Home again

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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.