“I’ve got a great story to tell you. So there are a bunch of witches hanging out. A few warlocks are there, also some Goblins, a chupacabra, assorted ghouls, vampires, werewolves, etc. A real “who’s-who” of the world’s phantom scary-beings. It’s their Annual General Meeting at the airport Ramada in Laughlin, Nevada. They’ve all come down from their rooms, bleary-eyed and hungover from last night’s debauchery. The Creature from the Black Lagoon chokes down a dry bran muffin from the continental breakfast tray as the meeting begins. The administrative side of things takes up most of the day, followed by awards (“Most Scares,” “Most Improved,” and the announcement of the winner of the coveted top prize at the previous day’s chili cook-off). They decide to end the event with a competition. Some of the attendees were lacking inspiration and method in their recents attempts to petrify onlookers with terrifying displays, and so it was decided that all attendees would attempt to produce the greatest possible fright they could, by any means necessary, with a winner being determined by vote at the end of the exhibitions. Haunting organ riffs were played, macabre cakes were baked, and very frightening balloon animals were crafted. Last in the line of performers came a pretty ordinary looking human, who did no more than tell a story. No one seemed to recall sending an ordinary human the e-vite. The story was brief but potent. In its aftermath, faces frozen in grotesque expressions filled the room. The person left. The monsters did not even convene to vote for the winner. Their stunned silence ordained the victor. Only further choking from the Creature from the Black Lagoon, who was stealthily attempting to consume muffins left over from the morning’s meal, broke the eerie silence that succeeded that story of pure evil.”

For a story about how evil came into being it might seem like my version has too much comedic ambition (“ambition” being the key word there, as it drew few to no laughs) and this is something that developed directly as a result of my repeated tellings of it. I started by simply retelling Thomas King’s version of Leslie Silko’s story. My first response came from a friend who replied: “so it’s fiction. Fiction brings evil into the world?” Her response was probably the best one I received. After this I learned that my friends and family have very little patience for dour material. Either this or maybe my desire to provoke a reaction made me heighten the comedy. I was worried that the added humour might be taken as disrespect for the story’s origins, but it was really just a way of drawing it out and amusing myself in the process. But there is comedy in King’s telling of Silko’s story. I pictured the gathering of witches as something like this: by turns comical, terrifying and sort of campy. Think of how bored these witches must have been to make up such a contest.

I decided to make the one who brings evil into the world a human (though I left the gender ambiguous, as Silko does) because the idea of a mere human raining on the parade of all of these famous monsters is hilarious to me. Though I know we were supposed to maintain the ending and Silko’s story does not end with a marine monster choking on a dry baked good, I made that little addendum as a last opportunity for the audience to laugh (though they did not), and take a breather after the story’s gravest moment.

Beyond coming face to face with my lack of comedic talent, I don’t know that I came away with any trenchant insights about storytelling. Though obviously I found that it is much easier to tell a story in a vacuum without the immediacy of an audience response than it is to engage in a more performative storytelling activity.

Hyperlink:

Haxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages. Dir. Benjamin Christensen. 1922. Film.

1. “What the Rastafarians have done is to make up a story – and I say this in high tribute – that will bring them back homewhile they wait for reality to catch up to their imaginations” (italics mine).  (77).  Chamberlin often points to Rastafari myth and song as exemplary of the power of stories to connect and reconnect peoples, as places to begin to find the common ground. Indeed, he thinks, “Rastafarianism may be the only genuine myth to have emerged from the settlement and slavery in the New World” (187).  Why does Chamberlin think this? Please be sure to include some discussion about language, in particular “Dread Talk.”

Rastarianism seems almost custom built for Chamberlin’s approach as it is the real life manifestation of “finding common ground” through story. It is a faith spawned from a grand metaphor, though the suffering experienced by those who practice it is certainly not metaphorical.  The entirety of Chamberlin’s text concerns the use of story as a means of “overstanding the stories and songs of others with whom we may be in conflict” (188), and by grafting the Old Testament narrative of wandering exiles onto their own cultural situation, they have heartily accepted “the challenge to believe in strangeness” (188). Rastafarians identify with the story of the Israelites with – literally- religious fervor.

Of course it is not without adaptation that the story is transposed onto their own heritage, but it is stamped with their own subjectivity and this is done through language, which “reflects their own imaginings and recovers their own realities” (Chamberlin 187). Native languages and names were taken from these people by their oppressors, and so in turn they modify this unnatural tongue of the colonizer as a way of acculturating it. This renaming is a way of exercising power in a subtle, yet resonant way. More than this, Chamberlin notes that “dread talk” is crafted to “represent a return to wonder, and perhaps to the surprise of the original metaphor” (188). So “dread talk” is language that prioritizes the experiential representation (using words like “overstand” and downpression”), it attempts to close the gap between the thing signified and its signifier in order to transport the reader’s consciousness more effectively.  Perhaps it is this aspect of their culture that allows for the acceptance of “strangeness” of the Old Testament and facilitates the inhabitance of metaphor.

Though not written down, reggae music provides an oral document, as permanent as anything in the bible, that exists beyond the death of its author, telling and retelling the stories of the Rastafarian faith. It is important to know that a primary conduit for propagation of this belief system is the musical recording: as Courtney MacNeil notes, the audio recording provides a challenge to Walter Ong’s assertion that oral expression is inherently “evanescent.” Although Chamberlin does point out that Ras Kumi set down the history of Rastafari in the 1980s, it is written exactly as it is spoken, without florid metaphorical obfuscation, and the oral precedes the textual. Oral expression is “a means through which an interior drive towards communication is accessed” (MacNeil) so the “dread talk” is a privileged point of entry into the individual and collective Rastafarian consciousness.

By buying into this narrative of Jewish exile the Rastafarians have “forged a connection among these… stories of horror” (Chamberlin 76), united themselves with disenfranchised populations the world over, yet done so in a way that maintains their distinctive cultural features.

Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?: Finding Common Ground. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2003. Print.

MacNeil, Courtney. “Orality.” The Chicago School of Media Theory. 2007, Web. May 16, 2015.

Trojan Records. “Desmond Dekker and the Aces- ‘Israelites’ (Official Audio).” Online video clip. Youtube. Youtube, 9 May, 2014. Web. 21 May, 2015.