will discuss some background and history. We will talk about how roleplay games figure into storytelling, and vice versa. And, naturally, we are going to play a series of games to test the theory. Right now, D&D, Changeling and Werewolf are on the menu, with a side of samples we probably will vote on (my choices would be 7th sea, Pendragon, Piratas!, or Star Wars, but that's just me). Then, in the second half of the semester, we are going to build a game world together, and create a storytelling performance that presents to people what gaming is.
And we shall have a lot of dice.

When I tell my friends I'm going to be roleplaying for a whole semester for graduate credit, I get all kinds of reactions. Mostly along the lines of "What the..." and "I hate you!" (of the nice kind). Gamers generally applaud the initiative.

But, seriously. Wanna know why a storytelling department is interested in roleplaying?
Read on! With the authority of someone who has been a gamer for 11 years, and a storyteller for 6, I present you:

Things gaming and storytelling have in common

1. "It is like writing a story, but with other people."
When you are playing a roleplay game, you are essentially creating a story together. It has a beginning, it has characters, it has a plot, and adventures, with the occaisonal monster thrown in, and then it has an ending, hopefully the successful kind. Some adventures follow the Hero's Journey quite closely; others meander away from the trodden path to create a whole new story no one heard before. In the present, sitting down together, us players give birth to new stories every time we play.

2. Adapting to the audience
When you are a DM (Dungeon Master), GM (Game Master), ST (Storyteller - isn't that just adorable?), you are telling a story while the others play the main characters in it. You have to twist and tweak your pre-planned tale every time they do something, to be able to tell them what happens next, and keep them on track for the plot you have planned. Or, in my case, kinda planned. You have to be ready to improvise to fit their mood, their characters, their decisions, their experience lever, and their personal tastes. Again. Just like storytelling, your version of the tale is born in the moment, based on feedback from your audience.

3. Brings people together
Just like live oral storytelling, live gaming (also known as tabletop gaming, as opposed to online gaming) brings people together. You sit down with your friends, cover the table with character sheets, maps, dice, books and notoriously unhealthy snacks, and you spend hours talking, laughing playing together. It doesn't get any better than that. Actually, this is why I prefer live gaming to online games, just like I prefer live storytelling to watching a video: it happens in the moment, and it is a community experience. We are in desperate need of those.
Storytelling and gaming also teach teamwork. In a roleplay game, you are part of a group that has to accomplish things while working together; in storytelling, you work with your audience and give them a collective experience of sharing a tale.

4. Teaches values
Courage, teamwork, logic, creativity - just a few things stories and roleplay games can teach people. Playing together a game of any kind is a valuable experience, especially for children - just like listening to stories and having discussions about them. Children instinctively seek out both forms of entertainment: they were born longing for stories, and born ready to play. And besides, as it has been pointed out recently (see further readings), some games are great for teaching simple math...

5. Myths and legends
Many games are based on world folklore and mythology; some more than others. Both gaming and storytelling carries on the characters, motifs and tales people have been fascinated with for long centuries. Gaming is rapidly creating a moder folklore where everyone has a chance to chime in... just like storytelling.

6. Shared memories
Good stories stick with you for a very long time; our brains are wired in a way that make it easier to remember things through narratives rather than as data. Your favorite tales are with you all your life. Same with gaming; there are adventures you will never forget, and talk about them every time you sit down with fellow gamers. Just to have a laugh.

7. Great fun!
That needs no explanation. Never underestimate the power of fun.

8. Nobody believes it is useful
That is why we have to explain it over and over again.

9. Creates a community
Wherever you go as a storyteller; you will always find other tellers to talk to, who are going to be unbelievably nice and friendly to you just because you are a storyteller too. Because they are nice people. And if you meet other gamers, you have at least one common topic to break the ice...

See? I bet our storytelling class will get a lot out of gaming together. If nothing else, definitely a bunch of good stories to tell...

Once a gamer, always a gamer.

Further reading:
Everything I know I learned from Dungeons and Dragons (Awesome book! The Bridget Jones of the gaming world.)

Winged Wolf

2011-11-15T23:08:00.002+01:00

Yup, you read it right. A winged wolf. How freaking awesome is that?

Pretty awesome, if you ask fourth grade. I told this story for the very first time in my life, it took 30 minutes, and they loved it. If you want instant feedback on a folktale: tell it to fourth grade. They will comment on everything, and you will know what works and what does not by the time you get through your story. Don't forget to take notes.

We started out by collecting mythical monsters on the board. I was completely shocked by the amount of creatures from Greek mythology they could come up with. Halfway through the session it started to dawn on me that I had Percy Jackson to thank for that. Say whatever you want to say about the quality of the book or the movie, but it did teach kids a thing or two about mythology. Most of all, that it is cool.

The Winged Wolf is a Hungarian folktale collected from the northwestern part of the country (actually pretty close to the city where I'm from). It is a long and classic fairy tale with three princes, and flying horses, and magical swords, and dragons, enchanted castles, you name it. And, above all, a winged wolf that can breathe fire.
It was amazing to watch the kids delve into the story. They gasped; they cheered; they helped me when I mixed up words (happens after 4 hours of sleep); they reminded me of details and asked a whole bunch of questions that I will need to think about.

It was really interesting to see how they made no difference between the stories they knew and the story I was telling. When I told them about the seven-headed dragon, the girls started squealing: "Don't cut off the head! Don't cut off the head!" I kind of went along with it and tweaked the story a little so the hero did not make that mistake, and everyone nodded in approval. For them, hydra and seven-headed dragon (hétfejű sárkány) were the same.

When I got to the first appearance of the Winged Wolf, the boys wanted to know if 'it was bigger than Jacob'. I told them it was definitely bigger than Jacob. Bless his cute tame teen romance werepuppy heart.
(That coming from a seasoned Werewolf: the Apocalypse player)

The story was long, but it took the class by storm. It has action, suspense, a little bit of romance, and a whole lot of mythical, magical stuff that makes the kids squeal with delight. After it was over, however, they attacked me with a whole bunch of questions: there were details in the story that did not make complete sense, and after I gave up trying to answer their questions, I had to admit that.

And this is where I have to stop to think: many storytellers and/or psychologists claim that fairy tales talk to people on an elemental, unconscious level, and they need no explanation; that they make sense in their own way. Well, that might be the case with adults, who kind of just accept that 'it is just a story, and anything is possible'. Kids, however, especially in this age group, expect the story to make sense, even within the endless realm of fantasy. Once you set a rule (love makes the prince too heavy for the winged wolf to carry him), you have to stick to it (or answer for your mistakes if you say he did carry him to his wedding in the end - or admit that the prince stopped being in love by the time it came to the wedding, which, you know, is also a plausible explanation.)
And they will have questions and they will ask them all. Which made me realize the ever-changing nature of folktales once again, and my responsibility as a storyteller to adapt them to my modern audiences. These kids know a lot about stories (mythology and fairy tales are in this year), and they will expect them to make sense to them, here and now. They will not appreciate symbols, or authenticity; they will just want to be entertained in a world they are just starting to discover. So in the end, you have to be responsible for changing the story to meet those needs, and at the same time stay true to the original as much as you can.

You are a storyteller - make it work. They will let you know if it does.

The Good, The Challenge, The Tales - Beginner Storytellers' Guide to Audiences

2011-11-10T04:35:00.003+01:00

I have been thinking a lot about this lately. Every budding storyteller seems to have his or her own idea about what the perfect audience is like, and, most of all, which one is the perfect age (group, range, grade) for storytelling. Including me. You listen to conversations between storytellers and you hear stuff like "I love Kingergarten" or "I'd never tell in high school" or "I wish I could only tell to adults", or (in my case) "Teenagers, wheeeee!".
And then you start doing gigs and all of your expectations and preferences turn upside down.
I thought teenagers were my complete favorites. Then I started working with fifth grade and they completely stole my heart. Against my better judgement.

Storytellers work so hard on making the world understand and accept that storytelling IS FOR GROWN-UPS TOO, that sometimes they tend to forget that does not mean children are not equally good as an audience. We overcompensate the all-around trend of "storytelling is for children" by believing that storytelling as an art form can only blossom and shine in front of adults who can grasp the higher meanings.
Well, this might be true, but let's not forget that those open-minded, appreciative grown-ups have to come from somewhere.

So, here is my totally subjective and scrambled Beginning Storyteller's Guide to Audiences:

The Little People (Ages 0-6)
The Good: They will love you to bits. They will also love the stories to bits. They generally love everything to bits, including toys and books.
The Challenge: They can't sit in one place for more than 30 minutes, and if theit attention wavers, they walk away. They are very honest in theit critique that way.
The Tales: Participation stories. A moving target is harder to hit.

Shiny Eyes (Grades 1-4)
The Good: They truly and honestly love and crave storytelling, and they are old enough to remember complicated refrains and repetitions. They also figure out riddles quite quickly.
The Challenge: They are very active and they talk a lot. They express their ideas, and expect to be given the chance to do so. They are the age group that will carpet bomb you with questions and expect you to tell the complete any honest truth and nothing but the truth. Or, you know, just make it up.
The Tales: Folk tales and fairy tales, or, if you want them to love you and worship you and follow you home and sleep on your doorstep: scary stories.

The Untamed (Grades 5-8)
The Good: They are fiercely loyal and they understand everything you say. Or imply. Once they accept you as fun, they will adopt you and consider you a BFF. Their reactions are honest, and hard to miss; if you want to test a story, they are the best audience you can wish for. Laughter will be quick, gasps will be common, and snoring will be loud.
The Challenge: Something weird happens around the age of 12 (although it may vary from person to person and it usually happens to boys first): kids suddenly turn cool. From this point on, they will expect to be treated as grown-ups, and will start a protest against stories they find childish. Or, simply, lie down and pretend to be asleep. Or talk loudly over your head.
The Tales: Ghosts. Adventures. Knights. Dragons. Magic. Adventure. Pirates. Ghosts. Vampires. Adventure. Did I mention Ghosts?...

The Wanderers (High school)
The Good: They will love the stories grown-ups love, and they will love them with much more enthusiasm. They will be looking to the stories for answers and guidance. They are very creative and extremely grateful if you treat them as equals.
The Challenge: They will be cheeky and they will test you. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
The Tales: Love and adventure. Grown-up topics. Tricksters and humor! Blood and gore. Strong emotions. Vamps and wolves, if you are so inclined. Warrior maidens, pregnant Sleeping Beauties, and Mouse Deer in all his glory.

Party People (Undergrads)
The Good: They have a lot of time for storytelling events.
The Challenge: They don't usually go to storytelling events.
The Tales: Stories about beer are always a hit. Kid you not.

Reasonable Adults (Out of college and still alive)
The Good: They really enjoy storytelling, and they apreciate it as a performance and as an art form. They like to look into the deeper meaning of the story, and appreciate the eduational value. They can also sit fairly still for an extended perion of time.
The Challenge: It is hard to tell what they are thinking. They might smile and nod politely, and blank out the story. College teaches us to do that. They also believe that tales are for children. Duh.
The Tales: Anything, really, as long as it is not annoyingly repetitive. You can also flash the background of the story to them. They enjoy exotic things.

Don't take any of this in whole, though. This is just how I see it.

The good thing about storytelling? We do not have to settle for one!

Cinderella was a prostitute

2011-11-04T17:54:00.002+01:00

Don't tell that to the fourth graders.

Telling fairy tales to a high school class composed almost entirely of seventeen year old guys does pose a certain challenge. Just hearing the term 'fairy tale' makes them think of butterfly wings and Disney princesses and fluffy animals who sing terrible songs and all the things they are just too cool to enjoy. It will take them another ten years to admit they all used to be in love with the Little Mermaid.
Anyhow.

I have nothing against Disney; I openly admit I like a lot of stuff they do. But. Being a storyteller, I also know the importance of teaching the younger generations that Disney did not invent those stories. They merely made the appropriate for the greater public. Including kids.

So, today's goal was to show them where fairy tales come from and how they evolved from tales told by adults to adults into children's literature. Of course if I did a nice shiny presentation on the topic, the class would have walked out on me.
So, I just told them stories.

First I told them the tale of Rhodopis, also known as the 'Egyptian Cinderella' (not quite correct) or the 'Greek Cinderella' (more or less agreeable). Taking the bones of the story that I dug up from Aelian's Various Histories, I crafted a tale that is part history and part legend. Apart from Rhodopis being a hetaera (which detail one might or might not want to mention, depending of the age group), it also talks about slavery in Ancient Greece (slavery being a topic American students are familiar with anyway), Aesop, Ancient Egypt (and the dangers of swimming in the Nile) and a bunch of other very useful things. It shows kids how old some stories can be, and what a huge journey they have to go through until they turn into a Disney fairy tale.
(I especially enjoy telling it to American kids in that regard. Tell them this story is 2500 years old and they fall off their chairs.)

For the second half of the class I told them the legend of Zal and Rudabeh, as an example of a very old version of Rapunzel. The two girls who were in class were melting in their seats. Nobody can resist the charm of the white-haired Persian prince. Huh. The guys also enjoyed the story, although for different reasons; even though there were a lot of details to giggle about, their attention was captured and they followed the story from beginning to end. I have told this story a few times before, and thanks to audiences like this one, it is finally starting to take shape. The same goes for Rhodopis. Some tales are just too complex to be told well at first try; you have to see what details capture your audience the most, and where the story needs stretching or editing. But no matter how much they shift during these tellings, the natural magic of a well chosen tale (that was pretty awesome to begin with) works wonders with teenagers. Even if they are guys.

Scary is Forever

2011-11-02T22:51:00.003+01:00

"We don't want to be scared. We want to be terrified."

She was eleven years old and she was talking to me in the calm, patient tone of a grown-up talking to a baby. She has younger siblings. She has experience.

Kind of hard to scare a class of fifth graders brave enough to take on the world. Nothing gets to them, really, not zombies, not werewolves, not ghosts, no nothing. No matter what scary, gory, terrifying story you pull out of your storyteller's sleeve, they will tell you 'it was great, but can you tell us a really scary one next?'. It kind of ruins your self-esteem as a storyteller after a while.

We talked about what makes scary stories scary today. They came up with a nice long list. Of course there were things like ghosts, vampires, witches and haunted houses; but there were also stalkers, kidnappers, and men with knives. The girls, very cleverly, added 'story' and 'descriptions', noting that they have an important role in making a tale scary. There were also eyeballs, loud noises, haunted buildings, and Math. And Chucky. They all seemed to agree Chucky was the scariest thing they have ever seen. Go figure.

I told them Halloween was over, and it was time to tell some other stories (mainly because I think I have told enough scary stories to last me till this time next year); but one of the girls looked up and said "Halloween is all year round." They also told me scary stories were the only kind they liked.

(Of course that is not true, whatever I start telling them they listen with their mouth hanging open anyway)

I am curious what a child psychologist would say to all that. All storytellers know scary stories are very important to children; not because they like the blood and gore, but because this is how they learn about fear in a safe way. While they listen to these stories they get to experience all the emotions - fear, worry, stress - but inside the world of the story which makes them distan enough to deal with. Their imagination only allows them as many details as they can handle, and filter out the rest.
It also gives a great opportunity for the tricksters to crawl around on hands and knees and pinch the legs of others to make them jump, but that's a different story.

As you could see from my previous post, the fire alarm was a great addition to the genre of jump tales; but to really, truly terrify a group of fifth graders... that remains to be seen. I have been adamant that from next week on I'm not going to tell any more scary tales; we are going to explore some other genres, adventures, and cultures. Still, all this talk about terror and horror made me thing a lot about this age group and their connection to fear. There is a lot in this world to be scared of.

This is why I want to attach my favorite song on the topic to this post. This is how kids shoud be raised.

Voltaire - Goodnight Demon Slayer

Inspiration

2011-10-30T18:07:00.003+01:00

So, here is the thing: storytelling makes English classes awesome.

My mother teaches high school English in Hungary. That is where I started to practice storytelling five years ago, and it is the best audience anyone could ever wish for. Let's face it: most English teachers over here get away with grammar tests and lists of words that everyone forgets as soon as the test is over. Sure, there is some listening practice from tapes (!!!) and CDs, but that's mostly two people talking about homework or reserving a table in a restaurant. If you are a teenager, that is the exact definition of BOOOOOORING. And if you are not lucky enough to have a teacher who wants to make you enjoy speaking a foreign language, you are stuck with it for your whole high school career.
Well, my mom has that crazy idea that speaking a language should be fun, which makes her a minority among her peers. Sure, she teaches grammar and stuff, but she also makes her students chat, just for the fun of it; she makes them sit in a circle instead of rows, and she makes them sing and act and watch TV shows in English.
And because I am not always available to be passed off as "listening practice", she also borrowed the storytelling CDs I accumulated over the years, and decided they were just as good. Except, better.

I would like to give a special thanks to all of the storytellers who have inspired me. And I would like to give a special big thanks in the name of the students and my mom to the following tellers:

Barbara McBride-Smith. Her Texas Greek myths are awesome. One of the girls in the school decided she wanted to tell Medusa in an English contest. Have you ever tried performing storytelling in a foreign language? Try doing Greek myths with a Texas accent... but she loved it, and she did great! You could see how much she enjoyed telling, just by looking at her. Thank you, Barbara!

Gay Ducey. She introduced me to Mouse Deer, and and I fell in love with the little critter. I told Mouse Deer stories in the school; some girls decided they wanted to tell one for an English contest. Complete with puppets and funny voices. Kantjil became an all-school rock star. They even had posters on the walls. How could one possibly resist a creature this handsome? Thank you, MaryGay!

The Storycrafters. Our education system in Hungary does not include public performance or public speaking, and it genreally doesn't encourage students to perform at all. So, when two teenage guys volunteer to do a rap story in a foreigh language, you know you are doing something right. For the same reason, at school competitions the audience is usually very quiet and very polite, applauding at the end of every poem or song; so when the whole audience jumps up and starts cheering and clapping during the performance, you know you are doing something even better. When other students the following year decide to look for a rap too, and beacuse they only find half of it, they make up the other half on their own, in English... you know you are doing something magical. Thank you, Storycrafters!

And the next step in the plan? Get funding and bring all these peole to Hungary, so these students (and many, many other students too) can meet and hear them in person! In one CD can make such a different, imagine what a live storyteller could do...

(If you would like to see a video snippet of what I am talking about, go to the school's homepage here:
http://hyperion.krudy.gyor.hu/www/page/81/
Scroll down to the section called "Letölthető dokumentumok"
Download the videos titled
Egy rövidke (4 perces) bemutatófilm
CKC2
Gospel
And enjoy the show!)

THE BEST JUMP STORY EVER

2011-10-26T20:26:00.003+02:00

(Or: how to get out of telling jump tales on the professional level.)

As my friend Sara always says: if a kid is young enough to be dressed as fruit, you should not scare them.
A pack of fifth graders, however, yelling "tell us a really, really, reeeeeaaaaally scary one!!!"... is fair game.

I was scheduled to tell stories today in the library of the ETSU University School. Since this was our last meeting before Halloween, and because they chewed my ears off last week about the Golden Arm, I arrived prepared for everything and anything.
Or so I thought.

First of all, I had a fool-proof plan for NOT telling the Golden Arm (as I have already mentioned in my previous post) - I had the Mummy's Hand ready. I told the kids I am an archaeologist, which, of course, was the most awesome thing in the world in their eyes, so now they wanted to hear about archaeology. I told them some funny little details about the exavations I worked on, and strange things archaeologists tend to find (like a huge German soldier's skeleton in a Roman girl's coffin). The conversation got so edutaional it made my eyes well up with pride (I am just getting acquainted with State Standards...). We talked about archaeology, and history, and I told them how you can tell if a skeleton a boy or a girl (they loved that). Then I slowly shifted the conversation into the story of Sir Hamon and the mummy's hand. At first it is just a weird, slightly funny tale about a hand in a box, and the kids expressed their opinions about both the gift and the archaeologist. Here we got educational (sorry, I mean, Eduactional) again and talked about Egyptian burials and why people were mummified. They knew a surprising amount of details about that (well, I guess it's not all that surprising). Then the story slowly started to sound creepy, especially because I put a great emphasis on it being something that really happened (we know the story from Sir Hamon's journal, so there). To my grown-up (archaeologist) brain the end of the story comes as no spurprise at all - the ghost of the princess shows up to take back her hand. But to them, it was te creepiest, scaries story ever, even if it was not a jump tale. It worked.
The story seemed to drag on forever - it tied into the grave of King Tut and the pharaoh's curse, and since they had not heard about either of those, it was time for more Educashun (and a few creepy legends). Once we exhausted that topic, they startes whining again, demanding a second "reeeeeeally scaaaaaary" story.

The library grew very quiet by then (the older had kids left), so I decided to tell them a well known urban legend called The Stolen Cross, that I heard from my grandfather countless times as a child, in the local colors of my family and the village they live in. It is not a jump tale either, just a creepy story about a guy who steals a cross from the graveyard at night, and when he puts it back he pins his shirt to the ground and thinks the dead had caught him and dies of a heart attack.
Well. I got as far as putting the cross back into the ground; I was describing the man's dread when he felt an invisible force pull on his shirt, [whisper] and he could feel the fabric being pulled down into the grave by what felt like cold... cold... hands...

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

... and in that moment, the fire alarm went off!!!

I have never seen a group of kids so scared in my life! They fell out of their chairs, they screamed bloody murder, they jumped up and they all ran out of the library (which was just as good since we needed to leave the building anyway).
I could not stop laughing. I found them again on the lawn outside the school where they surrounded me and wanted to hear what happened next; some of them were already running around like crazy telling friends and teachers what just happened, and re-telling the story right there. Class was officially dismissed; I will need to finish that story next week when I return.

The best part? They all think I planned it! It certainly was the most perfect timing anyone could ever imagine.
That's just how awesome I am. I can tell a jump tale when I don't even want to. So there.

(Still giggling randomly as I type)

The Scary Season

2011-10-26T04:48:00.002+02:00

Halloween.

I have been in the States for two months now, and one of those two would officially qualify as the Halloween season. The one before that did not, but most of it was spent gathering scary stories and assembling a seasonal repertoire, a sort of International Storyteller's Survival Kit for Halloween. Wherever we go, even if we happen to catch a "theme not specified" gig, the kids would see us and erupt in an ear-shattering "TELL US A SCARY STORY!" chorus that will not quiet down until we comply.

Well. We do not celebrate Halloween in Hungary. At least, not the way they do it over here.
I have to admit, American Halloween is actually pretty fun. If you have the right stories to go with it.
We (as the Tale Tellers storytelling group assembled from students and faculty) certainly do not lack opportunities to practice. Our Tale Tellers Tour just started last Friday and I have already done 4 performances. In five days. Yay!

Here are some of the highlights of the Halloween storytelling season:

1. There is virtually no Halloween gig without some (or all) of the kids demanding the infamous Golden Arm. I have to admit, I have never really liked jump tales, and this one especially annoys me for some weird reason. But since it seems to be in such a high demand, I managed to come up with a solution: I found a story that looks like the Golden Arm just enough for me to get away with it. It's called The Mummy's Hand, and it's a ghost story about a long dead Egyptian princess looking for her lost arm. It is also supposed to be true, which works for the story, and it ties into archaeology, which is right up my alley. Yay!

2. Teig O'Kane. I love telling Teig O'Kane. Yay to the scary fairies! I just told this story to 4th grade today. They loved it. This story would make such a great, Tim Burton-esque crazy road movie...

3. Talking about Tim Burton: Corpse Bride. I found two versions of the original folktale in the library (plus the one by Clarissa Pinkola Estés). They are in a book called Lilith's Cave. I am in the process of merging the two versions into one. The story makes for a great telling.

4. Werewolves. When it comes to Halloween monsters (and the supernatural in general), my favorties are the werewolves, there is no question about that. So for this season I developed a milder version of Sigmund and Sinfjoti from the Völsunga saga (minus incest and baby-killing), and Marie de France's Bisclavret (because you can't really get cooler than having a werewolf knight in King Arthur's court). I have great fun telling these stories. I especially enjoy describing the transformations.

5. Hoichi the Earless is another classic favorite of mine - a Japanese ghost story about a blind singer and the ghosts of a clan that perished in battle. Makes for a very good telling, and gets very creepy in the end.

6. Last but not least: being the only Hungarian storyteller in the United States (as far as I know) comes with certain responsibilities. We don't really have many Halloween stories, but we sure are good at creepy. The first story I developed is a historical piece about Erzsébet Báthory (a.k.a. the Blood Countess); it goes about 30-35 minutes, plus questions and answers, and tells both the legend and the historical truth. I also tell (to kids) a Hungarian version of Mr. Fox, and a folktale with witches and wizards that I have been telling since I first visited the States. I have a few short stories too, like an urban legends I learned from my grandfather (about stealing a cross from the graveyard).

I am in the process of developing some more; if not for this season, then for the next...

NSF 2011 - Magic in Jonesborough

2011-10-10T16:12:00.002+02:00

I have been waiting for 4 YEARS to come back to the Festival, and now that I came back, it felt like I have never left. I saw Jonesborough the day before the Festival - anticipation making the air quiver like a heat wave, tents and decorations going up as if by magic, people with that special smile on their faces. I saw Jonesborough after the Festival; the sea of people slowly trickling out of the town, tents disappearing with the last daylight, everyone slightly dizzy and blinking at the sunlight as if awakening from a centuries-long dream.

And, of course, I saw Jonesborough during the Festival, and there is nothing like it.

I have been taking notes furiously all through the weekend (we get university credit for listening to stories, how awesome is that?!) - there is simply too much to remember, and still, too much one will never forget. So right now, instead of recounting the whole three days minute by minute as I would like to do, I will give you my top 5 favorite moments of the weekend!
(The order is purely by chance, mind you, I would never compare them to one another in any way)
Here we go:

1. Dolores Hydock. As a person and as a storyteller. As usual, she was the star of the Festival. I didn't get to hear her tell Silance, which is probably for the better, because I am seriously close to a Silance overdose from listening to her CD over and over again. But I did get to hear her tell Eglamore and Cristobel (and buy the CD, I am so doomed) and half of the time I was looking at other people's faces to see how they reacted to my favorite parts in the story. There must have been about a thousand people in the Library Tent. And we all laughed and cried and had the "Aaaaawwww" experience, and it was perfect.

2. Antonio Sacre. Strange thing, when I was here four years ago, I heard him tell and he was good, but I did not count him among my favorites. But for some reason (people change in 4 years, and I think I am also getting the hang of the whole "personal storytelling" thing) this time I really, really enjoyed his telling. And when Sunday morning he told his own poem about working with high school kids and poetry slams, he completely, utterly blew my mind, and I cheered with the rest of the crowd until my throat went sore. I love working with high school students as a storyteller, I absolutely adore them, and he talked about them with so much love and such a great sense of humor that now he definitely is in my top 5!

3. Clare Murphy. It was great to see her again (I met her before through FEST), and she did such an amazing job on the big stage! People adored her. She was telling in Tent on the Hill, and people were spilling out of the tend and over the hill, to hear her Irish legends. We have a great need for scary fairies and dashing heroes. She apparently enjoyed the well-trained Jonesborough audiences who did whatever she told them to do.

4. Megan Hicks. I did not get to hear the civil war story, but I did go to hear her European fairy tales. She did a great job with Molly Whoopie and the Twelve dancing princesses, but she absolutely rocked Davy and the Devil! She is not your average nice and cuddly fairy tale teller. She is brave and strong and sassy and she had the most amazing voice. For the third time in one weekend, I saw the crowd stand up as one and cheer.

5. For some strange reason, I also count the end of the Festival in my Top 5. Not because I liked the fact that it was over (I could keep going for a week...) but because it ended on such a great note. I was in the Courthouse Tent for the Sunday afternoon show. Ed Stivender was the last teller; he sang a song with us, and everyone sang together, and it was the perfect song for closing the Festival. Just when he was finished, we heard the whistle of the Jonesborough train, and I saw the tellers spill out of the tent right below the rail tracks and wave at the train with hands and shawls and musical instruments as it rumbled by and carried the 39th National Storytelling Festival away.

+1 (There is always a plus one)
I needed to relax and catch my breath, once the Festival was over. I was invited to the storytellers' party for Sunday evening, but I have about two hours to wander around and relax. I finally made my way to the park, and sat on the root of the huge willow tree, and closed my eyes in the nice warm autumn sunshine for a few moments. I heard people talking on the other side of the creek. It was a lady, walking two dogs, and a man in a baseball hat.
"So, did you tell at the Festival?" the woman asked.
"Yes, I did! I told at the Swappin' Ground." the man answered proudly.
"That's great! What did you tell?"
"Oh, just a small story about..." (the dogs barking drowned out the rest)
"That sounds great! Will you tell it to me?"
And they stopped right there in the park, with the dogs barking and jumping, and he told her the story.

This is exactly why the Festival exists.

It's all about the stories, dear Watson

2011-09-29T23:12:00.002+02:00

Getting a scholarship for doing storytelling work 24/7? Best. Thing. Ever.

Finally, after doing all kinds of stuff kind of simultaneously, I am in a place where it is my full-time job and responsibility to work on my storytelling. I read about it; I write about it; I discuss it with my classmates; I hear lectures about it; I go to see storytellers perform; and I perform myself. When I am not working on my stories, I am doing research for new ones. I have been raiding the library almost on a daily basis, and I turned the Interlibrary Loan system into Skynet. Long story short, I am having a field day. A two-semester long one.

My favorite part about storytelling work (right after being on stage, of course) is background research. I got that much out of the Archeology Master's. I found out that I immensely enjoy digging into a story and seeing where it came from, and who took it over from whom. Once I get started, time ceases to exist, and then it is two in the morning and my friends in Hungary are waking up, asking me why am I not in bed yet. It is kinda hart to explain. Here is what it would sound like:

Well, there is this story that I found, it is an Algerian folktale published in an English magazine in 2001. I have been looking for the original all over the place. Finally, after Googling and JSTORing my life away, I figured out that it is actually a Berber folktale, and has been published before in a French folktale collection in Paris, in the 1940's. Here comes the Skynet, someone must have that book in America too. And, lo and behold, they do. The firt loan request bounces with a huge red warning, "THIS BOOK IS IN FRENCH", so I have to do the whole order again, and tell Skynet that yeah, I kinda figured (Contes Algériens, Paris, 1940?... No sh*t, Sherlock.) Book comes in, and then comes a whole night of painfully slow translation, word by word, sentence by sentence, and all the previous sins of Google Translate are forgotten. I read enough French just to be able to tell if the translation is A.) correct or B.) fishy. Good enough.
Moving on. Comparing the translated version to the English, I notice significant differences that do not come from the translation (extra chapter, that kind of stuff). On we go to happily Googling and JSTORing our life away. The problem? The female hero's name is Aicha, kind of a common name in that part of the world, so in addition to the tale I am actually interested in, I end up with a whole bunch of other Berber folktales where the hero is called Aicha, Aisha, or Ayesha, and three of them are daughters of merchants, so no help there either (the whole title of the French version is Aicha, the merchant's daughter). Some of these tales are actually good, so I am not complaining, but I am obsessed with that one particular story. So.
Apart from searching for the name, I also search for all the other names and places in the story. The prince's name is not helping, he is called Aslan, I could Google that till the end of days and keep ending up in Narnia. The villain, on the other hand, is pretty unique (Horath), I do have a chance there. And I do. As soon as I turn of the Hungarian autocorrect (Horvath). You know those books on GoogleBooks that don't really have a preview, but if you search for a word in them, they show a two-line long snippet with that word? Well, I manage to find a footnote in one of these snippets referring to a name and half a title. Here we go. I find the name and the full citation. Old magazine, a hundred years old, in French, archives on the Internet, God bless the Internet. Searching French archives. That are in French. Searching in French. Found it.
This is the earliest version of the tale where I have gotten so far - 1916. But I do have some very interesting leads. One is that the story from the French book is actually a mosaic: only the first part was about Aicha, the later adventures belonged to other Berber heroes, and surprisingly enough those same stories were printed in the same newspaper. Whoever chose Aicha's tale for the book (that would be the author I guess), added the latter stories to Aicha's series of adventures, maybe to make it longer or more complete. Also, there is a point in the story where the wandering Aicha meets a mysterious stranger with scras on his face, who tells her a story about his escape from an island full of strange cannibals. Hey, I know that story. I know that guy. Aicha just met Sindbad the sailor... that opens a whole new thread of clues to go on!
And this is not all. To tell the story properly, I also need to read up on Berber folktales and culture. So, back to the library to dig. The story also has an ogre. Two hours worth of research later I figure out that 'ogre' is French for 'ghoul'. Here we go. Let's see what we know about ghouls.

At some point during this investigation (a fairly late point, but oh well) it also occurred to me to actually ask a storyteller who speaks Arabic. Wouldn't that just be so much easier?! So I went online and asked the other storytellers if they knew of someone. And so I got the name of an Algerian woman who is currently compiling a folktale collection about strong women stories... waiting for her to respond to my email now.

There is no solution to this investigation. No criminal, no original story. Not one clear answer. But if you keep following the clues, and walking the path back in time as it gets thinner and thinner and splits up into many smalles threads, if you keep your eyes and mind open to details... it will take you to places so far away in time and place you would have never even dreamed of. And when you return in the end, you will have one heck of a story to tell...

X-tellers, assemble!

2011-09-01T02:55:00.004+02:00

(I'm so gonna get kicked around by the geeks for that title.)*

It really is like joining the X-men, in more ways than one. There is this huge, amazing setting that is the ETSU campus, this closed world of students and sciences and creativity. Then, there are our professors, gathering us from all the corners of the USA (or, in my case, the world), to help us nurture and develop the skills we already have, and teach us new tricks of the trade. We are all gifted in one way or another; we all come from very different backgrounds, religious, ethnic, family, language, age, all those details that make the handful of storytelling students colorful and unique. And our gifts are all different too; the stories, the telling styles, the tale of how we got here and the plans of where we are going, they are all different and fascinating. And together, we make a great team, and we have a mission: keeping storytelling alive and sharing it with the rest of the world. Even if many people do not understand why we are doing this at all.
With that said: first week of classes, and I am having the time of my life. It is not always easy, being an international student in America; many times locas students are just not entirely sure what to do with us, or how to talk to us, and it gets all kinds of awkward, or even lonely. Adjusting to a new culture and a new place, far away from everything and everyone you know is not easy, and even when you do, not everyone will be nice to you. You have to keep trying to find those groups, cliques, communities that just accept you as you are.
Good thing I came here to study storytelling.
Storytellers are a wonderful bunch of people. They are open-minded, kind, fun, and completely kick down the cultural boundaries. As I said, we have a passion in common, and that washes the initial awkwardness away. When I first walked into class, I was greeted with smiles and questions and stories, and I just felt like I belonged. No matter how strange and faraway this land is across the sea, storytellers are storytellers everywhere you go, and they will be there at the end of your journey to catch you.
Romantic images aside, I really do like my classmates. They are smart and fun, and as different from each other as you can possibly be, and as far I can tell now, we work perfectly together. I haven't felt this anticipation about going to class since... um. Sophomore year in college? I think I took some awesome course back then. Yep.
Anyhow. I am here, they are here, we are going to go through these two semesters together, and I am looking forward to it!
X-tellers, assemble!

*Just so you know, I could have gotten my references straight if I wanted to.

Back in Jonesborough

2011-08-28T15:46:00.002+02:00

I have worked two years for this. Two. Years.
Actually, it might have been three.

After I returned to Hungary from my one-year trip that really, truly transformed me into a storyteller, everything I did with school and work was for making sure that I would come back here, sooner or later. Finished my degree in Archeology, graduated, applied for the Fulbright, worked my way through mountains of paperwork, found work to make money, practiced my storytelling and performed all over the place, got a job, got the Fulbright, more paperwork, administration, visa, and finally, here I am.
Of course it would not have happened without the help of a lot of amazing people who helped me thorugh all this work, and I will not thank all of them here because I don't want to sound like I am at the Oscars. They know who they are and they know how grateful I am.
Long story short: I have been accepted to the Storytelling Master's program at East Tennesse State University. More paperwork, traveling, moving in, jetlag, more jetlag, campus maps, orientations, I spent five days on the Johnson City campus and I was itching to finally break free. School is amazing, and ETSU is the best place to be; but I knew one that is even better.
On the Friday of my first week, I couldn't bear it anymore: I called for a cab (yeah, no wheels, European exchange student here) and headed straight to Jonesborough.
The driver was explaining to me she was not entirely sure where the "storytelling center" is; but when we turned the corner and I saw the Visitor's Center, I told her she could drop me off right there.
It was early afternoon; I arrived just in time for the Teller-In-Residence performance. It all felt suddenly real; three years just melted away as memories, smells, feelings came rushing back. I crossed the parking lot where the market used to be; only a few short weeks, and a huge tent will be standing there, a tent I must have shown to half the world on a photo to illustrate what a storytelling festival really is. I practically ran down the little alley between the parking lot and the main street; still cool, green, crowded with trinkets, smells of warm grass in the sun.
And then I burst into the light on the other side of the alley, and I was back in Jonesborough.
...
It felt like returning to Narnia. I can't really describe it any better than that. All the details I loved were still the same; the same shops, the same colors, the same smells. I must have looked like some crazy person, walking down the street with my eyes welling up and grinning like the Cheshire cat. My own personal little fairy tale world from three years ago was still the same. And I was back.
Arrived to the Storytelling Center just in time to say hi to everyone, pick up my ticket, and find a place in the auditorium. Then, I just sat, and let the memories wash over me.
The ISC still smells the same. When I used to work there, it had that really unique scent that probably came from some potpourri they sell at the gift shop; one whiff of the air inside was enough to take me back to the storytelling mood and the storytelling days. I sat in my seat and listened to the people murmuring around me and looked at the empty stage and remembered the evening when I was sitting up there telling Hungarain stories, feeling like the queen of the world.
And then the day's queen of the world appeared.
Dolores Hydock has been my instant favorite the moment I first heard her tell at the National Storytelling Festival; then, I met her again while I was an intern at the ISC; and now here she was in her own graceful, smiling self, and she noticed me across the room, and recognized me, and proceeded to introducing me to the audience which made me look not unlike a tomato with a sunburn and red hair, and then she hugged me. It was so good to see her again! She will be performing my two favorite stories at the Festival and I am going to be there to listen and if I have to break a leg and an arm to be there so be it.
Her performance of the day was a wonderful mixture of the life stories of a Southern lady and the story of how she collected those stories. I couldn't say which was more fascinating and more touching. All her words just in place, her face, posture and accent changing as she slipped in and out of character; her own humor and wit combined with those of the lady she was telling us about. The tales were full of references to American culture and people I don't know about; and still, even for me, the once-upon-a-time Southern lady turned into someone loveable and real.
After the performance and talking some more to the ISC staff and Jimmy Neil, I took a walk in Jonesborough. I wandered in and our of shops and up and down streets; and when I finally grew hungry, I went to the Cranberry Thistle.
Right after the ISC, the Thistle means the heart of Jonesborough to me. I used to have breakfast there, and sometimes lunch or an afternoon piece of delicious cake. I wandered in, and I felt right at home; there were no other guests, just the lovely ladies of the Thistle, so I got to sit wherever I wanted, got a big glass of lemonade, and a sandwich that could have fed an army for a week. I just sat there, listened to music, munched on my lunch, and felt completely happy.
I am back on campus now. This year will be mine, all mine, and I am going to enjoy it to the last second before they kick me out of the country. I will be in, around and all over Jonesborough; I am going to be there at ever storytelling event I can possibly reach in some way; I am going to contradance all my shoes to pieces, and I will learn as much about storytelling as I can get. I am going to drink deep from the well that is Jonesborough. And then I will be on my way again, just to beeline around and wonder back here again from time to time.
Every once in a while, one needs to return to Narnia.

(And thank God we have no mean old lion to tell us we are all grown up and cannot come back anymore! Take that, Aslan. Duh.)

Guadalajara 2011 - The tales of the Ocean Mouse

2011-07-10T13:33:00.003+02:00

Yes, Ocean Mouse. Sea Mouse, more accurately. The pun took me almost three days to figure out, and it's a cute one, so I just had to share it with you all. 'Mar' is Spanish for sea, 'ratón' is Spanish for mouse. Hence, Maratón.

Of course, I am talking about the 2011 Maratón de Cuentos (Story Marathon) in Guadalajara, Spain.

My first storytelling festival experience was Jonesborough in 2007; ever since then, every storytelling event (including our own festival) I involuntarity compared to that one. And let me tell you, it is hard to measure up to Jonesborough. Not really in numbers or quality, or the tellers; not even tradition or fame. It was the unique feeling of a whole town living our of time in some fairy tale world for days and nights.
Guadalajara brought all those memories back, and more.

We arrived Friday afternoon, just after the Marathon started; Pep was nice enough to take me to my hotel to get rid of my luggage; after that, I was on my own to walk downtown and find the Palace.
It took me about half an hour, but it was worth it.
The closer I got to the Palace, the more people I saw; music floated above the palace gardens and the green labyrinth, and I saw all the colors of the rainbow on the walls. As I got closer, the crowd began to grow, and the music with it; and suddenly, I turned a corner, and there it was: banners, flags, colors and the marvelous old building of a palace filled with stories.
Maratón de Cuentos.

I wandered into the gardens first. They were filled with colorful little tents selling colorful little things; jewelry, dresses, trinkets. And of course under the colorful arches there were long tables filled with books. I dove into the thrill of the book-hunt (with what money I had left from the travels and Toledo) and spent a lot of time (I mean, a lot) wandering shiny-eyed and bushy-tailed along the tables, turning pages and admiring covers, and generally enjoying the fact that I understood what was written in them. I was finally surrounded by a crowd of Spanish-speaking people, and I loved it.
(Spanish was my second language in high school, and my mother used to teach it too; I grew to love this language when I was a kid, but I only visited Spain once before, and I was eight years old then)
I finally settled for buying one book (ONE!) - a collection of Spanish gypsy legends and tales, and wandered on. A little farther down the road by the green labyrinth there was another tent, with a sign that said Taller Cyrano - Poems and tales for measure. For one Euro, you could sit down and have a poem or a story written just for you on the spot. Of course I had to buy a story, how often do you get to buy stories tailored just for you?! So I sat, and talked to the nice guy wo sat at the table, and he wrote me a story (in Spanish!) and I paid for it with one Euro and a 200 Forint coin. We were both satisfied with the business. How awesome is that.

Finally, I wandered inside through the main gates, and walked right into the story.

What you are seeing now on the photos is the inside of the Palace, an open courtyard covered with a roof against the sun, filled with chairs and hundreds of people listening to tales. In the back, under the green tents, sat the artists who illustrated every story as they were being told, and hung the pictures on the walls for veryone to see!

I grew to love this idea during the Marathon. Every time I walked along the long rows of pictures, I admired how beautiful they were, and tried to guess the stories they illustrated. It was great fun, and a beautiful addition to the lively colors of the festival.

So, I sat down, and listened. I spent a long time listening, drinking in the language and the stories from the ever-flowing fountain. The Marathon is really what its name suggests: non-stop storytelling for three days in a row, day and night.

Around ten o'clock at night (still not dark outside) I joined the other storytellers who came with us from Toledo to the marathon. We met outside the Palace, and talked, and laughed, and then the local tellers and the organizers of the festivals took us upstairs to the balcony for a welcome dinner. It was amazing; we stood on the balcony above the crowd and the colorful tents, watched the sky turnd dark, watched the swallows flying in great numbers, nibbled at stawberries, cherries and cookies, talked and laughed, drank champagne, and listened to the music from below (in th gardens, simultaneously with the Marathon, there was a marathon of music going on. Inside the palace, not a note could be heard, but outside it was magic)

Once dinner was over, we all returned to the inside court to wait for our turn in the telling, which, according to the program, was about to happen at 3 in the morning. So we wrapped ourselves in blankets, sleeping bags, and some of us even in banners and pieces of courtains, warmed our fingers on cups of boiled wine and listened to the tales.
We had audience all night. Even if most of the people went home, after midnight we still had about fourty or fifty people listening to our tales. I almost fell asleep once or twice, but when the FEST tellers started telling, I felt awake again. I told my tale around 5 in the morning, in Spanish (try telling on stange in your second foreign language... I would love to hear what I said, but the audience seemed to like it). My first official Spanish telling. It was fun :)
I waited till the sun came up before I walked back to the hotel to sleep. I woke up at 3 in the afternoon, got dressed, and walked back to the Palace. This was enough to mess up my perception of time; from that on (well, even from before that) the whole three days in Guadalajara felt like being out of time. Days, nights, light, dark, it didn't really matter; I slept and I woke randomly, I listened to enought stories to last a lifetime, I laughed, I cried, I wandered in the city, I ate when I felt like it, I hung out with other tellers, some of them disappeared and some stayed, and it was all very colorful, and very exciting, and magical.

The whole city was full of story people. They were eithr storytellers, or friends of storytellers, or listeners, or writers, or musicians, or just tourists who wandered into the city and got trapped in the Marathon like flies in honey. We couldn't walk ten meters down the street without meeting someone one of us knew; we always found each other at the oddest places (I ran into Birgit and Brendan in an alley at an open bazaar once).
And then, all of a sudden, after a century or two, we were in the courtyard again, and colorín colorado, the Marathon was over.
So, we danced.

We danced to the music under the yellow-red-orange banners that hung low from the ceiling; we waltzed and polkaed (however you spell it) and danced in circles, and laughed, and spun, and had a great time while the decorations of the festival were already coming down around us. We went to have dinner together, courtesy of our generous hosts and the festival's organizers; and by the time we returned to the palace, the square was empy, the banners gone, and not a soul wandering around in the garden.

It felt like a fairy market; for three days and nights, it was there, filled with magic and colors and laughter; and suddenly, it was gone with the light of the day. It left the same sweet heartache behind, the same exhausted happiness and memories like trapped butterflies. One could only sit in a quiet park, smell the freshly printed pages of the book of tales, and make a quiet promise - see you all next year...

FEST 2011 - Jeux Sans Frontières

2011-06-27T09:39:00.002+02:00

More than half a hundred storytellers gathered in a haunted castle in Spain to share ideas, news and stories for three days and as many nights before they scattered again in every direction of the compass.
Sounds like a fairy tale?
You bet.
(Also, 'castles in Spain'. I learned that from Orlando Furioso. The air castles of Spain, held together by spells and dreams, and occasionally a hyppogriff. How freakin' cool is that.)

It was the fourth annual meeting of the Federation for European Storytelling. In Spain. More specifically, in Toledo. Even more specifically, the thousand-year-old castle of San Servador, complete with its very own five-hundred-year-old ghost (that has already been exorcised at least once).
There was no way I would have stayed away from that.

I set out by plane on a rainy Tuesday morning from Budapest to Madrid, and I realized once again how much I love to travel. Especially by plane. Not like I am not afraid of a crash, but the whole experience makes me feel excited and comfortable at the same time. Terminals are easy. They tell you exactly where to go, and what to do, and they are usually clean (at least the ones I've been to), and full of interesting things and people. From the moment you walk in the airport gates all through to the gates of your destination, you are somewhere else. Outside of time. In-between. No everyday problems, no worries. Just... traveling.
(Annnd yes, I'm an Eshu, thank you to all of you who asked ;))

So, as I said, I set out from Budapest to Madrid. I was prepared to tell in Spanish; the tale I brought, translated and practiced, was the Hungarian folktale of The Boy who wanted to walk on the clouds. And now that I could see the clouds from above, I started to understand why. From below, clouds are just puffy white and grey things in the sky; but from above, they are their very own realm. The Cloud Kingdoms. There are valleys and mountains, islands and great white seas, cities with towers and walls, ships that sail the endless blue, and flocks of tiny white sheep. I spent three ours staring at them with my nose pressed against the glass. Not like it has been the first time I flew. But with the story fresh and rehearsed, it suddenly made all the sense in the world.

In Madrid, I got a brief taste of the 10+ metro lines from the airport to the railway station, and a little bit of the pouring rain, before I was on the train and on my way to Toledo. In the meantime, I found an unlikely travel companion in the one and only Giacomo Casanova, whose travel journal of Spain proved to be an amusing read on the long plane and train ride.
When I arrived to the most beautiful train station I have ever seen, the rain was still pouring. I walked around the castle hill, and up some steps; and suddenly, there it was, Toledo on the other side of the Tajo, with a great ridge in-between, and the sight was so beautiful I had to stop and stare. I climbed up the hillside, carrying my backpack with wild ducks circling above, and stood on top of the road, staring at the city and the river and the bridges, laughing.

San Servador is old, and cozy, and beautiful, everything one can wish a castle to be. And it was already starting to fill up with storytellers. Pep was there, with some of the other Spanish organizers, and I knew everything in the world was all right. I found my room, and a roommate from Austria called Karin, all smiling eyes and colorful clothes. And then other people started to arrive. Martin from England (big hug and laughing), the Italians (Paola, Davide and Giovanna, long time no see, and a lot of smiles), and other storytellers, one after another, some of them I knew and some of them were new. And then suddenly Birgit and Tone were there too, and the conference has begun.

When you have 50+ storytellers in one place (which usually puts 'herding cats' into a new perspective), speaking more than a dozen different languages, it is always confusing in the beginning. But our steering group did a great job keeping the program together as we introduced ourselves, and laughed, and slowly figured out who spoke what. That is one great thing about international storytelling: most of us speak 2+ languages, and then it is just a matter of time to figure out who can help you speak to whom. And by the end of the week, we even spoke in languages we have never heard before, and every once in a while I found myself wondering which language I have been using a moment ago... our hosts compared the whole experience to Babel, and I liked the idea. Many many languages, working together, trying to reach the sky. The book got it all wrong.

Once the introductions were over, it was time for some short presentations; first, the FEST babies, those projects and organizations that were born from the inspiration of FEST meetings in the past. One was FIST, the new organization of Italian storytellers, and the other one was our very own HOLNEMVOLT Festival. I was proud like a mother.
After the presentations, Abbi Patrix told us the tale of FEST; some of us have heard it before, but there were new details to it now, like to any good story, and it was good to hear it again, to remind us where we started.

After the presentations, we had dinner; by that time, the rain stopped, and a rainbow appeared over San Servador. This settled out program for the evening: after dinner, we all gathered and walked down the hillside to the bridge, to cross over the river and visit the magnificent city of Toledo.
A nighttime walking tour.
The city was ours; we barely ever saw anyone as we walked down streets, through narrow alleys and under great old buildings, following our guide who told us the story of Toledo. I think we must have spent about three hours wandering around, amazed by the city in the dark, the shadows around the cathedral, the moon above the main square, the gates and massive walls and cobblestones and tiny little balconies. It was great fun, doing that tour with other storytellers. I did not envy the guide, but we had so much to talk about... and at night, it felt like the whole of Toledo belonged to us, and there was no one else within the walls.

It was very late by the time we got back to San Servador; after a whole day of traveling and all the new things and the excitement, I fell into bed as I was. And the conference had just begun.

After the first day of the conference, three more followed; we had a lot to talk about. There were panel discussions of different topics; I participated in Young storytellers, Multilingual experiences, and Repertoire. In Young Storytellers, I learned about storytelling education in other countries; how the new tellers are taught, through mentors or in schools, where they practice and how. It was all very useful and fascinating, especially since I am trying to help two other young Hungarian tellers (see below), and also because I only have 2 months left before I return to the USA to start the Storytelling MA program at ETSU. (Yay!)
Multilingual experiences was equally interesting; as a group I have described above, we needed to talk about solutions to multilingual telling, which includes telling to audiences with a different native language, and also telling with other tellers, translation or tandem. There were a lot of fascinating ideas for tandem telling, and we all agreed that languages are essential in our work, and also in promoting the art of storytelling. Everyone should be able to tell in their own language, but it is also important to speak at least one other, to make international telling easier. And of course, the more the merrier.
Repertoire was mainly about what kind of stories we tell, and how we work with them. Patricia McGill had a lovely image for that: she said picking stories is like buying shoes. There are the ones that are comfortable enough to wear for years; and there are some beautiful ones you just have to have, even if they hurt your feet for a long time before you break them in. And sometimes you just need to run into a shop and buy one out of necessity, and that's okay too.

Apart from panel discussions, we also had group meetings. One for festival organizers, which was extremely useful for me (our festival is still a baby, while others are already teenagers, or even grown-ups). I took pages and pages of notes of useful ideas and creative tidbits about making a storytelling festival successful. And there were a lot to them to learn from. Hakaya, Maratón de Cuentos, ZauberWort, Raccontamiunastoria, Beyond the Border, Festival on the Edge... it would be a long list, if I listed them all. But they all had good things to say, and I was happy to be part of the group.
We also had meetings about FEST itself, trying to figure out what to do to make it more visible, to promote storytelling, to create a website, a newsletter... there were a lot of ideas, and we invented the wheel more than once, but there were things to be said, and in this huge Game Without Borders, we all had to be on the same page. Our greatest fear was that between the annual meetings (Belgium next year, Rome after that, and then Sweden) nothing would happen. But everyone seemed very determined to continue active projects in-between, so we had all the hopes in the world. We'll see.

On the last day of the conference, we even sketched out an international all-European storytelling project for the 2012 Grimm year. It is called Project Grimm, and includes dozens of tellers all telling Grimm tales in their own languages, styles and versions. I am currently coordinating the project. Fun fun fun!

And of course, we had fun. While the festival organizers worked, those who do not have a festival had creative labs, and in two days they created five multilingual story performances, one better than the other. Thursday evening we all walked into Toledo once again, to the baroque theater, to watch the show. One group after another walked on stage and told us stories, and with the abundance of languages they used, all the stories were great, and the performances enjoyable, full of fun ideas for translation and interpretation.

We even had a Mini Film Fest, where we watched videos and slide shows of various storytelling events and programs of the past year. It was nice to see the photos from Raccontamiunastoria, the amazing DVD from Hakaya, and I even presented a short music video myself, cut from the videos made at Holnemvolt. Once the music is legal, I will post it online as well...

Anyhow, a lot more happened in four days than one would believe; it felt like a year, or more, some reverse fairy tale where one thinks she spent a year in the other world, and comes back to find out nothing has changed. Not that I mind.

We are all very different, us storytellers. It is a unique European experience, having so many cultures and so many languages in one place. (Just for the record: Spain, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Italy, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Greece, Sweden, Norway, Canada, Israel, Jordan, Chile, Mexico... I must have left one or two out...) We have ideas, and festivals, and a lot of stories; sometimes we invent wheels enough to supply a car factory, but most of the time, we get along just fine. Storytelling builds long and strong bridges from one culture to another, and even when we are tired and confused and don't always understand every word, we always find our way back in the end. It is a great honor to be a part of such a great group of people; to listen to the tales, and share the news the old way: traveling, listening, telling.

And here ends the conference, but not the tale.

The Oriole, the Cloudwalker, and the Multicolored Lady

2011-06-04T10:55:00.008+02:00

The first storytelling guild in Hungary!!!

In the aftermath of TEDxYouth and the Holnemvolt Festival, quite a few people approached me to ask about storytelling, and some of them were even interested in telling tales themselves. They were eager to learn, and excited, and fun to talk to. Some of them I met more than once, others just sent an e-mail or two; but all of them were interesting and talented and it made me happy to see storytelling is indeed increasingly popular in Hungary, and that I can be a part of this change.
In the end, two people decided to try their hands at being a professional storyteller. Both of them I knew before for their other talents; I knew they would make good tellers. And so they did. Now when I am writing this post they are both past their first gigs, and we are having a lot of fun together as a storytelling guild. I cannot even begin to tell you how excited and happy I am!

Allow me to introduce the new storytellers:

Júlia Lovranits, a.k.a. Rigó (which is Hungarian for oriole or blackbird)

I met her in a summer camp organized for young writers and poets back when we were both in high school. She is a writer, and also now a Biology major at the university; she has been a birdwatcher since she was a child, and she knows everything there is to know about birds. No, really. Everything. In her spare time, she is a member of BirdLife Hungary, and a volunteer at a hospital for wild birds. She has always loved stories and tales, and she kept showing up at most of my gigs; she is a marvelous listener, and also collects stories wherever she goes. Not she decided it was time to tell them.
Juli specializes is bird tales, legends and myths, and she combines them with interesting and important pieces information. Into a Bulgarian folktale about storks, she wove the tale of their long migration from Europe and Africa, and even the stories of real storks who were somehow strange or amazing (there was one that came home from Africa with a spear in its body, and raised its young and lived on; and there is one in Hungary who came here from Spain and ever since then he does not migrate at all). She is graceful and cheerful, and she always has a spark in her eyes when she talks about birds.

Viktor Gy. Fekete, a.k.a. Felhőtlépő (which would roughly tranlsate into Cloudwalker)

He is the one who made the homepage and graphic design of the Holnemvolt Festival. He writes, he sings, he composes poems and music, he is a graphic artist and a webdesigner, and he studies at the Lutheran Theological University. Also, he now tells stories. He prefers improvising to traditional tales; he can make up the most amazing and funny stories on the spot, and you never know what to expect when you listen to him. He has a great sense of humor, and he is surprisingly good with young audiences. And have I mentioned the guitar?
(He also has a homepage)

I am proud and happy to be working with tellers like Juli and Viktor. I hope our performances and tales will encourage others to explore storytelling, and then the guild will grow into something wonderful...

(This is us, dealing with a gig at an open-air festival. We may look tired, but believe me, it was great fun! :))

Paul Bunyan visits Hungary

2011-04-01T11:04:00.002+02:00

I have been planning on telling Paul Bunyan stories ever since I first met Babe the Blue Ox in the Fables comics (where, by the way, he totally steals the spotlight). This was entirely new for me, the whole giant lumberjack thing, so I looked up the tales on the Internet, and I enjoyed reading them immensely. I decided that I should tell them, sooner or later; sooner didn't quite work out, because I was busy with other things, but later finally came along, and I decided to give it a try.
Of course, I asked many American tellers about Paul Bunyan stories and how to tell them; I received tons of good advice, and many tales, and encouragement. I prepared by reading a lot, planning on telling the tales that stuck.
My audience consisted of two classes of second graders; they were lively, and cheerful, and very curious. I traveled from Budapest to a small town called Perkáta, in the bright spring sunshine, watching magpies and hawks fly along with the bus.
I was curious how Hungarian kids will receive Paul Bunyan. I had no clue if they would be interested, or if they would get the joke. But I found that they did not only get it, but they also loved it, and they cheered and laughed all through the whole telling. It was an unbelievable success.
I drew a few conclusions:

1. Telling tall tales is fun. I haven't really tried that before, I though it wasn't really my style, but once I started telling it felt good and I went a little crazy, with funny faces, big gestures and all. I also managed to be fairly serious when I wanted them to believe something. Hungarian kids are kind of used to tall tales; they are very popular in Hungary.
2. I started with a short introduction in the first person, telling them how I traveled to the USA and how everyone knows Paul Bunyan there, and not knowing him would be just like not knowing who King Mátyás is. They laughed. They understood what I meant.
3. They believed every word I said. I told them it was a long time ago and far far away, but other than that, I did not discuss with them what was real and what was not. At the end of the telling, one little girl raised her hand. "The only thing that sounded strange to me was, I mean, why five storks?..."
(The only thing that sounded strange. Go figure XD)
4. There were really no elements in the tales that needed explanation. Hungarian kids are pretty well trained in country life (both from our own folktales, and some experience), so such things as cutting wood, making dairy products or farm life in general didn't need to be explained, they just went with the story. And the giant mosquitoes were familiar, we have stories like that in Hungary, we even have a song ("I caught a mosquito, bigger than a horse..."). Maybe next time I'll put the song into the story...

All in all, it was great fun :)

Once upon a HOLNEMVOLT 3.

2011-03-19T11:42:00.003+01:00

Sunday.

We woke up early in the morning (well, I did - many people seemed to have decided to sleep in), ready for the second day of Holnemvolt.

This time, Wayqui was the first performer; he brought us a full hour of Peruvian folktales that would have made most of the Folklore Department cry from pure joy. His authentic stories were beautiful and amazing, and at the same time, funny (the legend of the son of the rainbow; the tale of the little blue stones; the journey of the three animals). I had a great time translating for him.

Birgit brought us tales about luck and happyness; she was dressed all in red, and she was an elegant Lady Luck, a teenage Cleverness, Ali the Fortunate, and many other characters all at the same time. She sang some songs too, and they all made us feel lucky and happy.

Tone followed Birgit; she told us tales about the dangers of taking a bath. It started out funny and delightful; but as the stories went on, it touched upon some more serious issues as well (King David and Bathsheba; Susanna and the elders). It was a wonderful, wonderful program, and gave us a lot to think about.

Szende told her székely folktales again, with laughter and dancing and puppets and jokes; the audience participated willingly, and they all had a great time. Szende has the power to be a wise woman and a cute little girl at the same time. I wonder how she does it.

Angela was the last performer of the day; she had an amazing story about Baba Yaga going to New York. She told it with momentum, and magic, and song, and it was about twice as exciting as watching an action movie. It was one part Russian folklote, one part Night Watch, and one part Fables, all mixed into a story that made my mouth hang wide open. It was unbelievable.

After the big performances, we had some time left for a SWAP! Four people from the audience volunteered to tell. One of them was Jay Miller, who is an American storyteller currently living in Budapest (who would have thought?). He told us two stories with voice and pantomime, and audience participation, and everyone loved him. My friend Juli also told a Bulgarian folktale about the journey of the storks from Europe to Africa. I can't hear that story enough.

Because the festival took place in a Lutheran church, Sunday afternoon was time for a service. Instead of one, we decided to tell religious and spiritual stories; I think it was one of the best parts of the festival. Wayqui, for example, told a Perucian myth; Tone told us a tale about an elf building a church in Norway (and we could see her transform into an elf on the stage). Angela told her African folktale of finding your inner strength; we could see how the audience reacted to that, and how they all started to sing.

And with that, the festival was over. We thanked everyone who helped us; we gave our presents to the storytellers. We promised we would do it again next year.

After the closing ceremony, we all went out into the dark garden with candles in our hands; there was a small exhibition waiting for us among the trees that some of our friends put together from glass and porcelaine art, and every piece told us a different story. We wandered among the shadows with our little lights; it almost felt like finding our way back home after two days in another world.
All the tales are true.

Once upon a HOLNEMVOLT 2.

2011-03-19T11:06:00.002+01:00

As I was saying, we had 6 amazing tellers.
Well, actually, we had 5 amazing tellers, and me :)

(Check out the HOLNEMVOLT Facebook page for photos!)

We had...
... Angela Davis, the Yarnspinner, from New Orleans, LA
... Tone Bolstad FLøde, from Norway
... César "El Wayqui" Villegas, from Perú
... Birgit Lehner, from Austria
... Csernik Szende, from Transylvania
... and me.

I have told with Angela and Wayqui before when they were in Hungary; I knew Birgit from FEST, and Szende because I have been to her performances, and she is a friend of Petra, the person who made Holnemvolt happen (she is a pastor of the lutheran church, also leads the gospel choir, is an opera singer and a midwife, and speaks like 5 languages, by the way). Tone was new for me; I have exchanged countless emails and messages with her, but never heard her tell. But what I knew about her I could tell she was an exceptional person :)

We started the festival with an olio, to show the audience what they can expect for the rest of the two days. To open the festival I told the story of Moses dividing the Red Sea (as an allegory to the festival, because someone had to take the first step to create a road to the other side). After that, every storyteller told a short story; they were all delightful and wonderful, and captured the audience at once. Birgit told a tale of the three wishes combined into one; Angela sang a funny song about how guys should not be trusted. Tone told the tale of the clever girl (going to the prince not dressed but not naked, not on foot but not ona horse... etc. you know the story don't you), Wayqui told a folktale about how all the birds got married except for the hen and the rooster. Szende sang a wonderful song, and told a short little tale too.

And then it was time for the rest of the day. Every teller had a one-hour performance to ourselves; and all the programs were great!

Angela opened with Swamp Party, her collection of Louisiana tales. I was the one translating for her, and let me tell you, I felt like Coyote holding on to the tail of a shooting star. The audience loved her; they laughed, they yelled, they smiled. She walked down into the audience and picked a guy to participate in the story; and she not only picked him, but also picked him up, and carried him onto the stage on her shoulder. You should have seen his face.
(She also happened to pick my dad to play a loup garou in the story; I was laughing so hard I had to stop translating)

After a short lunch break, Szende took over the stage; since she doesn't only tell stories, but also uses foot puppets, she had to sit on a table to let the audience see what she was doing. She was very cute, and pretty, and we were glad we did not need to translate her because she speaks a Transylvanian dialect and it is sometimes hard to understand even for us. Her performance of székely folktales (with lots of audience participation) was a great success.

The next teller was Tone, and I was very excited to finally hear her tell her viking tales. She was dressed in a Medieval costume, and so was her translator, Timi; they looked great together. Tone started humming a song, and we were instantly pulled into another world; I had a very strong sensation of traveling, and even the air seemed colder. We heard about the Norns, golden apples, viking warriors, Loki, and the World Tree; at some moments in the story, I felt goosebumps on my skin. She was that good.

Birgit followed, and we wandered into another world: the world of Roma folktales. She fell in love with gypsy culture a while ago, and she tells their wonderful stories and sings their beautiful songs. It was an interesting choice of a program; in Hungary, even though many Roma people live among us, most people barely know anything about their culture or heritage. Birgit did a great job opening that world up for us through stories.

The last performance of the day was Wayqui (since I was translating for him too, I made sure I had time to rest between the two). He brought us love stories from all over the world; he told us how the first act of love was invented, he told us a tale about a grain of sand who loved a star; he told us the story of the three princes who all loved the same girl, but in different ways. Wayqui has a very calm, strong way of telling; the audience would follow him anywhere.

And the day was far from over!

In the evening, we had a ghost story concert named "Esti kísértés" (kísértés has a double meaning in Hungarian: it both means temptation and haunting). The hall filled up with people; somehow everyone seemed interested in ghost stories for adults. In this program, every teller told one tale again. Some were frightening (like Angela's, who dressed up as an old woman, concealing her face with a shawl, and managed to creep out everyone just by showing up), others were funny (like Birgit's telling of The piper's revenge). Wayqui told a Medieval tale of a man who snored, and a princess who was always terrified; it was one cute love story if I ever heard one.

And when all the tales were told, we walked outside, and... erhm... noticed some flying lanterns that happened to float by (since the fire department does not quite approve of them), and watched them disappear into the dark sky until they were just moving stars among the real ones. Our wishes, wonders and stories traveled with them.

And so ended the first day of the Holnemvolt Festival.

Once upon a HOLNEMVOLT 1.

2011-03-19T10:43:00.002+01:00

We did it.
We put an international storytelling festival together.
2 days, 6 tellers, 6 countries. Countless stories.
We did it.
...
All right, so we just wanted an excuse to bring storytellers here for ourselves.

An enermous amount of work went into the creation of HOLNEMVOLT. Fortunately enough, we had a lot of great people helping us; seven women and one guy worked together for months, taking care of all the details from creating the homepage all the way to making decorations. We all worked with enthusiasm and devotion, and we managed to overcome all the obstacles (such as some people trying to sabotage the festival by organizing a national conference on top of it... well, two, actually, taking our reserved guest rooms etc.) We were all tired and busy and overwhelmed; but no one ever complained.
We were building a new event from below scratch - we did not only have to promote the festival, but promote storytelling itself, since a few people even knew what the word means. So we had to patiently explain over and over and over and over again that Holnemvolt is for grown-ups, and yes, we will have translation, and no, we are not reading from books, and yes, storytelling can be enjoyable for adults, blah blah blah Ginger. Looks like we did a great job; no one showed up with kids expecting a children's festival, so the message went through. Our pr and media expert did a wonderful job promoting the festival; we were in newspapers, in all the radio programs, on tv, everywhere. We had posters and stickers up all over Budapest. We did everything possible to make the festival successful.
Of course there were problems; we had to deal with a lot of things. The timing, for example, proved to be one of the problems: since 15th of March is a national holiday in Hungary, and it was on Tuesday, people had a four-day weekend with amazing weather, so many of them left the city. We also had almost no money for creating the festival, so we had to rely on people's good will and volunteer's help. Fortunately enough, we got great volunteers. We made a few mistakes ourselves out of tiredness or inexperience; but we managed to get everything in place in the end, and made a list of what we will do better next year. For a very first festival we've ever organized, I think Holnemvolt was a pretty decent job.
I hope that one day, years from now, the creation of the festival will become a story in itself. One of the people who came to listen to our tales said "this is the kind of event that years from now when it will be huge an popular, people will be proudly saying 'I was there at the very first one...'". That's what we are aiming for.
Of course, it would not have worked without our wonderful, wonderful tellers. They traveled here on their own money to help us create a storytelling event for this country; they were all great, and kind, and helpful, and very patient with all of us when we were tired and confused. And they brought us amazing stories that made us think: "We HAVE to do this again next year..."

So many things happened in two days, it is hard to remember all of them at once. In the next few posts, I will try to summarize the experience for those who were not there.
Maybe next year :)

HOLNEMVOLT FESTIVAL!

2011-02-08T10:30:00.003+01:00

International Storytelling Festival for 500 people
Recommended for ages 14 and up

Time: 2 days (March 12-13., 2011)

Ingredients:
Base: 5 international storytellers
- Northern flavors: Tone Bolstad Fløde
- Southern spices: Angela Davis
- Austrian sweets: Birgit Lehner
- Hungarian savor: Csernik Szende
- Mixed salad: Zalka Csenge Virág
Toppings: 5 creative Hungarian interpreters

Spices:
Stories, tales and legends for adult audiences
Ghost story concert late into the night
Spiritual stories
Open mic
Floating lanterns!

Served:
Evangélikus Egyetemi és Főiskolai Gyülekezet
1117 Budapest, Magyar Tudósok körútja 3.

HOMEPAGE

FACEBOOK

Yes, that's right! Hungary now has an inetrnational storytelling festival! YAY! :)

Moment of cute

2010-12-08T13:22:00.002+01:00

"What kind of story are you going to tell?" the little girl asked, sitting with her chin in her palms, eyes shining.

"Peruvian" I answered "It's an indian story."

"Ooh" she smiled, flashing milk teeth "We are indians too! Half."

They looked like it too. Two little girls with beautiful dark eyes, dark hair, and cream brown skin; one of them smily and chatty, the other timid and shy.

"Well," I started "Thi story is about a tatú. Do you know what a tatú is?"

"I don't." said the little one.

"I do!" said the other cheerfully "It's a little anyimal with a tail, and armor. And it can curl up into a ball."

"That's right, that's very good" I smiled.

"I still don't know what it is" the other girl chimed in.

"We saw in on TV" her sister explained "It has short legs."

"That's right; it's a small animal, it has nose like this, and ears like this..." I added "And yes, it has short legs."

"Maybe it doesn't" the chatty girl mused "Maybe it has long legs, you just can't see them from the armor. Like, you know. Icebergs. There is a little bit sticking out, but they are big. Under the water."

"I still don't know what a tatú is" the little one complained.

"I'll show you at home" her sister promised. "Listen to the story."

And so I told them the story of how peope stole the nigt from the tatú, because it was just the perfect length for them to sleep and rest, and how they never gave it back to the little animal, so now it has to sleep during the day. And ever since then, every day is followed by a night that has been stolen from the tatú.

"But but but" the girl held up her hand politely as soon as they story was over "Not all nights are the same length. Some are longer. And in the summer, they are short."

I really had nothing to say to that.

"I still don't know what a tatú is" the little one volunteered.

So, we went on, and I told them the story about the Fox who was saved by the cactus plant, and gave his claws to it as a sign of gratitude. Ever since then, cacti have thorns, and foxes still hide among them.
And then I told them the story about the Fox who was in love with the Moon, and how after a lot of adventures he managed to reach the sky, and stay with the moon forever.

"I think this is the same story" the girl concluded, once the tale was finished "I think it is the ame fox."

"It might be" I agreed - I had never thought about that possibility before.

"Do you think he is afraid up there?" the girl asked "It is very high up."

"I don't know." I admitted "Do you think he is afraid?"

"No." she shook her head firmly "I think he is happy."

I smiled. "I think so too."

"I still don't know what a tatú is." chimed the little one.

"Maybe he is afraid" added her sister, ignoring the change of topic "You know, when the moon is dark and you can't see the whole of it, and then the fox in under the shadow, and maybe he is afraid."

"Maybe" I nodded "But the Moon is still there, so he is not alone, right?"

"Right" she nodded with a smile.

"I still don't know what a tatú is." the little one insisted.

"Shush. I will tell you." her sister said.

...

That, my friends, is a storyteller in the making.

The True Tale of the Black Knight

2010-11-03T18:31:00.002+01:00

"Tell us stories about the Black Knight!"

They really got me with that one.
The first time we met, I told them the story of Dame Ragnell (they are studying the Middle Ages this semester), and they greatly enjoyed it; interestingly enough the most exciting character for them was the Black Knight, who asked Arthur the question and threatened to kill him if he didn't find the answer. So, naturally, they decided they wanted to hear more about him.

And here I was with one week to solve the riddle: Who is the Black Knight, really?

There is a bunch of Black Knights in legend and lore; knights, especially evil ones, generally enjoy wearing black. My favorite Arthurian novelist, Gerald Morris, might have a word or two to say about that; but the question still stood: where could I finf the true story of the Black Knight?... In one week?

There was one other person I knew of: THE Black Knight, the one that conquers all other knights, and wins every fight in the end. Yeah, I'm talking about Death. There is a story about a princess who would only marry the perfect knight, the one that could kill all others - and she ended up being carried away by exactly that person. There is an amazing song about it, Der Letzte Tanz (The Last Dance) by Schandmaul.

Anyhow, back to my quest. I doubted a whole Story Club could be based on the Black Knight being Death, so I kept on searching for more apropriate and more... alive candidates.

Remember one very important thing: Children are always right about stories.

So without further ado I present you our very own personal Black Knight: Sir Breunor.
He was interesting enough to tell about; we could start with how he became a knight (and slaying a lion in King Arthur's court was something the kids just loved to act out - Guinevere ran screaming around the Round Table pursued by a roaring lion until Breunor (or, Bruno, as we called him) killed the beast, and got knighted for his deed). We went on with the tale, and it was an absolute win: the little girl and the knight were an amazing couple, constantly yelling at each other and calling each other names until they gave up, the girl got kidnapped and rescued by a whole team of Arthurian knights, and they became best friends forever.

And this is not all. To my utter surprise, there is another story about a Black Knight, and that Black Knight is nobody else but the grandson of our very own King Arthur! If it wasn't for the kids' request I would have never found the Renaissance romance of Tom a'Lincoln and his two sons, the Black Knight and the Faerie Knight. It's a tragedy, really, but a very colorful and well written one. And because I discovered our very own Black Knight (Bruno or not Bruno) had a brother (well, half brother), there was a straight linw to walk from Black Knight to Faerie Knight (which, by the way, is the lamest name ever for a knight, according to my kids), and from faerie knight to faerie princes, and so we ended up with the story of King Cormac.

It was amazing to watch them act the story out. It was as if they knew what was going to happen the moment I started the tale; most of the time I didn't even need to tell them, I could just sit back and watch as the story progressed. They just felt their way through the entire story. I gave Cormac a string of bells I use for storytelling, and he shook them every time he needed to, and they figured out the tale on their own. It was really a fascinating sight - a story, thousands of years old, and they had no trouble coming to the same conclusion it originally had. Once it was finished, we talked about what makes a good king and why, and they all agreed that good kings talk to people and listen to their problems. They also agreed the bells were awesome, and I had some trouble untangling them before I could tie them back around my ankle.

I think I learn just as much from these kids as they learn from me. Now I know a lot more about the Black Knight, and he'll remain just that, our very own Sir Bruno, with his half-brother the Faerie Knight, who has the lamest name ever. Sometimes, just sometimes, fairy tale villains turn out to be so much more than just an evil guy in black armor...

God is a birl

2010-11-03T11:22:00.003+01:00

"You know. Boy and girl. Like snails."

I swear I was not the one who brought the Bible stories up. It was the third meeting of the Story Club at a certain international school in Budapest, and my adorable eight-year-olds decided to take matters into their own hands, and requested stories from the Bible. They brought the book too, a colorful and easy-to-read kids' version of it, and told me they had been reading it and found it very exciting, and they were almost at the end now. It was fascinating to see the sheer enthusiasm they had for reading through the greatest story of all for the first time in their life.

The Story Club is a colorful bunch. Kids from all corners of the world, native and non-native English speakers, from different backgrounds, cultures, families and languages. And they work perfectly together. They are amazing, creative, friendly and lively. I honestly have no idea if they are having more fun at the Story Club or I am.

One of the boys opened the book on the first page, and started to read the story of the Creation. Since they made it their own rule that they are going to act out every single story we tell, as soon as the tale begun, we were in need of a God. This was the moment when the question of God's gender became an issue. They pointed out that "in this book, God is a he" (since he was picutred as the stereotypical old man with the long beard), but they also knew quite clearly that that's not the whole truth. And then, snails came into the picture, and the group cheerfully agreed that God was a birl.

Chosing one of the boys to create our own story universe, we went on with the tale. One girl ran to the light switch and turned it off and on, illustrating light and darkness. Pillows made the clouds, and the blue carpet was excellent for water, with the green sofa rising from it, forming firm ground. Animals and plants were never a problem for such a creative bunch.

And then we got to Adam and Eve. Adam was a bit shy, and stood next to God, listening to the story; Eve, on the other hand, did an excellent job of acting like she'd never seen... well, anything before. She poked and prodded at things like pencils, bags, pillows, walls and people, and she made funny squealing noises when something surprised her. One little girl with an amazingly deep voice volunteered to be the snake; another boy became the angel with the flaming sword. I couldn't help but smile as one of my favorite books came to my mind.
(Good Omens, what else.)

After we got through creation, we went on to Noah's Ark. All piled onto the green sofa, we floated on the blue waters of the Great Flood Carpet. There are several folktales about animals on the Ark; we acted out quite a few of them. Why the dog's nose is wet; why cats sit on the threshold; why the woodpecker's head is red. When floating on the Ark got boring, we decided to skip to King Solomon.

I know it's not a Bible story per se, but I've always loved the tale of The Butterfly that Stamped. And it has King Solomon in it. And the Queen of Sheba. And genies, which I had to explain to the kids - to my surprise they didn't know the story of Aladdin. Anyhow, we got into the story of the King and the butterflies, and the parents waiting for us outside the door could hear the whole group chanting "Stomp! Stomp! Stomp!". We got a great King with a magic ring, a very smart little Queen, and an amazing genie who could lift the whole palace into the air.

In the few mintues left at the end of the story club, we finished with the tale of Moses dividing the Red Sea (the folktale version of it, where a girl has to walk into the waters first in order to show God the bravery of the people). It was a much more quiet story, and the kids watched in awe as one of the girls walked across the blue carpet with determination in her eyes. That story has a lot to think about. "God doesn't give you a miracle until you give something from yourself first."

I was not planning on bringing Bible stories to them; when I asked them one week earlier what kind of stories they wanted to hear, I was expecting to hear 'dragons', 'princesses', 'fairies', or something along those lines. But they said Bible, and so Bible it was.
We had great fun.

I can't wait to hear what they'll come up with next time.

Traveller, like me

2010-10-24T16:25:00.002+02:00

Sometimes, unique chance meetings can happen between two people who live centuries apart.

This time, one of them is (obviously) yours truly. That one, I don't need to introduce.
The other one... now, that's a story.

His name is Ács Gedeon, although he complains yankees changed it to Ácsy, and then to Archer, since translating it to Carpenter would have been a pain. He was born in Hungary, in the year 1819, and he died there in 1887. He spent 58 years of his life as a pastor of the Reformed Church in a tiny village in what back then was Southern Hungary, and now belongs to Croatia. People loved him there; and he loved the people. He was born and raised among them; he knew all their stories, their customs, their lives.
Gedeon was 30 years old when the Revolution and Freedom Fight of 1848-1849 swept across the kingdom. He joined the army; fought in the fighs; and when it was all over, like so many of his friends, he followed Kossuth into exile. First, he spent a few years in Turkey; then, he travelled to the New World, and ended up living in New York, Boston, Syracuse, Ithaca, and a few other cities in New England. After he couldn't make a living as the pastor of the Hungarian community, he neded up working as a railroad builder, factory worker, carpenter, and finally as a photographer.

Why is he special?
He was also a writer, although nothing he wrote ever got published until a hundred years after his death. He kept a journal, or rather, a notebook full of short stories, musings, anecdotes, and other scribblings. A little more than four thousand pages; barely one tenth of it has ever been published in print. This is the book I started reading last week, and got through the 400 pages as if I was eating candy, enjoying every word.
I love 19th century travel journals. I just disocevered this lately, and naturally it started with Mark Twain. Finding someone who wrote in the same era from a Hungarian point of view was truly fascinating.
Ács is a good writer. His notes are full of humor, wit, elegant style and cheerful curiosity. All the more fascinating since he was in exile,constantly hoping he would be allowed to go home to his family; he did not choose to travel, fate chose it for him. And sill, he travelled with an open mind and an open heart. Even in his darkest days of poverty, he always had a good word or two to say about his friends, the people surrounding him, the weather, or anything, really.
And he wrote about everything.

And I really mean everything. He wrote about Turkish marriage ceremonies; Hungarian smoking customs; American underwear; Lincoln's election; Boston's main street and the newsboys there; flowers in Turkey, Native Americans in Washington, gang fights in Baltimore, superstitions in his hometown, curious words and phrases, interesting people, newspaper articles he'd read, Greek gods, the Underground Railroad, snowstorms in New England, female fashion items, kissing customs of different nations, his childhood and the schools he went to... really. Everything. His notebook is a treasure chest of shiny bits and pieces; every time I turned the page, another interesting topic would pop up, and more than once I would giggle aloud at his anecdotes. He was a man with a full heart, bright eyes, a solid sense of justice, and a curious story for all it was worth.

"I did not want to become a pastor; I was following my father's footsteps. The first time I baptised, if I remember correctly, I baptised twins.
(...)
I was the pastor at my own sister's wedding, and she was barely 15 years old.
(...)
Once I married a young girl to a man she did not love; she loved the pastor instead.
(...)
Once, when I asked him if he loved his bride, the groom said no.
(...)
I only had one sermon about murder; I told it at Laskó [at home], and I was only halfway through it when someone ran into the church yelling someone had been murdered outside.
(...)
I did not want to become a pastor; I was following in my father's footsteps. But I have reason to belive that most of my listeners - in all three continents - loved me."

Amen to that.

(I really need to translate him into English. I don't think anybody ever did that.)

Reporting from the National Folktale Conference

2010-10-04T12:02:00.002+02:00

It was the 6th National Folktale Conference, and I have no clue how I missed the first 5. Really, no clue.
But. I have been to all kinds of story conferences, and this one was smaller, and shorter, and maybe less crowded - but it is ours, and it was awesome.

It took place in a small city on the Danube south from Budapest; the place is called Százhalombatta, and it was there even before the Romans came here. As a reminder of the town's rich and logn history there is a big open-air archaeological park and a museum worth visiting. They also have a brand new building for cultural events and conferences. They decorated it for the occasion with big puppets of fairy tale characters.

As for the conference itself, I give you only the highlights:

1. Hungary now has a unique Fairy Tale Therapy Centre, dreamed and designed by psychologist and story therapist Boldizsár Ildikó, specifically for children. Read the information on the homepage, it really is fascinating!

2. We heard about HUNRA's (Hungarian Reading Association) latest program; the name of the program would translate to 'Reading Partner', and it has dozens of volunteers who go out to families and children in need to read with them (and tell them stories!) and help them improve their literacy skills, and their enthusiasm for literature.

3. We heard tons of good lectures on folktales and folklore; this year's focus was the Croatian minority, so we got equal parts from the folklore of Hungarian minorities in Croatia, and the Coratian minority in Hungary. Lots of amazing stories! Lots of book titles I had to write down. I'm hitting the libraries tomorrow.

4. And then there was STORYTELLING. From master Berecz András, who is in my (and many other people's) opinion the greatest living storyteller in Hungary, to young girls from various parts of the country who recited folktales in wonderful regional dialects; from Kóka Rozália, traditional folktale teller to Kovács Marianna, a lady with delicate features and a rich, deep voice who told stories in Croatian and in Hungarian (she was my personal favorite). There was Agócs Gergely, the mentor of the only storytelling course available in Hungary (in a place called House of Traditions) and his current and former students, a lively and colorful group of story-loving people who took every opportunity during the two days to tell a good tale or two. It just felt like suddenly storytellers were springing up from the ground left and right. I was so happy!

5. And then, I told a story too. I told the Jewish story about the baby storyteller and Laila the angel, and it was a very precious moment. It's one of my favorite tales, and it is a perfect story for a huge goup of tellers and listeners. And people listened, so intently it felt like everything stood still. After the performance, some of them told me they had goosebumps, and some people said they cried. Lady Rozália shook my hand and told me she'd collected a story in Transylania that begins with the same words. Funny; they were my words. I translated the story from English.

6. There was a lot of storytelling, amazing folk music, some dancing, and many stories. More cute, amazing, cheerful and memorable moments than I could recall in one blog post.

I felt completely at home - after all, I was home.

Another leap of faith

2010-09-02T13:05:00.002+02:00

I can't believe I wrote my last post in February! I have been slacking off once again. I don't really have an excuse. Except, in the past months, I finished my thesis and got a Master's Degree in Archaeology (with a specialization in the Roman era and Early Middle Ages, not that it's important).
School's over.
BUT!
From now on,
I am officially a full-time professional storyteller!
Does it rock, or what? :)
I have a few gigs lining up in September, and hopefully there will be more.
(Or I might starve.)
(Just kidding)
I do not know how it will work out, but it is fun so far, and all kinds of exciting, and I really hope it remains so. My head is buzzing with plans, and stories, and ideas. It's a good kind of dizziness.

Also, there will be a National Folktale Conference in Hungary in the first days of October. I am really excited about it! It's the sixth time they organize it, and this time the featured minority is Croatian. There will be lectures, and presentations, and stories, and Hungarian storytellers! Yay! I can't wait!
I'll keep you all posted.
Promise.

Journey to the West

2010-02-02T12:23:00.002+01:00

This time, it's the real thing! (Not me going overseas one more time, although the title would fit that too just fine... ;)

No, this time it's the ever so famous and amazing Chinese story about the Monkey King and his companions!
(All right, so the Buddhist monk and his companions. But seriously. Xuanzang vs. the Monkey King? Talk about stealing the spotlight!)

What I'm talking about is an exciting international storytelling project started by a Swedish friend of mine, storyteller Ulf Ärnström, and yours truly. Here is the link with all you need to know:

JOURNEY TO THE WEST

Come join us on this adventure! :)

2010-01-05T12:40:00.002+01:00

The Multicolored Lady is on Twitter now, under the username TarkabarkaHolgy (which, surprisingly, is Hungarian for 'Multicolored Lady'). She has no idea how useful or fun it is going to be, so she's just putting this out there in case there are other tweeters lurking around. Come and tweet :)

"Pali bácsi"

2010-01-03T18:15:00.002+01:00

Have I ever told you about the person who was responsible for my adventures in the United States? The one who gave me one of the most wonderful gifts in my life?

You would probably know him as Paul Kellner, but we used to call him Pali bácsi.

He and his family support seven Hungarian students every single year with a one-year scholarship to the United States. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for many of us, and definitely a life-changing experience for all.
And you know what the most wonderful thing is about this scholarship?
Trust.

It took a lot of paperwork, all kinds of references and records, a language exams and an interview - but when we got to the final meeting with the Kellners, they still didn't know who we were, not really. They chose us for an incredible adventure, and they barely knew what kind of people we were. I remember sitting there, very very nervous, and them asking me why I wanted to go to the USA... I told them about storytelling, which was a new thing for me back then, a dream that was still vague and fresh, and because I myself couldn't really make sense of it, I told them a story instead. One of my very fist tellings in English.
(Do you know the tale of The Three Dolls? That's the one.)
And so begun the journey of the Multicolored Lady. The rest is history.

I still can't believe it. I have been back home since then, and back in the US again, and now back home once more, and I still can't wrap my idea around the fact that someone would just read my records, and talk to me for a while, and then spend that amount of money on sending me to the US. For a whole year, filled to the last day with new friends, stories, adventures, and all kinds of wonderful things. They bet their own reputation on how we'd fare in a strange country, a strange culture. I spent the whole year trying to make them very proud of me. Or at least not disappointed.

It is a rare thing nowadays to meet people who believe in you that much. So when I say 'gift', I don't only mean the scholarship itself - I mean that incredible amount of trust they showed towards each and every one of us they chose. It makes my head spin, just thinking about it.

So here is my advice to you: notice the people in your life who truly believe in you. Treasure them. Whether or not they support you financially, respect them, and treasure them, and remember them. They will change your life forever.
And when it is your turn, be brave enough to believe in others. It is the best way to repay their trust.

I didn't expect having to write another post of this kind so soon after Blue's. But here it is, and I and grateful and proud that I was able to write it. It means I knew someone very special in my life.

Rest in Peace, Pali bácsi.

Blue is everywhere

2009-12-18T00:23:00.002+01:00

I wanted to write about Brother Blue. I have for a while now. I did a long-ish piece on my Hungarian blog, and tried to put it into English, to get away easy. It didn't work. I can't really tell you why; it just didn't. Maybe because that version was me talking about Blue to Hungarian people; telling them who he is. Nobody in the English-speaking storytelling world needs me to tell them who Blue is. So I didn't write.
I got a call yesterday, a last minute call for a performance, to the Christmas party of a gospel choir. Of course I said yes. You don't say no to gospel music.

This gig gave me waaaaay more than I bargained for. Actually it gave me more than most of my performances, ever.

When I arrived, people were still gathering; young people like me, no little kids buzzing around. Perfect. We started talking; soon they were asking questions about storytelling, and I was running my usual rounds explaining what kind of storytelling I do, and how it fits into the big scene of the international storytelling world.
Then the name Brother Blue came up, and it was not me saying it.
Wow.
I got used to people knowing about Blue because I told (more like sang praises about) him all over the place. But this lady did not know him from me, or from my writings - she knew his tales from the Internet, and her face just lit up with an unmistakable light when she talked about him.
She'd never met Blue in person, but he did something amazing for her: he healed her heart after a loss, and his words stayed with her ever since. She talked about him with love and admiration. And there, at some Christmas gig, late one night, two people met, and there was something Blue in that moment.
We talked. I did my telling, but it was more friends talking to friends than anything else; I shared my favorite tales, and we sang, and told jokes, and shared Christmas gifts, and played music. And then we talked, and talked, and talked some more; we talked about people who changed our lives. I told them about Blue. And how I met him at Sharing the Fire, and how he heard my stories, and how his words stayed with me ever since, and how he helped me become the storyteller I am today.
Someone had tears in her eyes. She was not alone.
It was the most perfect Blue moment this Christmas could bring. Shredding tears for someone you have never met is one thing; spending an evening full of joy and laughter in his memory is another.

Hey, you all over there in the New World: the sky is blue above Hungary too!

"Tell everybody I'm on my way..."

2009-10-16T18:29:00.003+02:00

"...new friends and new places to see..."
:)
Guess what. I'm back in the USA!!!

That's right. I was invited to tell stories at the Kids Euro Festival in Washington DC!

It's a festival organized by the embassies of the EU countries for American children, promoting our cultures and values. And this year, I have the honor of repesenting Hungary. And storytelling as an art form.

Yes, I am excited! :)

Do you remember what I said about returning home after a year - that it felt like I've never left Hungary and things just went on? Well, returning to the US was exactly the same. I left the airport after a friendly two-hour customs check-in, and I felt like the past year-or-so since I returned to Hungary was nothing but a dream. America became reality again, and continued on from where I left it. Memories came rushing back, and so forth and so on.

I brought a bunch of new stories too. I hand-picked my favorite Hungarian folktales, then spent days thinking them over and over again, turning them upside down and inside out, and selecting the right music to help me build up the whole tale in my own special way. I tested some of them on my friends, others are brand new and shiny. I have traditional tales like The Land of Ice (with a very smart prince who climbs frozen mountains and rides a polar bear), The Wandering Prince (with duels and travels, and a friendly lion), The Fox Lady (which kind of turned into a Japanese-Hungarian cooperation story, but is still fun), The Bald Prince (and his trusty sidekicks, the Bear Boy and the little demon who was too good to be evil), The Lily of the Valley (with more princes, princesses, dwarves and fae folk), The Immortal Queen (and the quest to find her castle), and Princess Hide-and-Seek, and I'll get to her in a minute.

Today I had my first performance in a DC middle school. The kids (most of them 10-12 years old) were very well behaved, adorable and super creative. they were curious about Hungary in general, so we looked it up on the map, and I told them how many hours I flew, and they tried to pronounce my name, and all in all, it was already fun before it even begun. From all the new stories, I chose to tell Princess Hide-and-Seek (formerly known as The princess that saw everything), and she flew. It is always great to see a new story spread its wings, and this one is just perfect for a group of kids - they put in their ideas, and their imagination, and all in all, it turned out to be more successful than I expected. Not to mention we ran into modern mythology with all the "special superhuman abilities" stuff, but hey, this is America, and I dig comics anyway. :)

The list of my upcoming performances in DC can be found here.

Tonight I'm going to tell stories at Kennedy Center - the first official stage performance of the Festival. No pressure. Good thing amazing people like the staff of the Hungarian Embassy have my back :) Not to mention Princess Hide-and-Seek.

"...with the sun beating down, yes, I'm on my way,
and I can't keep the smile off my face..."

(Actually, it's raining in DC right now. Not that I care :)

Rome sweet home

2009-10-01T10:04:00.004+02:00

This was my fourth time in Rome, and I have never ever dropped a coin into the Trevi Fountain. How about that.

This time, however, was entirely different: in addition to two weeks of enthusiastic digging and shoveling and other highly scientific work up in San Potito, I happened to have another event to visit:

RACCONTAMIUNASTORIA
organized the first International Storytelling Festival in Rome!!!

I met Angela and Giovanna in Lausanne, and even before that, on the Internet. When I heard they are bringing together my favorite Urbs and Storytelling, there was no question where I'll be this September.
It was amazing.
Going to new places and meeting new people is one of the things about storytelling that I like the most. But going to a place I've grown to love over the years (I'm a Roman Archaeology major, in case you didn't know) and do what I want to do the rest of my life (tell stories) was a gift. A special, unique kind of blessing.
When I arrived on Friday evening, the tellers were already gathered in a tiny, friendly theater on the side of Monte Testaccio. Meeting friends again - people I've met in Lausanne - was fun, to say the least. We talked, we laughed, we discussed Rome and Italy in detail. Angela and Paola - the two young ladies who organized the Festival - greeted me with smiles and hugs. The only thing left to do was sit down and enjoy the opening of the Festival.
And there was a lot to enjoy too. Stories, and songs, and poetry, and music, and stories without words and laughter and fun. I told the Sad Prince there as an opening, and it was a blast! It all depends on the audience, you know. With a lot of enthusiastic young storytellers and story-lovers around, it is easy to make a story fun :)
And that fun was nothing compared to the evening concert: mainly, because that one happened in Santa Maria del Popolo, one of the most beautiful churches in the City. I've been there twice before, but never at night. It was grand and silent and gloomy and friendly at the same time, with shadows in the corners and echoes of our voices, and statues and paintings blinking at us as we disturbed their sleep. There was also excitement and laughter as our storytellers (Angela, Paola, Giovanna and Davide) prepared for their big show - Sisters from the Book.
If you ever visit Rome, make sure you go and see that performance. I don't speak Italian (apart from the words and phrases I picked up during three years of digging), but I did learn Spanish and Latin, and I could catch most of the story - but I didn't really need to. The rhythm of the language, the looks on their faces, their movements, the whole thing was just amazing as it was; I lost track of time completely as we sat in the shadows and listened to the age-old stories in awe. Later I asked them what the stories were (the ones I didn't catch), and they were just as beautiful as I thought.
I wandered home around midnight, and felt like I have been asleep and dreaming for a day.

Saturday was the second (and, for me, unfortunately the last) day of the Festival, and with the bright autumn morning came a new and exciting setting: the Via Appia Antica. One of my favorite places in Rome. It's full of history, and legends, and it's a road, polished by the footsteps of millions of people, leading us from the present into the past. Sometimes further away than we'd like though, getting of the overcrowded bus was a bit tricky, so I had to walk back from the catacombs to the meeting point at Quo vadis. I didn't mind it one bit. It was early in the morning, it was quiet, I was almost all alone as I walked towards the City, enjoying the sun and the silence.
The first half of the day was Graham Langley's storytelling workshop. I enjoyed every second of it. There were a lot of young tellers there, lively, cheerful and very very friendly. We told stories and played around with them; talked, laughed, made friends, and discovered things about our craft that we didn't realize before. Thank you, Graham :)
As for the second half of the day - we walked the road of tales. Raccontamiunastoria took us on a journey down the Via Appia from Quo vadis (you out there who are not familiar with this beautiful legend, go and read Henryk Sienkiewicz's amazing book, Quo vadis) to the tomb of Annia Regilla. There were Roman tales and legends from the Middle Ages; between stops we walked and talked and sang and admired the beauty of the Appian Way.
At the end of the road, there were chairs waiting for us under a huge tree, and some more stories to listen to as the sun set behind the hills and stars started to come out. After that, the nice walk back to the meeting point, warm dinner in a cozy little restaurant, and then the evening performance at Parco Egeria. Somewhere along the way it started to rain, but it didn't bother us much; David Ambrose (Wales) and Mats Rehnman (Sweden) made sure we forgot about everything beyond the storytelling tent. It was very interesting to see how the translation worked out - Angela and the others made an excellent job of playing around with the story, inserting a few keyword here and there, and not really translating anything but making the tales easier to understand. It was perfectly balanced that way.
Two hours of amazing tales and lots of laughter later it was finally time to find our ways back home and into our beds.

I can't really add any comments to all this, apart from
THANK YOU, RACCONTAMIUNASTORIA,
and
SEE YOU NEXT YEAR!!!!
:)

Oh, and I have some photos on my Hungarian blog, check them out here.

The story of the Sad Prince

2009-08-25T12:56:00.003+02:00

Egyszer volt, hol nem volt, az Óperenciás-tengeren is túl, a tüzes tengerek hetvenhetedik szigetének partján...
Once upon a time, far far away across the Óperenciás sea, on the seventy-seventh island of the Seas of Fire – lived a prince, whose name we do not know; everyone just called him Bús Királyfi, the Sad Prince. His father, the king, kept telling him day after day how useless he was; true enough, he was not particularly brave or exceptionally clever, he wasn’t talented either in war or in politics. His father used to roll his eyes and say „He doesn’t even have a good story to tell.”
So one day Bús Királyfi decided to set out on a journey – if he cannot become a good prince, he will become a good storyteller. He traveled for a long long time, searching for stories – but he didn’t even find people to talk to. At last, he met a little rabbit in the forest.
„Te nyúl, tudsz-e nekem mesét mondani?”
„Rabbit, can you tell me a story?”
„Van nagyobb dolgom is attól!”
„I have other things to do!”
And the Rabbit hopped away.
Bús Királyfi continued his journey, and met a wolf.
„Farkas testvér, tudsz-e nekem mesét mondani?”
„Van nagyobb dolgom is attól. Eridj innen!”
„Leave me alone!” said the wolf, and left the Prince alone.
Next, Bús Királyfi met a bear.
„Medve bátyám, tudsz-e nekem mesét mondani?”
„Van nagyobb dolgom is attól. Eridj az utamból!”
„Get out of my way!” said the bear.
The Prince went on, and reached the place when the forest met the fields; he stopped there, leaning against a lonely willow tree, and sighed.
„Hát ki fog nekem mesét tanitani? Mesélsz nekem, te árva fűzfa?”
„Who will teach a story to me? Would you do it, lonely willow tree?”
But the willow couldn’t even talk.
So on he went, ment, mendegélt; he walked into a town, and came to the door of a house; he opened the door, and here we are, telling our stories...
Bús Királyfi is always standing in the doorway, listening to us.

(The story was told by the traditional storyteller Fejes József, and can be found in the book A magyar mesemondás hagyománya, by Raffai Judit. This is not a literal translation of the tale, but the version I tell with my own words when I perform. Tell and enjoy! :)

East meets West

2009-08-23T15:22:00.005+02:00

Hungarians can't seem to agree about the location of our country. Some say Eastern Europe, others say Central Europe (and are seriusly offended by being called Eastern), many say Easter-Central-Europe, some say Balkans, and there is also a rumor that if you put the map of Middle Earth on top of Europe, we would be in the dead middle of Mordor. Go figure.
Whatever the case is, from a Western point of view we tend to look strange and exotic. It took some getting used to, when I wandered overseas, but I think I can live with being unique :) Which brings us to a new piece about the above (um, below) mentioned FEST conference and festival.
Eastern Europe (for the time being let's agree on this) was represented by the three of us: Birgit from Vienna, Jitka from the Czech Republic, and yours truly. You could say the Habsburg Monarchy reassembled for a guest performance... none of the three countries has any official storytelling organization or network (yet!), so we tended to stick together, first out of curiosity and shared experiences, then out of friendship. We talked, and talked, and talked some more, and we sang, and we laughed, and we made a storyteller out of Jitka who only came to observe the conference for ther phd research. Turns out she isn't only talented in telling, she also sings very well :)
Long story short - the Eastern European Special Interest Group came into being. Yay!

As for Hungary...
I told three stories at the festival; two of them were Hungarian folktales and one was a great story from the American South, which I coudn't help but tell at one of the evening story swaps. (I'm thinking there are some people out there who wouldn't think it appropriate to tell an American story when I'm out in the world, representing my culture and my country all alone... well, those are the people I don't really care about)
The first story was that of the Sad Prince (I'll put it on this blog later). It's more like a story opening, really; it's short, it's simple, and it fell right into place at the first evening of the festival. People seemed to like it. A lot. And when some telers cem up to me afterwards and asked me if they were allowed to tell the tale, I couldn't have been more proud... not of myself, but of the story!
(What did I say? Of course I said yes. Folktales are supposed to travel! :)
The success of the Sad Prince gave me a lot of self-confidence for the next day, when my performance was the very last one of the festival. I spent a lot of time pondering about which Hungarian tale to tell; actually, I have been thinking about it for months, and I came up with the right story on the morning of that very day. This is how it usually works with me.
The story I chose was that of Ludas Matyi (I'll also post it on this blog later, or maybe include it in my next Multicolored Newsletter... we'll see). It's a kind of trickster tale, funny and smart, and it includes some characters that are from other countries (or so they say). I had the silly idea to have some of the other tellers help me with the tale... it was already too late in the day for traditional storytelling, and after 4 days spent together with the great crowd of people already mentioned, I felt really, really playful. So this is how it happened that the story suddenly had a Czech architect (Jitka) and a Swedish doctor (Love) in it. (In the original story it's an Italian architect and a German doctor, and I couldn't care less...:) It was amazing! I've never had so much fun on the storytelling stage before. The three of us were the youngest at the conference; playing together at the end of those 5 days was everything I could wish for to make the Lausanne experience just perfect. The story worked, the improv came out just perfect, and the audience seemed to like it too.
And so we closed the festival, with laughter and playfulness.

Moments like this make me proud of my country. It has stories that work no matter where I take them and no matter which language I use; it has unique and curious things to tell, and I have ways to tell them to people from all over the world. Sharing the tales of my own culture is a great responsibility, but also a great joy; it is one of the things I want to keep doing all my life.

Left to right: me, Birgit and Jitka, a.k.a. the storytellers of Eastern Europe :)

F.E.S.T. report - the nutshell version

2009-08-12T12:25:00.004+02:00

A very wise American lady once told me that herding storytellers is like trying to nail jello to the wall. Well, try the same with about 70 European tellers from more than 18 countries, speaking 14 different languages, and that jello thing will suddenly seem like a welcoming way of relaxation.
For those of you who live far far away: F.E.S.T. stands for Federation for European Storytelling. Yay to that! This amazing organization had its first conference last year in Oslo, and now it was time for the next gathering! This time it took place in Lausanne, a wonderful city by Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Even better, this time I had the opportunity to join the conference, thus representing Hungary among a very international and multicultural crowd of amazing and friendly people. Storytellers.
Describing these 5 days in detail would (will) take a lot of time and several blog posts. Right now I have to work on my official report for F.E.S.T., as well as this same enthusiastic post in Hungarian for my other blog, so going into all kinds of delicious details and stories will have to wait a bit. I'll get to it as soon as I can. Until I do, I just want to give you a taste of "what happened in Lausanne". Because it definitely won't stay in Lausanne ;) So here comes the essence of F.E.S.T. 2009:

- The countries: Austria, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, plus Canada and Cuba as outside-Europe guests.
- The languages: German, English, French, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Spanish, Portuguese, Gaelic, Italian, Greek, Czech, Hungarian, Dutch, Catalan and Basque.
- The time: 3 days of F.E.S.T. conference, followed by two amazing days of the Les 7 langues du dragon Storytelling Festival.
- The place: the ever-so-beautiful city of Lausanne, in Casino de Montbenon, overlooking Lake Geneva and the Alps. Beautiful sunshine, excellent weather, and a fountain to play in. Um, yeah. It can't really get any better than that.
- The stories: More than you can imagine! Mostly legends, folktales, myths, and all kinds of traditional stuff with some personal stories thrown in. Continuing their journey across Europe from mouth to ear, stopping by in Lausanne.
- The audience: besides the other tellers, we also had a crowd of local people coming in for the festival. They mostly speak French, but the understood English and German quite well. As for the storytelling - they seemed to understand quite a lot, no matter what the language was, actually :)
- The telling: all kinds of tandem and bilingual you can imagine - we spent most of our time playing around and experimenting with ways of translation. Most of them were great fun, and worked perfectly. I'll write more about them later on.

So, this is it for now. Stay tuned, I'll return with all the stories and details soon enough. Believe me, I have a lot to tell! :)

Oh, and as for the jello on the wall: we nailed it.

Louisiana meets Hungary

2009-07-30T19:20:00.004+02:00

Almost a year ago (can you believe that?...) I spent a week in New Orleans, visiting a dear friend of mine, Angela Davis, the Yarnspinner. She showed me the city, took me to lots of fun places (e.g. the Laura Plantation and an alligator farm), and of course she told me stories, stories and more stories.
This week, it was her turn to visit me in my home.
All the fun we had!
We told stories together in two summer camps - it was a blast! One camp was pretty much like all the other camps I've ever known: dozens of children running in around, doing whatever they felt like doing, under the supervision of a handful friendly but tired-beyond-measure people. There was music, and food, and a stray dog under the table; few children were actually in the barn when the storytelling started.
Hungarian kids are not used to storytelling, not to mention tales told in English, American style. First, there was surprise, and shyness, and then it just went BANG, and suddenly the barn was full of excited children, crowding around the stage. They were enchanted, mesmerized, and all kinds of long synonyms I can find in the English dictionary for "totally amazed". Angela told her stories, and I translated for her; it felt like riding a tornado, I had to keep up with her rhythm and speed, not to mention finding the right words to give back the shades and details of the original tale. After an hour of telling, I felt like I've been knocked over the head with a hammer. And it felt good :) The kids had a great time testing their English knowledge. As the performance continued, some of them actually started to translate words to the others, and guessing what happened in the tale before I had my chance to translate. It was great fun! When I told my story, they were already on the stage, and not willing to give up what they received from Angela, so I ended up with a whole bunch of cheerful kids around me, acting out everything I told in the story. It. Was. Fun.
The other camp (the one in my former high school) was a lot more organized, but not less fun. We earned a watermelon for an hour's telling :) After the show we were overrun by the kids, each one of them wanting autographs, and our webpages, and our favorite stories. Cuteness ensued.

Apart from telling stories, we also traveled a lot with Angela. First I had to show her around in my hometown, Győr; for that occasion I had to blow the dust off of my childhood's stories and the local legends. It's a very true cliché that you don't know anything about your home until you have guests from far away. I was a tourist in my own town.
We also took Angela to Pannonhalma, the archabbey that's more than a thousand years old, and can be seen from Győr, shining white on the top of a hill. The monks make excellent wine there. And lavender oil. It's a peaceful island of history; the Benedictines have only been there since 996 A.D., but they had finds dating back to the Roman age (which I didn't know, but really appreciated).
We spent one day in Slovakia, visiting castles (Trencsén and Beckó) and telling legends about kinghts and lords and damsels in distress. We tried our best to give Angela an impression of Hungarian history, Medieval life (as we know it...) and bits of history like the Turkish occupation. The story of Beckó has always been the "castle legend" for me (is that an existing phrase? It is in Hungarian. We have a whole bunch of them).
The next day we spent in Austria, where we went all the way up to the Ottohaus on the Rax. It was beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Clear, bright, with wild flowers, butterflies, high mountains, pine woods, and (naturally) lots and lots of stories.

We (me and my family) did our best to show Angela a glimpse of real authentic Hungarian specialities like Túró Rudi (dark chocolate and sweet cottage cheese), Hungarian literature (high literature with hints of depression), the puli dog (Hungarian, not Rastafarian), and a bunch of other things I forgot. Hopefully she won't.

All in all, I had a great time.

Prague is the place to haunt!

2009-07-30T16:19:00.002+02:00

Every city should have a book just like Václav Cibula's Legends and tales of Prague.
We spent 3 days in Prague on a family vacation, and let me tell you, I have been to several cities around the globe, but never one that was so filled with stories and legends. And because I'm a storyteller I also know that this is not so because Prague is a unique place for tales to be born. I mean, I have been visiting Rome regularly for years now, and even there I never felt like this. Like I am surrounded by an invisible web of tales, connecting places to other places and people; like the air itself is buzzing with words whispered long ago, like I can hear the footsteps of shadows, like every corner I turn leads to the world of another legend or fairy tale. It's all in the details. And the stories. It's all in an old used book I found in an antique shop years ago, and never thought about it until we were on our way to the Czech Republic.
Now go ahead and tell me stories don't shape the world we see.

The hotel we stayed in belonged to the Church of St. John on the Rock. It was a nice old building, with friendly people and cozy rooms; also it was in the New Town, right in the middle of everything. And by 'everything', of course I mean the stories. I mean, come on!
Right next door there was the Faust House; we didn't realize it when we arrived, and when I opened The Book to search for local tales, I almost fell over with surprise. I expected there would be a lot of stories about the Castle, the Charles Bridge etc., but never thought there would be tales all around, right next door to our hotel...
So, once I realized we had Dr. Faust for a neighbour (his house now converted into a hospital and pharmacy - the irony of it...), I started browsing through the book's New Town chapter. Soon I found out that in the monastery just across the street the Devil used to be the cook in the good old days (and when we went in, no one knew why I was giggling at the "Catering" sign); that one street over from us the ghost of a young girl dances people to death; that we were a 2-minute walk away from Prague's most haunted street; that one of the houses close to us used to be the headquarters of a secret brotherhood for people who left their bodies and traveled through paintings; and that one night long ago someone had a nun buried alive in one of the neighboring buildings.
Not to mention the Vysehrad towering over us in all its beauty.

We couldn't take a single step without bumping into stories. Most of them I only had time to read after we came home; tales about old gods, cruel water spirits and their babies, cursed artists, the blinded clock-maker and ghosts, ghosts, and more ghosts.
And, of course, the Golem.
I've always loved the story of the Golem; now I had the chance to walk around in the old Jewish quarters and re-tell it to myself. Of course, in the Jewish quarters mostly everything is about the Golem. Not that I mind, not at all.
One evening, we took a "ghost tour" there. It was just me, my father and the tour guide; she told us that very few tourists are interested in Jewish tales and the place itself, which surprised me. A lot. Ever since I've been a storyteller (and before that a story-reader) Prague was always one with the Golem and Rabbi Löw for me. Apparently, not for most people. I don't get it.
(Did you know there are policemen walking around at night, guarding the Old-New Synagogue from people who might want to sneak in and find the Golem? :D How cool is that?)
Unfortunately, the Charles Bridge (am I the only one who feels silly writing Charles Bridge instead of Karluv most?...) was being renovated, so the famous Bruncvik-and-lion statue was nowhere to be seen. Bummer. I liked that story, even though I didn't quite approve of the slaying of the bride. She had snakes for legs, then what?...
All in all, we wandered in Prague for three days, and it was wonderful, unreal, and filled with stories I won't forget anytime soon. So, my point is, one book made a HUGE difference in how I experienced Prague itself; I bet that if I went with a local storyteller, it would have been even better. That's why I believe that every single city should have a book just like that. Or a storyteller for a tour guide. Yep. Every one of them.
Or at least the ones I'd like to visit.

Land Ho!

2009-04-13T14:27:00.001+02:00

What was that about getting settled in again?...
Okay, it took me 8 months, and finally I can say with the outmost confidence that I'm never gonna be fully settled in again. Anywhere. Except for nonexistent places, but that's a different matter.
I'm thinking about renaming this blog - I'm thinking Briar Rose. It certainly has been sleeping for a long, long time...
Now, here is the thing. I could start going through everything I didn't write about since... let me check... Jonesborough last July, but I suspect I'd never catch up to the present day.
So, how about we pretend the past 8 months have been compressed into 8 days, and go on with the story without much catching up at all? Sounds good? Fine by me.

Home again

2008-08-05T14:05:00.002+02:00

2 things about coming home:
1. It's as if I didn't leave at all and the whole year was just one night's dream - while everyone keeps telling me I was away for so long.
2. It's as if I lived a lifetime of adventures and I came home and no time passed here at all.
Yes, both of them at the same time. And I have jetlag too (although 17 hours of sleep did help a bit)

You know those fairy tales when someone spends some time on the "other world" and then comes home and hundreds of years have passed (Oisín, Urashima Taro and all the others)?
I've always loved them. Now I understand them.

I'll get back to writing as soon as I get settled in...

Campin' out with the Nineteenth

2008-07-05T04:53:00.002+02:00

Okay, before we start, just to make sure we are on the same page: in Hungary, in high school, American history was discussed in about 40 minutes or less. The only thing we heard about the Civil War was Gettysburg (that's how it's possible that when I "went down South" some of my friends thought I was in South America. Go figure.) So my first (and most complete) source of information about the war was Gone with the wind (and you can guess the rest). Ever since I came here, I was kinda picking up the pieces of American history and putting them together to get the bigger picture - I had a lot of help from nice people like Carolyn Stearns (who tells wonderful civil war stories) and Marilyn Kinsella (my fairy godmother during the St. Louis Festival who introduced me to the Museum of Westward Expansion and the whole Lois and Clark story) and so forth.
Now that I'm in the South, and I have Civil War soldiers camping out under my very window, I saw an opportunity no decent storyteller is allowed to miss. Go behind the scenes of historical reenactment.
("Civil War soldiers under your window? Wow! Which side?" "Whaddaya mean which side?! I'm in the South for heaven's sake, do you honestly think they would let a bunch of Yankees camp out there?!")
So this evening, after the "public" went home, and I got back from another mind-blowing evening of contra dancing (no need to explain - someone please marry me already!!!), I just walked into the camp, so ruining my reputation as a decent lady forever and ever (and I couldn't care less, really). The soldiers were a bit surprised at first; they were just getting ready for dinner and they were starting the campfire and I bet they were glad all the people went home with their questions, and then here is that weird young lady with the strange accents, marching into the camp and she doesn't look like she is planning on leaving anytime soon. Well, the Southerners are all gentlemen of course, so they offered me a seat and they kinda gathered around, and I started asking them about the war and stuff, and no matter how silly my questions were, they kept answering, and they told me the story of their regiment, and it was just THE perfect history lesson. The ice broke, we started talking, night settled in, and we continued talking among the firebugs and the candles; I told a Hungarian story to the soldiers, and it was a blast, I had so much fun (I told them about the siege of Eger, a story every kid in my country grows up with - I never thought one day I'd tell it in a Confederate camp and the soldiers would go "woooow" over it... talk about the right story at the right place. Another precious moment I'll never forget)
And we kept on talking into the night until I felt like I was gonna pass out (and, well, walking into a camp as a lady is one thing and passing out in a camp as a lady is another thing...) so I said goodnight to the soldiers, promised to visit them again tomorrow, and walked back to the 21th century side of the creek.
The North might have won the war - the South has won my heart.
(All my Yankee friends will just have to deal with it. I still love them too, though;)

Beware of the Hungarian story stalker

2008-07-04T03:41:00.005+02:00

Yeah, that kinda covers what I am doing right now. I'm diggin' deep, deeeep into the archives of the Storytelling Center, pulling out one ancient, dust-covered festival program after another, and listing all the tellers in a database who performed on the Jonesborough stage. Ever.
Right now, I'm back to 1988 (told ya, deeeeeep - I was 2 years old!), and I got to the juicy stuff: I'm starting to find photos of tellers whom I know (and who still are performing on the same stage!), and some of those photos are actual blackmail material... Sounds like a story, "Back in the ooold, old days, when Connie Regan-Blake had long black hair and Ed Stivender had a mustache and Donald Davis had dark beard and David Novak looked like a shiny eyed schoolboy and Heather Forest looked... pretty much the same..." ack I forgot this is my English blog. Bummer, I'm only allowed to write impertinent stuff like that on the Hungarian one. Babelfish still has serious issues with my language. Thank God. XD)
(Just kidding ;)
Seriously, this is so much fun :) I probably read a lot more than I need for the research (Name. Country. Year. Done.) but c'mon, it's like a candy store for a kid. I love every minute of it! I read about tellers I've met and tellers I've heard and tellers I've heard about, and even legends like Ray Hicks and J. J. Reneaux who are not with us anymore (and yes, I firmly believe there are lots of good things in modern technology, one of them being the ability to hear the voice of a storyteller who is not with us anymore). And the history of the Festival is bigger and more colorful and more legend-like than I have ever imagined...
Uh-oh, Civil War troops are camping out under my window. Gotta go pull up the Confederation flag. XD
(Gettin' ready for Jboro Days...)
Fun fun fun.

Resident Trickster

2008-07-02T22:25:00.002+02:00

T.I.R. - Teller-in-Residence. Right?
Wrong.
This week, it's Trickster-in-Residence.
Andy Offutt Irwin in da house.

Andy appears, Andy smiles, Andy runs up and down, Andy gets lost, Andy is found, Andy chats with the ladies at the front desk, Andy scares the kids at the front desk, Andy is in the way in the box office, Andy is ushered out of the box office, Andy gets lost again, Andy joins a school group, Andy greets the audience, Andy drives the emcee up the wall, Andy comes in, Andy whistles, Andy plays, Andy bangs on kids' heads with a plastic hammer, Andy threatens the crowd into laughing loud enough, Andy plays the guitar, Andy hops off stage, Andy visits with the audience at the gift shop, Andy randomly changes personalities. Andy is fun.
Somebody care to come up with a definition for 'trickster'?

(Yep, back in Jboro, being "office trained" at the ISC - my inner child enjoys playing with the cash register and the credit card batch, my outer child deals with the ticket office. I'm here for this week and the next week, er... working on my summer research project, which includes observing the professional storytellers' behavior in their natural environment... And I watch every single afternoon matinée. No pressure.
Jboro is getting ready for the big 4th of July weekend. Fun fun fun.)

The Crone is back!

2008-06-21T15:59:00.001+02:00

Friday afternoon performance at the ISC. I am sitting in the front row of the theater, waiting, together with 50-something other people; waiting for Dolores Hydock. And I can’t even start to describe you the joy and exctiement and the huge, heartfelt smile that took over me when I saw the old, ragged Medieval woman leaning on her staff, climbing the stairs to the stage, while the sounds of the saltarello music filled the room...
It has been a long time since when I first heard Silence at the Festival; and today, the old crone was back, with a shiny new story to tell. And not just any story; the most amazing Medieval love story you have ever heard.
Well, I can’t really tell you about the rest of the audience, for the whole world could have crumbled around me in that one our and I would have never even noticed it. But I can tell you what I felt.
When I was not laughing out loud at the old lady’s opinion about minstrels and legends of 14-year-old „lovers” (quite true if you ask a Middle Ages – fanatic like me...), I was sitting with wide eyes, only drawing a breath when it was absolutely necessary, and it required some self control to keep my mouth from hanging open. Many times during the story, I was biting on my hand to keep me from shouting at the most dramatic turn of the events („Oh crap oh crap oooh crap...”) (seriously. I still have bitemarks on my thumb.) Towards the end of the story I kinda said goodbye to my makeup with the tears and all (and there was some sniffing around me in the audience too); when the story ended, we all jumped up from our seats and applauded till our palms hurt.
Yeah, the story kinda kicks ass.
Dolores does too.
The story has everything a good Medieval story needs – dragon-slaying, Crusades, jousting, action romance desire, a hero who is quite far from the moony-eyed Medieval ideal („My name is Adventure” - hell yesss!!!), drama, some traveling, and it all makes much more sense than the average minsterel song...
Dolores told me the original poem is quite short, and she had to work on it to fill in the gaps in the story; well, if you ask me, she did a wonderful job. A job a true storyteller would do – take the story where is came from, and play around with it with imagination and creativity, and present it to the audience with grace and wit and the sheer joy of telling. That is why we love her.
Yes, the crone is back too.
I can’t wait for the CD. Till then, I’ll just have to listen to Silence over and over again...

(Nah, she did not pay for this post... in fact, she doesn't even know about it. It's just me being hyper again...)

So far, so good

2008-06-18T22:53:00.002+02:00

So much about determination.
1. I lost the wifi at the gingerbread cottage, so my online time is quite limited...
2. Being here at the ISC is busier than I ever thought (and I'm having fun with it!), so looks like it will take a while to start posting again...
News in short sentences:
1. Storytelling yesterday at the Cranberry Thistle. Amazing, lovely, fun fun fun, lots of good tellers (and me), very supportive audience. Hungarian fairy legend, well received.
2. Dovie left (I keep listening to her CD just to hear her voice...), Dolores arrived, she did her Medieval story today, and rocked the world. She's such a sweet lady.
3. Still in love with Jonesborough. Wanna stay here. Somebody, marry me.
4. Working on storytelling research, digging up archives about the Festival. Lots of fun stuff there.
5. BIG Hungarian storytelling evening coming up tomorrow. Nah, I'm not nervous. At all. Well. Maybe. A bit. But we're gonna have free food...

The girl in the gingerbread cottage

2008-06-14T06:04:00.002+02:00

Do you remember the pavilion in the park in Jonesborough, by the mill, where the infamous ghost story concerts are held? Ya know, creek, willow trees, eerie light, old buildings, train, that kind of perfectly creepy storytelling stuff.
Well, in the background of all that, there is a little cottage, with ivy on the porch, white rocking chairs, flowerbeds and bumblebees, and fireflies in the evening; tiny door, tiny windows, rust-colored walls, and all kinds of creaking noises. When you look at it between two haunted tales in a cool October night, you'd definitely believe the cottage is haunted itself. I did too.
Not by ghosts, but by spirits of stories, hundreds of them, and dreams and memories and laughter from many years ago piled up in the corners, awe and delight seeped into the walls, fantasies and colors and the breath of people who lived or visited here or never have been in the town in any form but their tales.
Well, our story starts when, on a warm summer afternoon that was not different from any other, cheerful and relaxed and almost unnoticed, somebody moved into the quiet little cottage.
It was me.

Time-warp, wrap-up, skip hop jump, or: What the heck is going on with this blog?

2008-06-14T04:47:00.004+02:00

I can't keep putting it off any longer, no more excuses, no more exams, no more... whatever. I gotta get this blog going, because there are all those lovely friendly story people out there whom I want to share my adventures with...
And adventures I had. If you check back in time, you see I stopped writing in the middle of Sharing the Fire, which means we have lots of tasty stuff coming up, like the rest of StF, Northlands, St. Louis, a workshop with Elizabeth Ellis, and the legendary return to Jonesborough (if you're not familiar with all these, don't worry, just keep reading! I'll give you a clue: It's all about storytelling... you have been warned.)
Because I'm so far behind with writing (lazy, lazy me), I decided to start posting about what's going on right now, and fill in the blanks later. That means you will not only have posts about Jonesborough (where I happen to be right now) after (up up up) from this one, but you'll also have to scroll down (back in time) once in a while and check if I've filled in a chapter or two about the conferences. I hope you can deal with all that, it's gonna be fun!
Sooo... here we go!

Sharing the Fire - Campfires, candles, fireworks

2008-04-12T17:19:00.002+02:00

Toast with strawberry jam and more familiar faces in the morning cavalcade of colors and voices - what a perfect way to start the second day of the conference! And we had a lovely keynote teller to go with it: Susan Klein. "Storytelling is not for sissies" she said, and we all agreed; the elegant and sassy lady on the stage told us to behave ourselves because we are special, and that's always a good thing to hear. Her wit and humor and wisdom kicked off the first day of workshops and fun...
Did you realize how troublesome it is to choose one and only one workshop from all the amazing topics that are at the same time? Seriously, I spent half of my morning pondering about it.
Finally I ended up in Diane Edgecomb's workshop about Kurdish tales - and it turned out to be the best choice of the morning... The lady with the long braid and the long skirt told us about her amazing adventures and work with Kurdish storytellers, and how her book came to be (and yes I bought the book and it's worth every penny) (penny? I'm still not used to American coins...) She is doing an incredible job with the collecting and publishing and she is just that original kind of wandering storyteller who goes to the other side of the globe to rescue the stories she loves... cheers to her!
For the second round of workshops, I picked Ann Shapiro's workshop of storytelling and literacy, hoping that I'll learn some effective answers to The Question (I know, 42) (nah, not that question): Why hire storytellers in schools? I just see it coming, once I go back home, I'll really need all the training I can get... and Ann is a wonderful teacher. We played some games and we learned some answers, and I had much more confidence about telling in the classroom than before the workshop... yay!
Last round of the day, and I was pondering again - finally my vote went for Rabbi Rachmiel Tobesman (the third good choice of the day - not that I think that any other choices would have been less good...) and his Tales to touch the spirit... And they did. Listening to him telling those amazing stories and talking about how it does not matter what your religion is as long as you can find a message in them that touches your soul - I was thinking all the time "yessss, this is what religion should be about for everyone." He was wise and funny and entertaining, and I spent the whole 90 minutes going "True. Yes. Exactly. Wow."
And so ended the series of workshops for Saturday - and so began the Saturday night OLIO...

Sharing the Fire - The first spark

2008-04-12T05:47:00.003+02:00

What a nice name for a storytelling conference, huh? You imagine nice friendly candles, colorful Chinese lanterns, lamps with flickering flames, torches in dark hallways of castles and campfires surrounded by moths and stories...
Well, for me, it was rather like a badass bushfire.

I just finished reading Neil Gaiman's Stradust - the most fascinating part of the whole book is the fairy market at the beginning. All kinds of miracles, people in colorful clothes, elves, goblins, faeries, wizards, flowers, colors, voices, music, stories stories stories...
Well, this is pretty much the same picture as the one that greeted us when we arrived at Crowne Plaza in Nashua, NH. Outside it was a miserable weather with puring rain - inside, well.... inside it was the inside of a very fancy hotel completely taken over by storytellers and so turned upside down. I just arrived to the front desk when I got run over by a whirlwind which was yelling "Csenge weeeeeee" in the voice of Meg Gillman, closely followed by a second, tiny and elegant one, Karen Chace. Felt like coming home.
(*humming* "Csenge got run over by the tellers...")
Check-in, greetings, finding my way across the corridors of the hotel; and then it was time for dinner, cheese and fruits (hey, I'm a college student, I eat whatever is free, and I have no problem refilling my plate). I was handed from teller to teller, introduced to dozens of people, and repeated the story of my life way too many times (although it got shorter and shorter with every telling, sic transit gloria mundi).
And then the fun began. We got some Irish music, and lots of greetings; then we got some storytelling, of course of course, young children of all ages can't go to bed without their bedtime stories...
Said stories were presented to us by five great tellers: Simon Brooks (and he just rocked. Every guy with a bodhrán rocks. Especially when he has a great story to tell), Meredith Bird Miller (fun story well told - we all just love the tales when the animal people can send their eyes out of their sockets), Uncle George Radcliffe (now he is a master, isn't he - he told the Tiger's Whisker from a female point of view, and we didn't care for a second), Jean Armstrong (lovely funny single lady), Roberta Burke (tell me more wonderful tales like that granny!) and finally Cora Jo Ciampi (and hearing her version of Cinderella we all just wanted her to be our Fairy Godmother...).
After applauding till our palms turned red, it was time for the open mike - more stories, more tellers, more fun (I like open mikes because you can never know what you'll hear). And when it was over too, I got introduced to another new person, a guy called Tony Toledo - Karen told me he is completely harmless (next think I know, he scared the hell outta me with the yelling and the jumping up and down - yeah, well, he is a true trickster) and we got invited to the secret storytelling evening meeting, with beer that bit back and pretzels filled with peanut butter, and lots of chatting and laughing and telling stories.
By the time I got back to my room, it was past midnight and my head barely touched the pillow before I passed out...
And so began the 27. Annual Sharing the Fire Storytelling Conference.
And the flames rose high...

Long way from Clare - Irish jam session

2008-04-04T16:23:00.001+02:00

“Well, they should be somewhere… back there… at the bar.”

That’s what the waitress answered me at City Steam Café when I jogged in, asking for the Irish Jam Session. I wondered what kind of place can be where a waitress doesn’t know where exactly they have put 15 Irish musicians with full gear…

“Somewhere back there” turned out to be a half-lit small corner behind the bar and the tables crammed with people; I elbowed my way through the crowd and finally arrived to the small but cheerful island of Irish culture, where the jammers were just tuning up to start. Chairs were arranged in a circle; when I found one for myself and sat down to do a quick headcount, I came up with a following list: 3 guitars, 4 accordions, 1 violin, 2 Irish bouzoukis, bones, 1 wooden flute (12 people). When I looked around two minutes later, it was all mixed up and I just gave up the idea of keeping a proper list. Partly because there were new people coming in all through the first hour of jamming (finally there were 16 musicians, plus a baby – “she does the jig”), adding more and more instruments to the band (1 bodhrán, 3 harmonicas, a tin whistle, spoons, guitars, bouzoukis, a double bass and more accordions). I was quite happy to realize that except for the Irish harp and the uilleann pipes all traditional instruments were there for me to watch and listen…

And I listened.

First they just played medleys, one short piece after another; they were talking to each other while playing, and once in a while someone would stop to tune his or her instrument, or switch to another. Somebody went to the bar to order beer (Guinness I guess, judging from its color and the fact that we are talking about Irish musicians…) – the jugs and the glasses were put down in the middle of the circle and finally everything was ready to start…

The group was quite mixed, and people from various places just came to join in; but it did have a leader, and he played no instrument, but he started the songs with clapping and shouting, and he was the lead singer too. Once the jamming started, English and Gaelic songs got added to the program, and it went like this:

Someone (people took turns) would start a melody; then the whole band would join in, paying the same melody over and over again till everyone managed to pick it up and play correctly (sometimes the others would clap to help them adjust to the rhythm – sometimes some of them would even stop playing so the others can hear the bones or the clapping better). When everyone picked it up, they would play the piece for a while before someone came up with a variation or a new song; times like that the leader would point him/her out, and the others would stop playing or quiet down to listen and pick up the new melody, and then it started all over again. Sometimes during a longer piece, the leader would point out someone who would then play a solo (it was usually either an accordion or the flute) while the others continued playing the same tune. There were dozens of variations and solos during a medley (especially because the pub itself was so noisy that sometimes they couldn’t hear each other at all, and the two halves of the circle would start playing two completely different tunes before realizing where the dissonance came from…)

The songs were a completely different matter – someone would ask for one by title, and then the leader (or someone else) would start singing; the others would join in, and some of the instruments would follow, but only as background music – the emphasis was clearly on the words and the act of singing together as loud as possible with human throat and lungs, louder and louder till the final chorus.

Audience participation was limited to say the least (means I was the only one who actually went there just for the jam session) but highly encouraged (means the leader would show me what rhythm to clap, and sign me to join in during the singing too) and extremely enjoyable (means I kept clapping and slapping my tights all through the 3 hours straight – and I have bruises of nice shades of black, blue and green on both of my tights to prove it).

The essence of the jam session was the socializing part. The whole event was totally informal; people would talk, laugh and drink while playing, would pass instruments around, pass the poor baby around, walk away to talk to other people and then come back. They would start playing songs and then agree on something else. There seemed to be some kind of hierarchy in who could decide what to play – I only guessed that because the two youngsters in the group, two high school guys, were only allowed to start a song at the end of the whole 3-hour session (but it was greatly appreciated, and they played very well).

I talked to some of them at the end of the session (by that time they seemed to accept me as some kind of “clapping person”, sitting on the edge of the group and enjoying myself, dangling my legs from the barstool and drumming on the table with a huge grin). They gave me several addresses and dates for other sessions in the Hartford area, including “slow jam” – that means the place where new musicians can pick up the basic tunes and learn how to “Irish jam” (they told me that most of the jammers came from different Irish bands and music groups – means they are professionals – as well as from other jam circles, just like the youngsters who were picked up by the band leader at a high school concert).

All in all, it was a great experience – not only because of the amazing music but also because of the nice little community that gathered to spend an evening together, singing and drinking and making music. Irish music.

Yay!

Tellers and Tales at Timp - See you on the road

2008-03-02T04:35:00.002+01:00

Of course we still had the evening concert to go. But that was only the fun part of it...
The auditorium was full, and once again we experienced all the cheerful people coming in, eager to hear some stories - young children of all ages, as Donald put it. The colorful little bunch of storytellers was sitting in the front left corner, chatting and smiling and sharing the experiences and highlights of the weekend... until the lights went out and it was time to go on stage.
Cherie Davis opened the show, with a personal story about her mother (yes we all wished we knew her, it was such a nice story); then there was Meg Gilman (another personal story, absolutely hilarious and still deep; trademark Meg) and Kate Dudding who showed a piece of that historical storytelling I mentioned earlier (life of Irving Berlin) and then Linda Gorham, aka Lady Attitude (she is such a blur of colors on the stage - and we had such a PaaarTay:) and Jo Radner, elegant as ever, telling about Sir Maxim and his Yankee inventions (wow what a story... and now I feel I'm not supposed to say it was funny, but it was... in an ironic way...)
And then it was my turn to tell a tale; and because I promised it to all the dragon-lovers the day before, I told the story of the Dragon Prince (with the new name the heroine got - she is now calles Kerkenez, little hawk...). It was such a great experience to stand on the stage in front of a full auditorium of people... it really was. I'm getting seriously addicted to it...
And it was David again who had to close the show, and the conference. If I had to summarize the story experience I had during that weekend, I'd say something like "fairy tales will never be the same again"- his Cinder Girl just so rocks. It is really a big deal if someone can make my like a story I was not really fond of before... and he did. "Ashes to ashes, we all fall down..." And he also told a sweet little story about a salt shaker (I doubt I'll ever be able to pass a salt shaker after this without saying hi...).
And suddenly and way too soon the conference was over. It was getting dark outside; people, laughing and chatting, left us in the auditorium. We were happy and wide awake; people hugged each other like family, we took photos, we talked and talked and talked, and exchanged cards and phone numbers and good wishes for the journey home. It was a happy scene; I was already sitting on the plane back to Hartford the next day when I started thinking about what just happened to me.
It was a scene that is thousands of years old - storytellers travel to a place to meet, and tell, and listen; they share their own tales, and spend a day or two together in their own colorful family circle, and then they are on their way again, and one can never know where they came from and where they are going, and when they will show up again...
And it was David who gave me the perfect sentence to close the post and the conference, and start the journey:
"See you on the road."

Tellers and Tales at Timp - Baptism by fire

2008-03-02T03:42:00.003+01:00

There are only a handful of better ways to spend an early morning than sitting in a room filled with storytellers, munching on strawberry marzipan muffins, sipping hot chocolate and listening to Donald Davis. Doesn't sound that bad does it?... Especially when he talks about why storytelling is important - scratch that, essential - for human beings and children in particular (yeah, we all love kids).
So this is how my second day started at the Timp Conference. I was much less sleepy and much more nervous (you would have been too if you had to do a workshop after hearing all those performances the day before...) and ready for learning more...
For the first session I chose Nannette Watts' workshop about coaching young storytellers and organizing youth storytelling events. My main reason for that was that I'd like to start something like that when I go back home (I have a whole castle for a setting... seriously), and one has to learn from the pros... and pro she is, with lists and tips and advice and handouts, and lots of games and fun (besides she is a bundle of energy, always moving and moving - yeah, dance major :D - reminds me of a hummingbird). I can't wait till I can try all the games and activities she taught us... (poor kids will be so exhausted XD ). And I also bought her book and it's gonna be very useful (and no she did not pay for this post XD )
Box lunch, enough said, and the show was rolling again: the afternoon performance was by the Resonance Story Theater (aka Wendy, Karla, Nannette and Steffani). They told us in advance that their show was designed for kids - and then they turned us all into laughing and yelling and squeaking 5th graders for almost an hour... there was drumming and singing and lots of funny faces, and a pleasant amount of audience participation... yay!
And there was only one session left. Because Wendy swore that the best workshop of her life was David's The Storyteller's Compass, I asked him if he would let me participate for the first half (of the 3-hour double session). And he did, and he did it with a smile (yay). It was a small and friendly group - the whole thing started out as a game of words and ideas, and soon I realized we were actually learning, no not really learning, discovering new things. David is a good teacher, he lets do draw your own conclusions... I felt a bit sorry I had to leave halfway through, but oh well, I had my own workshop to do...
Really, it's not my task to write odes about my own session... all I can say is that I had fun, enjoyed telling the tales, and... ow this won't work. Okay, one more try.
The whole experience of sitting in a friendly circle with people who came to listen to my tales; who asked me questions even before it started (even the day before) and told me in advance how curious they were; to see their faces and eyes while I was telling my stories, and the way they listened even to the Hungarian parts they could not understand (they could not, but they did, that's what Donald taught us...). It was just plain amazing. I was not nervous, I was not lost in focusing - I just had fun sharing something that is my own with people from halfway around the world...
The stories behaved well enough, Fehérlófia got the best telling I ever had in English so far; I had some surprises though - I'd never realized before that a castle spinning on a duck leg must sound hilariously funny for non-Hungarian people... Well, it was over before I realized it, and... I felt like an official international storyteller who had just presented her workshop at the Timpanogos Storytelling Conference...
What can I say? Yay!

Tellers and Tales at Timp - Taking the plunge

2008-02-29T23:38:00.003+01:00

(Keep in mind, this was my first storytelling conference ever. I'm not childish. I'm enthusiastic;)

Remember what I wrote about David Novak and his standing-on-the-head performance? Now, that was not only my first encounter with him, but also the first experience on the conference's first day... and it made my day. He was the keynote teller, talking about standing on the threshold as storytellers (I especially like standing on the threshold of everything... and balancing on it... and swinging on it... and doing cartwheels on it... comes with the trickster nature I guess). The room was filled with people, tellers and listeners alike, and in spite of the jet lag and the sleep deprivation (that created black circles under my eyes to match my black blouse) I felt really awake, and ready to remember everything I hear...
The first workshop I attended was Meg Gilman's: Up Close and Personal, about character connections. It was not only fascinating and useful, but also gave us a new perspective about folktales and fairy tales (the Wicked Witch will never ever be the same again...). And of course, it was great fun. I was working with the Dragon Prince - and thanks to Meg now the heroine has a name, she never had one before. Yay!
Lunch was almost just as fun as all the workshops - sitting, talking, being introduced to more people than I can possibly remember (but they were all very nice), running up and down between tables (Wendy just had to show off my dragon egg - yes I have one, a tiny jade green egg, one of my good luck story charms...). Cookies, apples, sandwiches, and we were off to the next session.
Performance, that is. Debi Richan's My Antonia. Afterwards she told us everyone always asks her about the spinning wheel - but come on, this was the first time I saw a spinning wheel live in use, and I was fascinated... almost as much as by her storytelling. She changed into Antonia in outfit and voice and all the emotions; she was loud and sharp and lovable... and she even told a Czech story I immediately recognized as a version of Belfegor and Monna Onetta, and a couple of Hungarian folktales. And she told it well. Now that I come to think of it, this was the first time I saw historical personification on storytelling stage, and I just love it (goes on the "I have to try it once!" list)
Fired up by My Antonia I went to Kate Dudding's workshop, Voices from the Past to learn more about transforming history and biography into storytelling. Kate is a fountain of knowledge and advice on this topic. Historical storytelling is something new, something different from what I learned at home - I do write historical novels, but I never told them. Maybe I could?... Fun part is, Kate had a lot to say about research, but as I see it now, I will make the whole thing awfully difficult for myself - not many newspaper articles from the 2nd century A.D. Well, we'll see. The workshop started it all...
The last workshop of the day was Donald Davis's It's all in the Medium. The tools of a storyteller and all the ways you can possibly tell a story - and who would know that better than him... (and yes, he sneaked in some stories too, and man were they just great...)
Well, after we had dinner in a nice Greek restaurant, there was nothing left but the Friday evening concert (or, as I called it in myself, the concert of the "big brothers"). The auditorium of the Timpanogos High School filled up by the time we got there; it was amazing to see all the families and people arriving, all cheerful and eager to hear stories, stories and stories...
The tandem teller girls who opened the show were just great (it made me add "try tandem telling" to my list - yeah it's growing and growing...) and hip and sassy and totally professional (I wish we had contests or festivals for young tellers too, makes such a difference if kids can stand on the stage...)
David was great as ever. He had a nice Romeo and Juliet/West Side Story/Pyramus and Thisbe/personal story mix - definitely a 'wow' experience. I like the way he works with myths and fairy tales and the way he mixes them with personal stories and his own telling style; the result is really funny but still deep (means we laughed our heads off but kept thinking about it even days later). And I was especially happy about Pyramus and Thisbe (oh joyful high school days when I was Puck for a whole drama season...).
Donald was funny as ever, with a touch of 'owww how sweet' in the mix (I mean his story. But he's sweet too). As always: all the fun of being a kid, all the weird family members, all the touching moments and yes, all the trouble (trouble is Donald's trademark, after all...) (Wendy kept giggling at me from time to time when I gasped "Nooo, he didn't...." "Yes he did.") It's interesting to see how my attitude changed towards personal stories in the last couple of months since I arrived here; I think I had to learn how to enjoy them. Donald is a great teacher for that...
And the first day was already over before I even realized.
Great luck that we had one more to go...

Tellers and Tales at Timp - The Setting

2008-02-28T20:41:00.002+01:00

Utah rocks.
(Er... no pun intended. Really.)
When I arrived, it was foggy and all gray, and I could not see the mountains at all, and although people kept telling me they are there, there were so many other things I could actually look at... especially from the top of Hotel Utah, which was downright amazing, and the Salt Lake Temple (very impressive), and than we were in the car on our way to the Orem Public Library, and then I got hit by the next culture shock: the library was just incredible. I wish we had one like that at home. I mean, come on, they have a whole storytelling room!
I was greeted by Janet Low, and when she noticed that I just couldn't keep my eyes off the walls, she smiled and started to tell me the story of James Christensen's storytelling pictures.
I knew it. I so knew it.
I found Once Upon a Time on the web some time ago, and ever since then I have been looking for it; and there it was, it belongs to Timp (or as you might know it, the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival - Timp just sounds so nice and cuddly). And it has a pair, painted for the tenth anniversary, The Flight of the Fablemaker (and now I'll only remember both of them as Tales beyond Timp, and I don't mind at all). I can't wait till the twentieth anniversary, and it's coming up next year... And then there were those beautiful stained glass windows - at that point I wished so badly I had been a kid in Orem. They are all crowded with fairy tale and mythology characters. I walked along them, pointing out the stories I know, and finding new details with every step - it was so much fun!
And then Wendy arrived to pick me up; when we walked out of the building, the sun had already set, and the sky was clear, deep blue, the exact same shade as the dress of the princess on the window, and I finally met the mountains, face to face, drew with thin silver lines against the evening, and they were just wonderful... at that moment I could believe all the elves and faeries in Christensen's pictures.
(And here comes the getting fed part again) By the time the moon rose we were already sitting in a friendly restaurant with all the storytellers and the conference staff, talking and laughing; first we only saw a cloud with silver lining, then the thin crescent of the full moon behind a mountain we could not see; the talking and laughing paused for a minute as we all watched the beautiful scene. For me, it marked the beginning of a weekend of wonders.

Tellers and Tales at Timp - The Cast

2008-02-27T04:37:00.002+01:00

First and foremost and above all, there was Wendy. My personal Wendy straight from Neverland, with her smile and her stories, and her amazing family. She picked me up at the library (see Setting later on), and we talked out way through the whole weekend without ever getting bored... (that means expect that there will be lots of "Wendy this and Wendy that" in later chapters;)
Then, there were the big brothers, or the "rock stars" as Wendy's husband called them - Donald Davis and David Novak.
"Oh my God, I'm presenting a workshop at the same conference as Donald Davis." (Yeah I know, one of those things you know for half a year and realize them when you are already there). I already knew who he was, oh I did. He is the guy from Jonesborough with the bow tie and the smile and all those funny and touching family stories, I do remember (how could I forget anything that happened in Jonesborough?...). And then there he was, waving at me from the table when we entered the restaurant the first evening (just off the plane I felt myself a tad unprepared for a place where you have your own menu card and half of it is in French, but oh well, everyone was sooo friendly anyway). During the two days of the conference, he was here and there and everywhere, as you'll soon read, and I found myself waiting for the next story he had...
When I first saw David, he was standing on his head, telling the Maori myth of Papa and Rangi.
And now I'm seriously thinking if I need to say anything more...
Yes I do.
He is the myth-and-personal-mix kinda storyteller, the laugh-your-head-off kinda storyteller, the wow-he-has-a-point kinda storyteller, the this-is-my-version kinda storyteller; the one who was happy to chat about Gilgamesh at the dinner table (yeah, rare treat for me... first of that kind) and makes you like a story you... well, did not like at all... (in case you are wondering, I'm talking about Cinderella, but again, I'll get back to the stories later on)
And then there were The Storytellers who were all around, colorful and smiling and chatting and hugging me randomly like the little sister of an amazing family (little sister for sure. To quote the emcee: "She is young..."). Meg Gilman (with her "you are gonna hate me" workshop and her laugh that made sure we were gonna love her), Kate Dudding (aka living fountain of historical knowledge), Nannette, Steffani and Karla (aka Resonance Story Theater, together with Wendy a nice bundle of fun and smiles that made sure everyone felt like 5 again...), Debi Richan (who gave us one of the best performances of the weekend and lots of laughing) Jo Radner (the always so elegant walking (hi)story book with the mischievous Yankee smile) Linda Gorham (aka Lady Attitude with the strong happy voice) Teresa (fellow blogger, yay!) and Cherie (another one you can't ever see not smiling).
And there were all the story lovers and listeners, those who make the conference roll, and those who arranged everything and fed us (yeah, the feeding part again, I know I'm impossible when it comes to food sorry) and guided us and made sure we had just as much fun as the audience...
And now I spent most of the evening going hyper over all the conference memories, that's enough for a start.
Next chapter coming up soon...

Tellers and Tales at Timp - Teaser Trailer

2008-02-26T05:49:00.002+01:00

Ta-daaah! I'm home from the Timpanogos Storytelling Conference.
4 days. 2500 miles. 5 workshops. 2 concerts. 15 storytellers.
Too many moments of pure fun to count.
Too few days to come home without wishing I could stay more. (A lot more)
Way too many adventures to include in one blog post.
Way too few hours of sleep in the last week.
Title says it all.
I have been running on pure enthusiasm (or pure Glamour, for those who know what I mean...), and it was more than enough for the way to Utah, the two days of conference and all the way back, with an additional couple of weeks of aftermath for sure. I met wonderful people from all over the United States, I heard incredible stories, learned more than I can recount without a list that rolls all the way down to the floor, got fed like a queen (yes, for a college student with weekly menu of pizza and chili, getting fed in those great restaurants does count), oh and did I mention the stories and the storytellers?...
(Yes I know I did)
Details coming soon.
(Insert movie preview music here...)

Ready, steady...

2008-02-19T20:03:00.003+01:00

Three days to the Timpanogos conference. I'm getting a tad nervous here. And very, very, very excited.
Yes, the poll is closed, thanks for the voting to everyone who did! The result came out quite interesting. Especially because the same questions on my Hungarian blog came out with an entirely different order...
(And none of them has anything to do with the program I finally put together, but oh well, it's still good to know what people think... and it can count as an anthropological research of people's interest in folktales from other cultures - even though some individuals voted more than once for the sake of their favorite stories... cheers to them!)
The Fairy section's winner is The Secret of the fairy lake - one of my favorites, that is. Good choice, good choice. Looks like English-speaking readers prefer happy ends over doom and gloom (just so you know, Hungarians voted for the Fairy of the Hany. Everybody dies...)
The Castle legends section was a close race between Beckó and the Castle made of salt - I love both, Beckó being one of the tales my father had to tell me over and over again when I was a kid. Still, I chose Bátorkő for the program, wanna know why? It's both a castle legend and a Mátyás tale, and because our favorite trickster king just won the third poll, I decided to put them together, so I can tell one more story... (oh my god, the program will be so crammed with all kind of great tidbits of Hungarian folklore... I'll really have to try hard not to run overtime...)
I need guinea pigs to time it before Thursday. *Goes to drag her friends to a quiet corner for an hour of storytelling...*
So I'm almost ready for the first storytelling conference of my life...
Wish me luck!

The crazy girl with the camera

2008-02-19T19:15:00.002+01:00

The collective thoughts of all the Trinity students who saw me on campus during last week:
"Oh. My. God. It's freezing out here... and I thought it was warm when I looked out the window, it's so beautiful, the sun is shining, there is not a single cloud on the sky, gee, I can't feel my nose and fingers... hey, what the heck is that girl doing on that tree?
Whoa, she is nuts. Look, she is climbing up the tree. And she is talking to herself... hey, isn't she one of those European students, now where are they from, Czechoslovakia?... er, no, Poland?... that's it, Hungary. But why on earth is she out there in this weather? Come on, I can see my breath...
Look, she is not talking to herself, she is talking to that camera. Oh, I got it, she is shooting a video of herself. Wow, ten more seconds and I'll be frozen solid... c'mon, let's go."
Or something along these lines.
Yes, it was kinda cold. Kinda below zero. Fahrenheit, I mean. That's why I like Celsius better... of course I had no idea it was that cold when I started my quest/mission/crazy afternoon to shoot an introduction video for an internship.
So most of the afternoons people could see me walking around the cathedral, sitting on a bench, climbing up somewhere, lying on my stomach trying to prop up the camera in the right angle, hanging upside-down from a tree (poor tree) (just kidding, no trees were harmed during the shooting of my video, I swear), talking talking talking to myself. And freezing to the point of numb fingers and very painful melting process afterwards (did you ever wash your hands in warm water after they were totally numbed by cold? Hurts like hell). I just hoped the camera would bear the weather better than I did...
It's not as easy as it sounds (does it sound easy? I wonder...). When I have time I'll put a second video together (the first one, by the way, I mean the one I put together with three days of work and several Windows Movie Maker bashing, is kinda cool) - I should preserve all the bloopers, like the one when I noticed after 15 minutes of talking that the wind just blew my gloves in front of the camera, or when I prepared for the speech of the year and then the church bells went off above my head... or the laughing fits I had, totally alone in the middle of the campus (it's a good thing I was alone, otherwise people might have thought I was... well, high).
But it was absolutely worth it. I never thought I would enjoy watching myself on video (my family is rather the taking-photos kind), or making a video, or cutting the video (till 3 o'clock in the morning when my eyes were tiny and red) - but here I am, ta-da, and hopefully soon I'll be able to upload it to this very blog too (let's hope for the best, because the uploading speed here is just scandalous).
One thing I've learned: ideal lighting and weather does not mean you won't catch a bad cold while filming the movie of your life out there...
Well, whatever.

Little museum of friendly medical horrors...

2008-02-09T05:58:00.000+01:00

(Vote vote vote! One week left!)

(It's about time to start the final project for the Museum Studies course... we need to pick an exhibition and dig deep into the background of how it came to be... interesting enough :) Here is the first scouting report...)

Just got back from the museum… it was an unusual experience… weird in a positive way. Judging from the information on their website, I was expecting something strictly arranged and accurately labeled, with white walls and… people?
Well, it started out with the taxi driver not even knowing what I was talking about… but we managed to find the place before we left the city completely. That’s a good start.
The door was locked; when I started making noise with the doorknob, I could see a lady appear on the other side of the small window, with utter shock on her face, and a wonder-like expression of surprise. I found out the reason soon enough: according to the guest book right next to the door, I was the first visitor in two weeks…
Good news is I had the whole place all for myself, and all the time in the world to wonder around. Bad news is, it turned out they were actually about to take the whole exhibition apart for good…
I started walking around in the first hall, looking at the showcases; I found them very interesting, and spent an awful lot of time reading the labels and the stories next to the objects; laughing out loud at the surgeon’s biography who was “the fastest man with a knife in England” (25 seconds for a leg amputation in 1846, no kidding) and getting somewhat sick watching all the horrible instruments the doctors used 200 years ago… ("Where would they stick that? *reads label* "WHAT?! Urgh, NO WAY!... Eeeew...")
And now comes the question, why on Earth did I choose this museum for a field trip. Well, I’ve always liked medical history (maybe because half of my family consists of doctors, and I grew up in my grandparents’ offices playing with medical stuff and writing “recipes” for the teddy bears) (no, no autopsy); I’m also writing my Archeology thesis on Roman medicine and surgery. And I needed to find a museum within Hartford - without a car I can’t get around so easily, and I know the final project would require a lot of time spent in the actual museum I choose… so this was the most interesting among all the museums listed on the Internet.
When I was finished with the first hall (that is, the most arranged and nicely done part of the exhibition), I moved through a narrow hallway (crammed with medical kits and bags and huge boxes with really old microscopes) to the Bicentennial Room. It was arranged in 1976 (from the collection of medical instruments between 1776 and 1976), and it shows the signs of the beginning stage of chaos. I was somewhat surprised to see many artifacts here and there without a glass case or any kind of protection (maybe because I was the once in a blue moon visitor from whom they should be protected – not that I’d touch them anyway). The clear concept of their arrangement was lost, themes were mixed up; the only coherent part was the case in the middle of the room, with 17^th century manuscripts in it.
Moving to the next room, I found a couple of dentist’s chairs set up with all the cupboards and medical kits around (there was a green teddy bear and a plush frog sitting in one of them). It was even more crowded with stuff than the one before, and I needed quite a long time to look around and register every detail before moving on.
When I ran out of rooms, and accidentally walked on into an office that looked like a crossover between a library and a storeroom, I finally realized the exhibition was over… backing out of the office, I met two ladies who were very friendly and asked me if I’ve met George. When my answer was no, they led me back into the office (that turned out to be an actual storeroom which looked like a crossover between an office and a library…) and introduced me to a skeleton… turns out George was an actual human being… a long time ago… and was found in some other museum’s or society’s back room, and bought by someone who started the HMS.
After getting to know George, I got to know the living crew of the nice tiny chaotic museum – who soon informed me that they were about to take said place apart, sell and give away most of it, and transfer the rest to UConn. I was a bit disappointed… but when I told them about the project, they got more excited than me, and assured me that I was most welcome to dig into their archives and whatever I’m interested in, if I’m not bothered by the fact that the exhibition is being taken apart above my head… and I don’t think I am.
In the meantime a photographer broke down the door and strolled in with huge bags, and then came the next surprise: the museum has three gigantic volumes of a really old medical dictionary that used to belong to Mark Twain himself – he even wrote a short story based on them, and they are full of notes and newspaper clippings… fun part is, the Mark Twain House does not want them (he himself did not want them, that’s how they got passed down to a doctor who donated them to the Society). So the photographer came to take digital pictures of them, and then there was the four of us, chatting and turning the pages of the rare historical artifacts (i.e. the books) enjoying the fact that we were allowed to touch something Mark Twain touched too… they were really old, the books, Mr. Clemens says (writes) they were confiscated from a Southern physician in the Civil War. How cool is that.
Well, that’s it for now; I got business cards from the museum crew (except for George, who was quite reserved) and left the place, plans of invasion already forming in my head…

Live from Downtown Atlantis

2008-02-01T02:33:00.000+01:00

(Just one of those titles: "Why didn't I come up with this?!" It's really a pity, because it kicks ass)

(By the way: Voting. Stories. Please. Enough said)

Mandatory concert for the World Music class: Mixashawn came to Trinity. Why is it that the word "mandatory" makes everything sound like a pain in... erhm, yes. But this is not the case with Mixashawn. Oh, not at all.
The only thing we were told was that we are going to hear some Native American music, so we were more or less prepared for that experience. Well, after the first 2 seconds (or rather, after seeing the instruments) we could throw that concept out the window. And we didn't mind at all (although I really don't have any problems with Native American music;)
He played the saxophone (and blasted my ears out - that's what I get for being a good girl and sitting in the front row), he played the flute (oh I just love that sound), he played the birimbao (which, dear Dr. Bones, is not a small kind of flute - come on, not even a wind instrument), he had rattles and a drum, and bells on his ankle, and the most amazing voice that makes the glass in the windows resonate. He told some stories, he told us bits about music and history, and sometimes he switched to poetry before we even noticed.
It was modern and ancient and very very interesting (really, I mean it), it was jazz and blues and rock and some griot tradition in the mix, and Native chants or sounds too, and he made us all sing with him, and clap, and turned music history upside down.
We had a great time; it was nothing we expected, and it was so much more.
It's all about the waves.

Lunch at the International Table

2008-01-29T19:24:00.000+01:00

(Stories. Voting. Polls to the left. January 19. You know the rest ;)

Another thing I would like to put in my pocket and take home with me: language tables in the diner. Turns out we have Tavola Italiana and Mesa Espanol and however it's called in German. Spanish should be the biggest and most popular - but it looks like students around here don't want to torture their brains with foreign languages outside class, let alone during lunch. In a totally packed, crowded, crazy diner the only table with empty chairs is the Mesa Espanol. Not that I mind.
All the international students (who have no choice but to torture their brains with English every day during meals and everywhere else... so switching to Spanish or Italian or German doesn't really make a difference) gather around these small islands of food, friendship and fun. Today it was our dear teacher from Bulgaria, two girls from China, two of us from Hungary and another teacher from Spain.
The conversation is lively and multicolored - one Chinese girl does not speak Spanish but speaks French, Dani does not speak Spanish but speaks Italian, the two of us speak Hungarian, the girls speak Chinese, and when we have absolutely no idea what the others are saying, we switch back to English.
Sounds like Babel? You bet! And it's more fun than any other thing you could do during lunchtime.
I really, really don't get it why the American students avoid the language tables. The people are nice, helpful, and they wait patiently till you put a sentence together (maybe because they are munching their lunch); we talk about classes, movies, our homes, our family (so it's not like you have to follow a deep conversation about philosophy or politics in a second... third... fourth... language). We laugh a lot, and get lost in grammar and tenses and sometimes we mix up everything within one single sentence. But hey, it's part of the game!
In my opinion this is the ultimate way to learn a language.
(No no no I just can't close the post with that sentence. Urgh. Go again.)
Those American students have no idea what they are missing!
(There.)

The Scrapbook Tradition

2008-01-25T17:02:00.000+01:00

(You know, you know: the voting for stories is still on, polls to the left, story synopsis and further explanation under January 19th, or click right here)

I finally remembered to look up the correct definition of "scrapbook" in the dictionary.
I definitely like the idea.
Wherever I go I keep picking up all kinds of stuff, fliers, brochures, freebies, postcards, whatever; I tend to keep tickets and receipts... not to mention the photos I take, and the notes I scribble on the back of all the above mentioned stuff. I still have the rather worn out tiny red notebook with half sentences and fragments from my first trip to Rome, containing all kinds of valuable information (for example: "spiderweb on the Laocoon statue..." or "small oranges in the Palatine gardens - not edible..." and "lizard on Vicus Tuscus, dark green").
Problem is, as soon as I get home after these trips, I have to start composing a "normal" travel journal immediately, otherwise I forget the meaning of half of the notes... (I still can't decipher "Ostia, 6 hours... we are totally nuts" er... why would anyone be nuts who spends any time in Ostia?...)
Yesterday I decided it was time to start the semester officially with cleaning up my room. So I spent my afternoon sitting on the floor with an incredible pile of notes and fliers and papers, sorting through them, and putting scrapbook material into a separate box (a rather huge box, that is).
I think unconsciously I have been doing the scrapbook project all my life, I just didn't put it together. Now I will.
(*imagines grandchildren turning the pages of an enormous book and Granny Csenge saying "Well, that was my boarding pass on my first flight to the US..."*)

Semester of Independence

2008-01-25T03:28:00.000+01:00

(The voting for stories is still on, polls to the left, story synopsis and further explanation under January 19th, or click right here) (and yep, I'm gonna keep repeating it till the end of February...)

One of the (many) things I definitely wanted to try while at an American college is doing an Independent Study. The whole idea is quite new to me (project, independent work, making my own schedule, being creative, coming up with ideas, and of course our favorite can-do spirit... nobody takes a single step without it), so I kept nagging teachers and students and other random people till I found out how to start...
And here I am.
The Role of Storytellers in Traditional Communities
(What, you thought I wanted to do an I.S. on Applied Mathematics?...) (er...seriously, where did you get that idea?...)
It's gonna be so much fun!
Well, maybe I went a bit hyper on my mentor: we (I) decided I'll write 3 shorter research papers on 3 different cultures, following the same list of questions. After almost 5 whole minutes of thinking, I came up with 2 of the topics: the griot tradition of West Africa, and the Irish bards (*eyes go pink and heart-shaped*) (er, sorry). I'm still not sure about the third one though (or even whether I, being a mortal human being who needs sleep once in a while, would have time to write three, or should drop the idea of the third...). Right now I'm getting interested in Chinese storytelling... (I came across a nice book about it while browsing the library shelves, looking for the Romance of the Three Kingdoms - one of those books that you start reading and the words just echo in your head... and just talking about those books I suddenly feel the itch to read Water Margin again... not to mention my best friend Sun the Monkey King... oops I got distracted)
So... yeah. Chinese might be the third one.
(And one day I will become a real traveling storyteller and visit all the places I read about... and then I will definitely have to visit a storytelling school in China) (sorry, distracted again, hehe).
Anyway. I thought I would be well off with making my own schedule... but I realized I have to make myself read and get the work done, and I can be more annoying than I thought... I'll get used to it, I guess. I started a new notebook for the notes (it's pink, blah. But this was the only one I could get), and created a pretty two-page syllabus (so funny, at home college teachers don't even know what a syllabus is, but now I can't live without it...) Now all that is left is to start doing my homework...
I just don't know whether the huuuge pile of Griot and African Folklore books on my table is the fault of the "teacher-me" or the "hyper-student-me"... eh, whatever.
Let the fun begin.

Lost in fine arts and lost again

2008-01-24T15:36:00.000+01:00

I still have winter break adventures I haven't shared with you! (Nope, I have 24 hours in a day just like any other mortal - I'm just too curious to rest. Sleeping is for home; when I'm on a journey, my schedule is usually full from dawn till dusk - and God help anyone who decides to keep up with me...) So, here is another episode:
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
(Digging in my new scrap... scrapbox, I guess, I just found the stuff I bought there. Having lots of friends has the strange side-effect that every time I'm "somewhere else", I find stuff that just cries "She/he would love me!" and so it happens that I end up buying small surprises everywhere, and now I'm starting to get worried about going home with all those boxes and bags... not that I mind)
We knew that we need a full day for it. In fact, we even knew that one day won't be enough. But we tried anyway.
Have I told you that I can get lost in museums? In two ways:
1. I just so enjoy walking through exhibitions and reading labels and admiring artifacts that I forget about time and reality, and
2. I can actually get lost in museums. Totally. No kidding.
Both of them happened in the MFA.
We started with Ancient Near East, hoping that somewhere in the labyrinth of the museum we will reach Greek and Roman Antiquity and then some Middle Ages... but I've never thought they had this much Egyptian stuff. Not that I mind (*I heart Archeology*), but still, after a while it was weird - if I had to summarize the MFA in one sentence, I'd say "Egypt! (and the rest of the history of humankind, by the way)"
And now I could get started on Greek vases (and parents who intend to give their kids some early history education "Look, sweetie, that is a... er, no, don't look!") and Roman mosaics (some muffled squeaks from me, hands on mouth, and eyes go pink and heart-shaped again) and Renaissance paintings and Chinese furniture and Japanese prints (the Far East collection is the most amazing part of the whole museum - and also the one where we hardly met any people... I don't get it) and modern jewelry and African masks and that amazing map from Oceania and the touch-screen computer in the Ancient America exhibition (it looked like something from Star Wars, and we spent quite a few minutes playing with the images)...
...but then this post would be so long that no one would read it... (I wonder how many people read blogs, and who reads it frequently and who stumbles upon it via Google... and now I got distracted again).
The museum is amazing. Really.
And really easy to get lost in (even with the maps they gave us).
The problem is, there is a limit of time and effort, and if you cross that limit and continue walking around after a while you start to feel dizzy and your feet start to hurt and you are like "Another room of paintings, oh joy". We crossed that limit somewhere after 6 and a half hours... (including lunch in the museum café, with a menu that beats native speakers' English, not to mention mine...) (maybe because it was actually in French... who knows).
But the first 6 hours were just bliss.

Stories under the full moon

2008-01-22T04:30:00.000+01:00

(The voting for stories is still on, polls to the left, story synopsis and further explanation under January 19th, or click right here)

The blinding silver light of the full moon accompanied me once again to the Hither and Yon meeting.
Nope, no fancy story talk this time - I just realized that somehow we managed to schedule every single storytelling meeting for nights of the full moon (yeah, I know, prepare those silver bullets). Not that I mind, not at all.
I also just realized that I haven't mentioned Hither and Yon before... which is rather shocking, because this was the fourth evening I spent with this great little group of storytellers.
If we lived in the Middle Ages, this would be a way more cool, with a campfire and the wind singing in the trees, and stars and the full moon, and weird people in colorful clothes gathering, arriving from the shadows to tell a story and then be on their way again, and we'd probably freeze our... everything off, because it's just so unfairly cold tonight. Ah, anyway. What was I going to say?
Oh yes, Hither and Yon. Even though in these lazy modern times you just find storytellers sitting in a warm, cozy room munching chocolate and sipping tea, it still has its ancient magic.
And there are countless useful things one can hear about at these meetings.
Oh yes. Very very useful things.
For example, today I heard about a king who "collected stuff", and then gave it all away (for a quilt, that is); I heard about a blacksmith, and a doll made of iron that could breath, and bled when cut (how cool is that); I heard about a leaf of the Tree of Knowledge that was blown away from Eden (nope, they didn't smoke it); and a cottonwood tree that learned to walk (I'd so like the cherries to learn that trick).
I picked up a lot of other stuff too along the road. For example... well, tidbits and shiny colorful nothings, such as hints of Japanese, and charms to rescue a changeling, books I must read one day, and 5 or 6 ways to become a real werewolf (from being born as one, which I think I missed out, to being rubbed from head to toe in boiled dead cat - so much about picking stuff up along the road...) (nope, I didn't try) (but hey, it would a creative way of recycling roadkill), and also the fact that sniffing around in Carol's garden for some legendary fruit can be an official part of a storyteller meeting...
I also add my own part to the meetings; today it was The Castle Made of Salt, and a handful of Hungarian Christmas candy; on other meetings, it was other stories and the fact that I tend to listen with eyes wide open, holding my breath, which can really motivate a storyteller (or just creeps her out).
Today I also discovered that someone wrote about me in the newsletter of the Connecticut Storytelling Center (and that really made my day). One of my friends from back home was musing about that "completely unknown part of the universe that is the storytelling world" just this afternoon, and it kinda made me feel like I was a free mason or something.
So, weird people in colorful clothes appeared under the full moon, they met, told their stories, talked about all kinds of everyday magic, and then they went on their different ways, carrying on their tongues a couple of new tales, and the taste of Christmas candy and jasmine tea.

Vote for stories, please!

2008-01-19T01:52:00.000+01:00

The conferences are coming up! Oh my god, I just realized that Timpanogos is just a month from now! I should be working on my showcase... problem is, I still haven't decided which Hungarian tales to tell. There are too many to choose from, even among my favorites...
(What conferences?... Timpanogos, Northlands, Sharing the Fire. Three great storytelling events, where I will be presenting my showcase called The Land of Dragon Riders. It's about Hungarian folk and fairy tales. It's gonna be so great! Once I decide which stories to tell, that is...)
It's not like I have no idea what to tell. Quite the contrary. I have lots of different versions... I just can't pick one.
So, here is my dilemma. I already know two stories for sure, I just need to pick the other three. I have several options. I designed three polls, you will see why if you keep reading.
Now I need you all to help me and decide what you would like to hear!

I definitely want to include one legend about Hungarian fairies. Here are my Top 4 favorites:
1. The Secret of the Fairy Lake (Legend says the lake in the woods has magical powers; it can make anyone beautiful like the stars of the sky. What happens when a shy young girl, mocked by all the others, decides to go any try? Even if she can't swim...)
2. The Fairy of the Hany (Bittersweet legend; love between a mortal and a fae of the marsh, who can only be together during the summer. What happens when he chooses a mortal bride instead?)
3. The Legend of the Water Lilies (The fairies are leaving our world; the cruelty of mortals and the sound of church bells chased them away. But there is one young girl who would like to stay... can she?)
4. The Fairy Castle of Backa (Times are changing; church bells ring out loud; the fairy folk is preparing to leave. What happens when they don't want to give up their castle? Can they stand and fight?)

I also would like to include a castle legend (one of the hundreds we have... because I just love castles, and every one of them has at least one story...)
1. Beckó (I grew up on this story. A smart jester, a cruel lord, a castle built on a dangerous rock; and the fate of the lord whose people died, building his castle...)
2. Bátorkő (Another smart jester, who became a thief, and now has to come up with something very clever is he wants to avoid the gallows... love, intrigue, adventure)
3. Rezi (A princess who cannot leave her bed; a brave young prince; a wise woman, a prophecy, and the mysterious healing springs...)
4. Castle made of Salt (the last Queen of the Avar people; a castle made of salt; witchcraft, fate, a young hero, a magic sword, and a battle between fairies both good and evil...)
5. Eger (this is history, not legend; the siege of Eger in 1552 - the mighty Turkish army of 70.000 and a small castle with 2000 brave men and women to hold it...) (yeah, like Helm's Deep, except that this one is true and a hundred times better :D )

And I still need to pick one more. I'm not even sure about the type. So, here are some options...
1. A story about King Mátyás, our favorite trickster king (*apologetic glance towards all serious Hungarian historians*)
2. A legend of a Hungarian saint (the princess of the roses, or the brave knight king's duel with the evil warrior)
3. A Gypsy story
4. A fairy tale from a Hungarian author
5. One of the various legends of the Lake Balaton (water fairies, wizards of the forest, princesses, curses and heroes...)
6. One of the legends about the origin of the Hungarians (they are rather long, they need to be cut)

So... the polls can be seen on the left. Vote vote vote :) Please. Thanks!

Meeting the Fox People

2008-01-18T18:14:00.000+01:00

(There is only one place missing from my unofficial and random Top 3 list; I think it would be this one. I really don't like setting an order between them. But I'm sure that if someone asked me "And what did you do over the winter break?" I'd say something like "Oh, LOTS of things. I stayed with a very nice family; they took me to all kinds of interesting places, it was so much fun! We even visited an Indian reservation..." And so it was.)

I always knew I just can't leave the US without visiting at least one Indian reservation. If I had to choose my favorite folktales, Native American stories would be among them... and I was just curious beyond measure. More than ever, after hearing Dovie Thomason and Gene Tagaban at the National Storytelling Festival. I wanted to know more about the First People, because I know that what I know now is close to nothing (except for the stories, of course. My latest favorite is Coyote and the Anthropologist, because it's so true... out dear Coyote's bringing down the folklore department... tricksters tricksters tricksters). Gail, of course, soon got to know all my interests, and she came up with another surprise.
Trickster Tales in the Mashantucket Pequot Museum. Do I have to say more?...
Yay!
(They call themselves the Fox People. Now isn't that just cool?:)
The first thing you see at the reservation is the casino. Because it's just HUGE. According to Gail, it looks like the Emerald City - she has a point. It's definitely bigger than the royal palace at home (nope, we don't have kings anymore in case you wondered...:). I'm not really interested in casinos (and the only form of shopping I pursue is shopping for books), so we just passed it on our way, huge, shiny, modern, fancy, great, so much about the casino.
The rest of the reservation was quiet, the sky was gray, the weather was dull, and it was half-raining, with patches of fog between the pine trees. The woods were deep and green-and-brown, smelled like pine needles and rain. It must have been such a wonderful place before the roads and... well, white people and modern stuff (and the casino. Okay, I admit it, I hate casinos, sorry) (random humming "Hate is a strong word, but I really really don't like...") (no worries, sometimes I just start thinking in lyrics out of the blue, you'll get used to it...)
The museum itself was much more quiet (surprise surprise), a nice modern building with glass walls and a tower. And the exhibition itself... whoa.
They told us it usually takes 3-5 hours for an average visitor to go through the whole exhibition (if he doesn't stop to read everything word by word). We somehow jogged through it in 2; we just didn't want to miss the storytelling...
First we had to go downstairs, back to the Ice Age, with white and dripping walls and all kinds of wild animals (huge wolves, yay:), and a reindeer hunt scene in the middle of the hall. Scientific or not, I decided I love dioramas (we have very few of them at home; museum people think they are not... professional... or whatever... enough.) I did not have the time to read all the info, but I couldn't miss touching everything that was there to touch, stone weapons, furs, everything. They did a very good job on the natural background too. And then there was that place where stone age tools and weapons were in pairs with their modern equivalents - fun fun fun. Goes on the list of good ideas (preparing for next semester's Museum Exhibition course, hah).
And then (and then, and then, and then... I could go on like this for days, insert 5-year-old me hopping on one leg up and down cheerfully...) there was the best part of the whole exhibition: in a big hall they set up a full Pequot village, with wigwams and a lake and a small fort and people all around (they looked like they would start moving any moment; very realistic). There were huge trees and animals and... really, everything. People eating, fishing, making tools, sleeping, tending the crops, women weaving, shaman healing... it made it so easy to imagine how life went back in those times. And even though I am not familiar with Native history, I saw lots of familiar things (ghosts of long past Prehistory classes came back to haunt me... not that I mind, professor, really ;) It was one of those walking back in time experiences which make the heart of a storyteller beat faster (and make her grin like crazy). They did an excellent job with the diorama, and the additional rooms of further information, the videos, the computers where one could listen to the Native languages (oh my god, those sounds... and I thought Hungarians were cool with the gy and the ű...) and of course, all the artifacts.
I think mortals like me have to go back there more than once just to go through the whole thing (or at least spend a full day in the museum). It's really, really worth it.
They even have a movie about the Pequot war, if it was longer it could be a "real movie", I mean, played in theaters. It's bloody and cruel and... well, history. "And then white people came." Not many cheerful stories start with this sentence... I was somewhat shocked to learn that the Mohegans of Granny Squannit sided with the English. The whole war started out as a personal offense, and ended with a nasty massacre... the movie was great, Native people spoke their language, the actors did well, the costumes were nice, and the main character... well, he had a beautiful face;) All in all they did a great job with it too, just like with the rest of the museum (which is now officially one of the places I would like to show to some people at home: "Now this is how it should be done.")
And we made it back to the main hall just in time for the storytelling.
The guest teller that day was Johnny Moses (his traditional name is Whis.stem.men.knee - Walking Medicine Robe); a fragile small man with a cheerful smile and face and gestures that can show you anything in a story. The program promised us tricksters, and tricksters we did get - he was one himself, for a start. He was funny and lively, and so were his stories; Coyote vs the great rock, and Octopus Woman vs Crow, and Ant vs Bear, and the kids all just loved them all (especially the gross parts - oh yes, every trickster tale has a gross part... at least one;). He speaks lots of languages, it was so much fun to hear him talk... well, he is a real storyteller, heart and soul and all. I realized again that I have so much to learn...
And of course I couldn't leave the museum without buying some small stuff for my Story Bag (a shell; an obsidian arrowhead; a small stone with the sing of the Otter, my other favorite animal next to the butterfly).
Before we left, we went up to the tower to look around - unfortunately the weather decided to get worse, and there was a heavy fog hanging above the woods and the hills, so even though with windows all around, it was like standing in an empty room with white walls... which of course did not keep me from pressing my nose against the glass and staring at the deep green ghosts of the trees below.

Magic on Wings

2008-01-18T05:37:00.001+01:00

(A couple of days before the Friendship of Salem, and close behind it on my Top 3 list)

Remember Gail? I told you about her when I wrote about the Tellabration. (You don't? My my, someone skipped entries from earlier... never mind, you can still go back and read;) She was so kind to invite me over for Christmas break! The next couple of entries will be mainly about our adventures together, and the stories we shared... (don't worry, I'm not writing anything personal, I promised in one of my first posts...) (go back and read again ;)
This one is about my birthday gift from her and her husband Steve.
(Yeah, I am one of those "Happy New Year! Oh, and happy birthday, by the way" babies...;)
They didn't really tell me where we were going, and I didn't really ask; I was happy sitting in the car, watching the road and the woods and the towns and everything I could see through the window. We were talking, about stories and storytellers, and places we visited or wanted to visit, and New England in general.
When we stopped I still did not know where we were; we got out of the car, and that was when I saw the sign: Magic Wings, Butterfly Conservatory. And I was close to squeaking again.
(Check the top left corner)
If I have any kind of spirit animal, animal symbol, nature soul or whatever, I am 100% sure it's the butterfly. It's about the colors, the changing, the moving, the flying (even the whirlwind, which must be a close relative of mine...) and all kinds of things that are just... me. Plus that huge butterfly story and legend collection I have. I just admire them. (I'd write "I just sooo love them, they are so cuuuute..." but that just feels plain wrong XD Hello Kitty mode off.)
At first I didn't even know what a butterfly conservatory is. I was more than happy to discover that inside it was a huge garden, open to people, full of plants and flowers and live butterflies (I can't stand the ones stabbed to death and behind glass). Now that I think of it I think I was actually jumping up and down, and laughing.
The whole place is like a fairy garden. You walk in, and before you realize what's happening, something orange and light as a flower petal flutters in front of your nose and then flies away; and then what seemed to be a quiet garden at first sight starts moving, and in mere seconds fills up with butterflies of all color and shape. They were all over the place, sipping nectar, and resting on the plants. First you only see the small ones, with transparent wings, or black and blue patterns, and the orange ones that just loved my orange purse (I bet they thought it was a kick-ass big guy), then from the corner of your eye you catch something huge and blue and lazy, like a tipsy big flower, flying around your knees, and your jaw drops in awe (they were so shy, those blue ones. The instant they landed, they closed up, and gave us the ugly brownish back of their wings. They just didn't like being photographed.) I was wandering around, taking pictures, whispering "aaah" and "oooh" and "wooow", bumping into other people in the process (who were fortunately doing the same) (except for the kids, who were running around... well, chasing butterflies) (even though they had strict rules against molesting the butterflies, some of them looked somewhat... exhausted). I couldn't sit still long enough for them to settle on me (one sat on my head though, for a few seconds). I tried, I really tried, but there was too much to see, so after all it was Steve and not me who managed to attract a big blue one. It sat on his leg, and closed up, then shrugged (well, I didn't really see it shrug, but I'm sure it did) (eternal love to Mr. Kipling for The Butterfly that Stomped) and opened up, and it was shiny bright blue, and a little bit tired, and I took lots of pictures before it flew away.
There is a Native American tale about The Butterfly Man; he is red and black and huge and has wings like velvet, and he lures you away from you family, and you have to hold onto his belt as he leads you to his home; and he leads you across a valley, full of other butterflies, all colors and shapes, and if you raise your head and look around, and let go of him to catch another one, you are lost forever, chasing butterflies in the valley till you drop.

(Okay, let's do justice to the tale: it's called Tolowim-Woman and the Butterfly Man, and read the original one in the book called The Inland Whale by Theodora Kroebel, because it's amazing and beautiful.)

Big ships first

2008-01-18T04:15:00.000+01:00

(It's gonna be totally random. I could go over the whole thing in chronological order, but usually when people ask you about a period of time when at least three amazing things happened every day, you tend to pick out the Best Of category first. So here is one of my Top 3 experiences over the winter break)

Two storytellers got into a car and went to Boston. And after two days of exploring Boston (Appreciate the adventure. Two words: Minus. Fahrenheit.) we went on to spend the last half a day in Salem.
The first thing you hear in the Tourist Center of Salem is "It's not just about the witches, you know." Well, hearing it after you passed two different witch museums and a couple of statues makes it a bit... hard to believe. We even watched a short movie about the history of the city, about trade and economy and stuff, and we came out of the theater and we thought "Nope, it's really about the witches."
And then they told us that there was a ship in the harbor.
Not just any kind of ship.
A sailing ship.
A real, big one.
You have to know one thing about me: when watching the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, every female in the room screamed for Johnny Depp - I screamed for the ships (all the way. Give me the Flying Dutchman, and you can have my heart. And any other inside organs you want.) But, Hungary being an inland country, the biggest I could get was still kinda small. Compared to a sea vessel.
Compared to the Friendship of Salem.
I jogged down the streets in the morning sunshine, Lethan following close behind, still amused, I guess, by my sudden rush of excitement (like a 5-year-old in a candy store). We turned around the corner, and I almost broke down the door of the tourist office; we signed up for the next tour, just in time. The office itself was amazing, with small models of ships, and maps on the wall, and books and a real sextant behind glass. For an inland girl who grew up on old and dusty books of sea legends, that place was "kinda near to Heaven".
And still not as near as the ship itself. When our small group walked down to the wharf, the sun was right behind the ship, making it glow with a clear and white light. The salty smell of the sea (even though the water was half frozen over, I could feel it - I guess my nose picked it up because I like it so much), and the seagulls, and the wharf with the lighthouse... and the Friendship. And it was all real.
Yeah, I know, I did know that it's "just a replica" of the original, 18th century ship - but still, it was real. It had bright colors and the smell of fresh wood and paint, and sails, and ropes, and we went on board (and I was grinning like mad). The guide told us about life on a trading ship, and the places they visited and the ports they were in, and the goods they brought back. We went down to see where the sailors slept and where they had the cargo, and the room of the captain.
We had three kids with the group, but I don't think they enjoyed it nearly as much as I did, and I don't blame them. Trading is not as interesting as pirates (unfortunately the pirate museum only opens in April) (one of the kids had a really weird Pirate Mickey Mouse hat on his head with the ears and an earring, on top of a Superman hat. I don't want to know who came up with that idea.) (Yo-ho, yo-ho, a pirate's life for me...)
I didn't really want to leave the ship, but after a while I had to (not till I took nearly a hundred photos, including some with me as captain... yeah I know, women on board, duh)
We walked up to the Customs House, that's really original, left there from the 18th century, and it was like walking through the door and back in time (this is the customs house where Hawthorne used to work) (no, I never really finished reading The Scarlet Letter) (but still, it was amazing). I suddenly became interested a lot of things at once; the list of taxes, the story the guide was telling us, the books on the bookshelves, Hawthorne's pens behind the glass, the stairs leading to the first floor, and the "dusty office museum smell" (totally unhealthy and so smells like home... I mean, the places I spend most of my time since I've been in collage, haha)
The rest of the day we spent with wandering around, visiting some historical houses with another guide (we missed the group tour so he was nice enough to tell all the stuff for just the two of us). The Derby House was my second favorite sight; it was old and full of stories, from Elias Hasket Derby's mismatched eyes in the portrait to the tea papers on the wall of the children's room.
So, by the end of the day, we concluded that Salem is really not just about the witches. It's about the sea and trade and pirates and ships (big ships!) (capital letters. BIG SHIPS. Like this.) and history.
And then we went to see the Witch Museum.

Long time, a lot to see

2008-01-18T03:28:00.000+01:00

Back again. Looking at my two blogs, I think I might be a bit lazy about this one... (yeah, a bit... stop snickering!!!)
And as hard as I'm trying to come up with some kind of excuse... I can't. So here is the deal: instead of apologizing for the past two months, I'll start writing all kinds of interesting stuff, right here, right now, and catch up on everything new and story-related and fun.
Okay, here is the trailer:
One Girl
Two Months
Three celebrations
Four States
Five cities
Plus butterflies, ships, witches, Native Americans and stories stories stories. Comin' up.

Miss Cleo's small but huge Tellabration

2007-11-18T03:40:00.000+01:00

Does the success of the event depend on the number of people in the audience? Many of you would say yes. I would say no, not the slightest bit. Tonight was one of the best storytelling events I've ever had, and we only had 3 people for an audience.
Miss Cleo has a wonderful place here in Hartford, with her own tiny little bookstore called Cull Books. She herself is the kind of person who starts smiling when you meet her, and keep smiling... probably forever. She set up the place for the Tellabration, arranged everything, brought food and drinks, and created a friendly atmosphere that was waiting for us when we arrived. The third storyteller for the evening was Gail Zeiba, the tiny, elegant lady with the twinkle in her eye and the warm voice. And so the Tellabration begun.
Miss Cleo told us an all-time favorite, a story that is very close to all storytellers' hearts (The King Who Loved Stories, at least this is how it's called when I tell it) and she was a happy smile herself. Then it was my turn to tell; I told a Hungarian folktale, The Tree that Reached the Sky, and I felt I told it well (as far as I can tell, the audience agreed). With all the friendly people around, I just sat back, and enjoyed the story myself - a rare experience, and a very nice one too.
And then, Gail started telling a story, well, more like hitting us in the face with a story, and I was right down on the floor. One half of her power was the story itself (one by Ursula K. Le Guin - and one of the best stories I've ever heard), and the other half the way she told it - her voice was sharp and clear and colorful, and her eyes were telling the story along with the words. I was just glad I didn't have to go up to the "stage" next, so I could sit half-dazed with the all the feelings and thoughts left behind by her tale.
Miss Cleo's sister wanted to tell us a true story, and we were happy to listen. She told us about her experiences teaching Hartford kids - it was all true, and it was heart-breaking and heart-warming the same time. Then Gail came again, with a folktale and a song (and what a nice tale it was:), and Miss Cleo with a true story to warm our hearts again. Then it was my turn; I felt happy and enthusiastic and comfortable, so I told one of my dearest, most favorite stories, Mr. Death and the Red Headed Woman. You know, one of the tales I always enjoy telling, and probably would tell it to the walls if I didn't have audience, just for the sheer joy of telling it... and the nice little friendly audience loved it too (Gail already knew it, and it was even better that she liked my version too:).
It was Gail who wrapped the evening up into a nice bundle of colorful tales and laughter and kindness, and tied it up with a last story (Wisdom and Luck), and then all was left for us was to eat some cookies, drink some coffee and apple juice, talk (and talk... and talk... and talk...) and then set out on our way again, happy and content with the evening.
Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but I had a great time. It really felt like good old all-evening storyswapping between people who have something in common.
If you ask me, this is what the Tellabration is about.

Coyote vs Raven

2007-10-26T21:58:00.000+02:00

I ran out, grabbed the lunch box, and ran back. Through the three Jonesborough days it became my routine between session 2 and 3 - I walked down to the food tents, bought sandwiches and a bottle of water, and walked back to get a good place in the next tent.
The first afternoon I had absolutely no idea where to go; all the show titles seemed equally promising, so I decided to stick to one tent and see what happens. Well, I failed. On the way back from the food court, with the box and the bottle and my coat and my bag in my arms (I looked like a squirrel gathering for winter), I crossed the creek and - stopped. In the shadows of the Courthouse Tent there was a black, winged creature dancing for the sound of drums, turning and jumping, and I nearly dropped all the stuff I carried, and tripped over my own leg, hurrying to get a closer look.
When I am in a good mood, storytelling means tricksters for me. Not trickster tales (although I love them all), but the pure joy of mischief and fun, and wit and a tiny bit of magic, unruly art, colorful chaos. And Raven is one of the guys who immediately made my official Trickster Top 10 (and also the unofficial Guys to Sweep You off Your Feet Chart, but that's another story) as soon as I first read about him. And there he was.
Actually, it was Gene Tagaban, one of the New Voice tellers. And his voice, besides being new (well, every voice at the Festival was new to me), was deep and rich and... story-telling. Raven was not only on his drum (a beautiful one, though - I wonder what it is with me and drums...), but also in his blood. I sat and listened as he told the story of Raven and the Sun and the Moon and the Stars, and I thought: "Now, this is a trickster telling a story."
And the next one was a special treat for me. Raven tricks Coyote - I never ever heard two tricksters going against each other before, let alone two of my favorites (for Coyote is one nice piece of cake too), and (with the words of the storyteller) "It was GOOOOD!" The world of Native American tales is still all new to me - and I'm glad this was the first taste of storytelling I had.
(And, just to go with the trickster image, he has a good sense of humor too - made me laugh out loud, several times. Again, fortunately, this was not the last time I heard him telling...)
Last day, in the afternoon - the Festival is almost over, people like me gathering in the tents to listen to every bit of magic left for the last session... and there he was again, with Raven and Hawk bringing the fire (one of my favorite types of stories - the version I know is with Coyote, but he was still sleeping off the day before I guess... growing a leg back takes a while, even for a trickster:) He was the one who passed on the fire, and I'm most grateful to carry it with me wherever I go.

Jonesborough - A wonderful night to be dead

2007-10-25T02:59:00.000+02:00

(Halloween in coming, and Jonesborough days are haunting me...)

I was lying on the grass, with hands behind my head, looking up at the sky and searching for the first star to appear. All around me, hundreds of people were doing the same, filling the dusk with a deep murmur of joy and anticipation. The wind was tiptoeing among the willow trees; the pavilion was glowing with a strange green light, and the fact that it was empty made the eerie harp music more... well, eerie. Saturday evening - time for the Ghost Story Concert.
I never really liked ghost stories, or any kind of "scary stuff" for that matter. I especially hate jump tales. We don't have Halloween. But I knew for sure that, once at the Storytelling Festival, I can't miss a chance to have a taste... of horror. After all, I thought, how scary can it be with such a crowd around me? Sure enough, there was not a free piece of ground from one end of the park to the other. And, as all good ghost stories begin, it was getting darker... and darker... and darker still...
"What a wonderful night to be dead!" the emcee's cheerful voice made me jump. Whoa, what a creepy way to be happy. Again, with Halloween missing from the family's medical history, the only experience I could rely on consisted of some late-night visits to the candle-lit cemetery, and some fire-lit storytellings in the summer camp... but everyone around me seemed to be familiar with this sudden morbid mood, so I pulled my knees to my chin and tried to settle in.
I was happy to hear a familiar, strong voice filled with music ringing out into the night: Heather Forest was on stage, I'd seen her before, and immediately put her on the list of my favorites. She could be scary, yeah, she could - in the summer sunshine of the afternoon before she froze the blood in me with the curse of the fairy queen on Tamlin. She was the one to open the night of horror. The Boy Who Drew Cats - a familiar story, I smiled, and let the music and the voice carry me. And then she announced that the next story was from Hungary. And I sat bolt upright again. She called it the Ghost's Gold, and though not by this title, but I knew the story, and caught my breath, not because of fear, but because of curiosity... I've never heard any foreign teller telling a Hungarian tale before. And. She. Was. Good. I started to realize how strong a story can be, if combined with music or song, and I rested my chin on my knee and smiled and listened and watched and relaxed and then she screamed and I nearly bit off my tongue. So much about jump tales.
While I was tasting my own blood, Bobby Norfolk came on stage, and, as usual, he was moving and telling and acting and playing and he looked like he enjoyed the tale as much as we did. Some children giggled in the background - I always knew kids were bloodthirsty and evil and best friends with all kind of creepy creatures, but I can imagine how much it would confuse me if I was telling the tale... and I giggled myself. After Taleypo, he came up with "the real stuff", the Florida legend of Uncle Monday, and I was struck again (without jumping, this time).
The Storycrafters gave a twist to the evening: they came with a tale of bittersweet love and sorrow so deep they made the audience let their tears fall without noticing... and the quiet song is still in my head after all these weeks, sometimes I catch myself humming it while walking back to the dorm after dinner, and it always make me feel... uncomfortable, to say the least... and when I meet all the colorful and happy Halloween decoration, I just smile. In addition, they came up with a hilariously funny rap version of the Golden Arm, and I've never thought that so many sayings concerning death can be crammed into such a short piece...
The sound of the evening train and its strong lights dancing behind the trees made a wonderful background, and a ten-minute break. The Ghost Train came and went, huge black monster in our horror-filled night, and, as usual, the Jonesborough crowd welcomed it as an old friend...
Gene Tagaban was already sitting between light and darkness while the others were telling; now he walked on stage with his drum, and seemed quite comfortable in the night filled with spirits and strange creatures. Actually, he sang for them, and because he is who he is (a very special storyteller), we all believed what he told us... (with his deep voice, the drum, and the usual nice sense of humor, of course). We clapped with our fingers, creating a strange low noise in the darkness, like something walking or dancing around, on the palms of hundreds of people... it was fascinating.
And it was Lyn Ford who was left, with the task to chill our blood for the rest of the night and the long way home. And she did. She told the ghost story, and she sang, in the nice and kind voice of dead girls who scare the hell out of everyone all the time... and again, the song remained, and I can't get it out of my head.
When I was back in my safe and silent room, I caught myself glancing towards the mirror, time to time. Yeah, I'd had nights with ghost stories before, stories which made the guys go everywhere together for several days... but I'd never been on the "receiving end" of the horror story business, never, let alone in a place like Jonesborough, where the "very best", the elite of scariness and creepiness and eeriness tell the tales under the willow trees and the green pavilion, and the Ghost Train haunts the night of whisper and sudden scream...

Jonesborough - When time stopped

2007-10-25T01:27:00.000+02:00

"Don' worry, honey, ya're goin' to the South ya know..." she said, and she smiled. Half a dozen times I heard this sentence the week before the Festival, and half a dozen times I smiled back with having absolutely no clue what it meant. But at least it made me feel a little bit less nervous.
When I boarded the bus (the one with my own favorite Peter Pan painted on its side), and pulled my knees to my chin on the seat, resting my forehead against the window, I wasn't sleepy (which is kind of a miracle because it was 1 am), I wasn't scared (not like my parents on the other side of the World), I wasn't even anxious - all alone, in the back of the bus, I felt like I was part of something. I watched the lights along the road, and I started telling the story to myself:
"Every single year, on the same night, this night, wanderers of North and East, South and West, are on the road, all alone or with company, heading towards the same place, the same tiny town far far away, under the starts, under the moon, just like me, on the bus, on the train, in the car, on the plane, on sea and air and water they come, from their journeys; it doesn't even matter where they are, where they were before, how many thousands of miles they keep to themselves, some of them are already sleeping, already there, but not yet arrived - but tomorrow, with the light of dawn, they will be there. Just like me."
And so I shared that crazy 22-hour bus ride with hundreds of people, Tellers and Listeners alike, and I felt the same a hero would feel when the journey begins (well, not every hero, of course. Some of them would be like "Nooo, let me stay home!". But that's another story).
Tell me about sleep deprivation.

And the South was, indeed, beautiful. I saw forests and mountains and small towns and... well, more forests and more mountains and more small towns, and hawks and blue birds and lakes, and tiny white churches. And then, just before sundown, when we left the mountains and the road took a turn - I looked up, and I saw all the clouds turning from white to rainbow. Not gold and pink, and not circled by a seven-colored arch - their white just turned to colors, all over my head, and stayed like that till the sun reached the horizon (no, it's not an allegory. It's the wonder of light, copyright by Nature herself). And from that moment, time stopped for me, and stood still like a painting, till the end of the Festival.

In the first morning, with the rainwater slowly disappearing in the warm autumn sunshine, I couldn't help but stare. At Jonesborough. At the houses. At the people. At the Storytelling Center. At the tents. At the pumpkins. At the scarecrows. At the Storytelling Center again. At... basically everything. Time stood still, well, yes... but many times I ended up running to arrive on time to the first session of storytelling... running along the road with the tiny shops, the autumn flags, the hay bales, the sunflowers and pumpkins and scarecrows and the butterfly-shaped bench on the sidewalk. I never enjoyed being late so much...

But, really, I should be writing about the storytellers instead. So much about Jonesborough.

Before the tale

2007-10-24T20:08:00.000+02:00

Before I plunge into all the details and the colorful bazaar of memories, I first have to say that the order I will speak about events has nothing to do with the real sequence of them, or my preference towards one teller or another... a little bit of this, a little bit of that, this is how we usually remember.
Probably I will upload some pictures too, but till then, fell free to visit my Hungarian blog, and check out the Jonesborough pictures there. Link on the left.
And now, back to the story.

Jonesborough - Beginning from the end

2007-10-24T14:27:00.000+02:00

Yesterday evening, done with all my homework (well, most of it), finished with everything to do, I climbed into my bed, cuddled under the blankets, turned on the CD player, and listened once again to the voice of Dolores Hydock, filling the room with magical words: "A wise king... A vengeful queen..." and I smiled.
The hundred-thousandth time I did the same (or, at least, it seems so - I lost count), fortunately the CD is not worn out that easily, the tape would be in shreds. And still, I listened, all the way through the hour, and smiled and laughed out loud, and caught my breath at the end.
And I saw the king and the queen and Silence and the minstrels and the dragon and the battle... but I also saw in my mind the Creekside Tent with the chairs and the colorful crowd of people, the stage with the musicians, the sunshine, the train behind the tent... and, standing in front of us in a skirt of rags and staff in her hand, I saw the Storyteller, her twinkling eyes, her all-knowing smile, her hands, always moving to guide us along the journey. Every word I remember, every wink, every gesture - and I'm so sure that for a long-long time, it will be the same.
And when I think of those three days, this is one of the first pictures that come to my mind - the first, I say, but far from being the only one. And when I turned off the CD player and lay in bed, listening to the Connecticut rain's whisper on the window - they all came back to me.
And so begins the tale of Jonesborough.

Telling a dragon in two minutes

2007-09-17T03:51:00.000+02:00

The dragon tale keeps coming back to me. Today I found it's perfect place and time.
Today was the day for the finals of the college public speaking contest. We went to watch Ngoni speaking (he talked his way into the finals, the only international student, we were sooo proud of him!), but there was this Wild Card, invite-someone-from-the-audience-to-compete thingy, and suddenly I was on stage again (no smart dress, no nothing). First I chose Comedy, and talked about what job I would invent that nobody else has in the world (I chose Telling The Truth - one person only, one month career).
The competition was fantastic. Awesome. Hilarious. People were funny, brave and really good; the speeches made us laugh our heads off. By the time I had to go back on stage for the second ground, I felt great, I loved the audience (and I knew I had absolutely no chance to win, and did not mind it the slightest bit!). So when I drew "Why should English be the official language of the United States?", I just told them that I had a great time listening to all the speeches, and I love English even if it's not my native language, and I gave them, as a present, the story of Drawing the Dragon, because I felt it shining, finding its place and time, and I wanted all those people to know that they all succeeded in drawing the perfect dragon in two minutes. And I did too. By the time the red sign went up, I finished the story, and they loved it.
This was my price at the contest. I couldn't ask for more.

One to one

2007-09-10T04:27:00.000+02:00

Song of the day: Captain Wedderburn (by Great Big Sea)

Sometimes we do forget how nice it is to tell to only one person, eye to eye; without caring about audience, time, setting, microphones. I did forget, nearly. Today I told bedtime stories to my friend Kata is a café, and on our way back to the dorm. All my favorites, without theme or order; Anansi, Captain Wedderburn, the Dragon Prince, Mr. Death... the Very Best Of. I really, really shared them with her. I have to do this more often. The experience does not depend on the number of the audience. A storyteller owes herself these one-to-one tellings. This was a real special occasion.

Dancing Stories

2007-09-07T20:48:00.000+02:00

I had my first Kathak class on Wednesday - an experience every storyteller should have once. The magic of India with the music, the colors and the sound of ankle-bells, the movements so light as feather, a blink of an eye that tells a story... they are all wonders by themselves, but if you are the one doing it, especially together with other people, it is rather like the miracle itself. Of course, you have to be born with it, or learn it throughout two or more lifetimes... but I figured that I have this opportunity once, and if I can learn just a single one of all those beautiful movements, then it's absolutely worth it.
If you haven't seen Kathak yet, check it out on YouTube.
I spent my evening watching water dripping from my fingers, moving them up and down (one of the movements for the technical piece).

First hint of storytelling

2007-08-29T04:02:00.000+02:00

We were walking downtown when I heard Trang nagging Ngoni to tell her a story on the boat where we were about to have our lunch, so she wouldn't get boatsick, whatever it is. Ngoni kept glancing around for help and started pushing her towards me, "ask her, she will". I felt the smile appearing on my face.
"This is your lucky day. I'm a storyteller." - it just felt soooooo good to say it out loud. Then it all disappeared in an enthusiastic scream.
Short story for short trip: The King Who Loved Dragons. My first story told over here. It's not like it mattered, though. As brother Anansi would say, all stories are connected to each other. You have no need to pick a first one in the web.

Storyteller walking in

2007-08-29T03:31:00.000+02:00

When we had been sitting on the plane for 7 hours and we still saw nothing but blue and blue and blue we started to think that maybe this whole America thing is just a huuuuge big joke and we're going to end up in India after all. We did not.
After spending 9 hours at JFK (killing time with admiring various things, just like state symbols on our brand-new quarters) we arrived to the enchanted midnight fairy tale called college campus, which, according to our rather random and half-asleep, full-jetleg observations, consists of many different things:
- crickets (millions of them actually, roaring all around)
- trees
- squirrels (dozens of them)
- lovely, old-fashioned street lamps
- redbrick houses
- beds (their importance increased a LOT after 30 hours of not-sleeping, that's how they made it to this list)
It was not really that "storyteller walking in with a single bag, a lute and a feather hat, whistling and smiling" kind of thing - it was rather like "the storyteller dragging herself with two backpacks and a suitcase, yawning uncontrollably and blinking like an owl with short-sight issues". But it still had a certain feeling of a beginning adventure.

The land I came from...

2007-08-23T22:51:00.000+02:00

How should I describe the land I came from? I used to think that there was not too much to describe at all, but right now, collecting and arranging all the Hungarian tales and legends to bring them with me to the US, the possibilities seem totally endless. If it would be a real storytelling moment, I'd tell you the tale from the very beginning to the very time we live in, but that would definitely take more than a moment... several moments, in fact. I could go into J .R. R. Tolkien mode and describe the woods, the hills and the "stars uncounted" in long sentences all ringing like church bells. Don't get scared, I won't. Right now, I'm more into checklists (guess why!:)

Let's see what storytellers and story-lovers would probably be glad to know.

The land I came from...

... is the land of dragon riders. Yep. It sounds totally cool, and we invented it a waaaay before Eragon was even thought of. Come back later for garabonciás stories.
... used to be the Kingdom of Fairies. Not the teeny-weeny butterfly-winged ones.The real ones (I have no objections for butterfly wings at all! I could use a pair myself). From rivers and woods and caves and marshes they built themselves a kingdom in Szigetköz and Csallóköz. Yay, I love those legends. They are quite sad at the end, though.
... has a castle or a fort on every mountain, every hill, every rock, every mole-hill and most of the anthills too. And every single one of them has their own legend (except for the anthills, I guess, but never underestimate a storyteller. I already have the name for THE ant!). I can't get enough of them.
... has a unique monster called rézfaszú bagoly, but I'd rather not translate the name. Trust me, it's serious.
... has it's own sleeping king just like Finn Mac Cool, King Arthur, Holger Danske. Well hidden somewhere, saved for worse times, ready to be reloaded.
... has dragons who look like humans. Some of them have vast amounts of heads, though. But they are rather effective when pissed.
... has magic horses in any size, any age, any kind, all coming in copper, silver, gold and diamond, and the deluxe version includes shape-shifting and free advice.
... has rather nice and friendly devils. Really. And the less nice ones are still funny. And the dangerous are manageable.
... has legendary princes who can consume incredible amounts of alcohol. Just for the sake of politeness, of course.

There are still some more facts coming up to this list. Not now.

You don't get a word? Start Googling;)

Granny Squannit a-waitin'

2007-08-21T22:46:00.000+02:00

When planning a trip to... anywhere, I always start by browsing through books and webpages to find something, a story, a legend or at least a faint belief to start with. It doesn't necessarily has to be something famous or huge, but it's important to find something special that captures my imagination. And searching is the fun part. If I find a legend too easily, at first click, I might leave it alone and search further.
This is how I started reading about Connecticut, and sweeping through the Constitution and nutmegs and Hartford and Mark Twain and Yale and more nutmegs I finally arrived to the Native Americans (I spent a lot of time with the nutmeg part though, which I find extremely facinating, but I'll leave it for later).
This whole Native American world is brand new to me, and I jumped right in, link after link, and suddenly there it was, the page with all the stories, and I had what I was looking for. The lady's name is Granny Squannit.

Here is the link: http://www.mohegan.nsn.us/heritage/makiawisug.aspx

I always loved every kind of Little Folk, and the minute I read this story I knew that I'll make Granny Squannit my imaginary host for the Hartford trip. It might seem that I've rushed into this decision, but I need a point to start, and I will be able to clear the view around me, starting with Native Americans and broadening the collection till I will be able to tell stories about Connecticut for hours and hours (and then I'll only have to figure out how to nail the audience to their chairs...) (and I still have a long way to go to the nutmegs. Gee, I like the word. Nutmeg. Nutmeg. Nutmeg.)
Besides, I especially love the idea of Granny being married to Moshup, a giant, and their fights making all the storms in the land. I can clearly imagine the tiny little shrew with her eyes like blackberries and moving like a bird, with deafening thunder pointing out her every argument... what a couple! I'm going to dig into that.
It's getting late. Three notes for my first day seem totally enough. Yawn.

Tell everybody I'm on my way...

2007-08-21T22:16:00.001+02:00

God knows how I envy those wandering Medieval storytellers: no visa, no paperwork, no passports, no borders, none of that pack in - measure - pack out - re-arrange - pack in - measure - get pissed - pack out crazyness. All they had was a backpack (or something like that) and a lute (ow, I want a lute so badly!) and their multicolored coats and hats with feathers and the road. The Road.
On the other hand, I have to admit that I like it better this way. I'm the child of the 20th century, and let's face it, I wouldn't survive for a single week in the Middle Ages (I'm still working on that, though. Check out later.). And I wouldn't be going to the US either if it wasn't for the Internet and phone calls and e-mails - probably I wouldn't even know about the place! (thanks, Columbus!) Good news is, I can plan my trip, I can contact all those great storytellers all around the World, and find tons of places to visit in advance. And books. Yep, I definitely love the books. Amazon.com will be happy to have me in the US.

IMPORTANT NOTE TO ALL THE READERS: I started this blog as The Multicolored Lady, the Storyteller. There won't be many personal details about me, or long descriptions of my everyday life - I still don't believe in sharing them with the faceless crowd of the WWW. If you were counting on it, ye be warned. BUT there will be lots of stories; not just real tales I've learnt or written, but also tidbits and adventures of the journey of a storyteller, with experiences, interesting details, all the ups and downs, and yes, pictures and hopefully audio! If it sounds good enough to you, bookmark my blog and come back to visit once or twice a week - take this journey with the storyteller!

So, tell everybody I'm on my way (and don't tell them I got my topic line from Brother Bear OST - such a happy song!). I'll take all the 21th century merits (without such flaws as the packing process) and make them into a timeless journey with stories uncounted, places filled with legends, many people to meet, and I'll carry my own little backpack of tales wherever I go. On foot or by plane, it really doesn't matter.

Meet the Multicolored Lady!

2007-08-21T20:30:00.000+02:00

"I’m the Weaver of Words, Teller of Tales, Traveller of Time. I’m the one who never keeps a secret, but always has plenty of them; I’m the one who can tell you the most beautiful lies but would tell the truth even if it cost my life. I’m the one who speaks the language of water and fire and all the words of mankind – but I never say a word if it does not have it’s time and place. I’m the one who knows how to tame a dragon, and how to fight an evil witch; but I wouldn’t shoot a gun. I’m the one who knows all the crimes and weaknesses, but I love mankind more than anyone. I’m the one who tells the first tale to the baby, and keeps the last one of the dead. I’m a link in the chain that connects people to themselves. I’m a storyteller."