Monthly Archives: September 2016

My home is a complicated in-between. Home is a sense of family, of security in the knowledge that someone is always there to support you. But my blood family is far from where I live, where I have carved out a little slice of the world to create a home for myself. I still say that I’m going “home” for Christmas, even though I haven’t lived in California for three years. That home is where my parents live, where I grew up, the sidewalks drenched in memories of childhood, friendship, and adventure.

But I have new sidewalks now, a familiar unknown, the mountains a constant presence to the north, a comforting reassurance that I know where I am, and I know where I’m going. Here, I have found friendship in strangers, and started to paint the walls with new memories.

I have always loved travelling, and this summer, I went on a month long trip to Europe. I visited Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, London, and Scotland. In each city, I explored this place that was home to so many others, and in Scotland in particular, I was told so many stories that all came together to form a strong sense of Scottish identity. I spent that time listening to these stories in Scotland with my mother and brother, and with my best friend from high school. I had family with me, and my entire life I believed that family was enough to make anywhere a home.

For the first two weeks, I was so caught up in the adventure, in the new places and new people that I didn’t notice what was missing.  Like Huffington Post blogger Sascha Jones, I, too, “have been blessed with the family I have. They have always made me feel united, connected, supported and loved. I realise that not everyone experiences this with blood ties, however family can also include an extended clan, a group of people where an unconditional love and connection exist.” Despite being with the people I’d grown up with, who’d made Alameda my home for the first 18 years of my life, I was lacking that sense of rightness, of home.

I’ve always read in stories and heard in songs that home is a person, or people. As the famous Canadian Justin Bieber says, “we could be homeless,” but it’ll all be okay “as long as you love me,” because our relationship is all the home we need to be happy.

What I’ve discovered, though, is that home is a culmination of things. True, it has a lot to do with the people you surround yourself with, your tribe, a term popularized by Sebastian Junger’s book Tribe. And that can be enough to make a home. But I’ve found recently that, for me, it is just as important to be in the right city.

I was sitting on a hostel bed in Amsterdam, looking at messages from my friends and all their photos of Vancouver moments, when I realized something significant. On this grand journey across another continent, I found I was, for the first time in my life, homesick. It wasn’t tear-inducing, or frightening, but it was important, because no matter how much I travel, which I fully intend to do, I will always come back to Vancouver.

Vancouver is by no means a utopia, but this vibrant city sandwiched between mountains and ocean has so many pockets that are glimpses into another world, and when I look at Vancouver from the roof of my house on the top of a hill, all I can see for miles are treetops and rooftops standing side by side.

My love affair with Vancouver has allowed me to find my own home, independent of the family who raised me.

Alameda will always be my childhood home, where I learned to read on Tintin comics and picture books, where I first encountered the feeling of that desire to write, to create a story for others, where I had my first kiss and where my parents got divorced and where I learned to drive.

But Vancouver is also my home, where I learned the power of words, where I reaffirmed my passion for theatre, and sharing those stories with others, where I first kissed a girl and where I had to say goodbye to my best friend and where I learned so much about myself as an individual person.

Both places are full of memories, and stories of my life, and stories I found and loved. Both places have people that love and support me. Both places are my home.

To be simultaneously at home and away from home is a strange mixture of nostalgia and excitement for the future, but it is an in-between place that I am thankful for. I may be in-between two homes, but at least I have somewhere I know I belong.

I leave you with the song that inspired the title: “One Great City!” by the Weakerthans. The key line that is repeated throughout the song is “I hate Winnipeg,” but I hear it as a love song for the city they’re from, despite all its flaws.

WORKS CITED

Crawford, Matthew B.”Sebastian Junger’s ‘Tribe’.” The New York Times. 27 May 2016. Web. Accessed 26 Sept. 2016.

Hodkinson, Jessie. “As Long As You Love Me Lyrics.” A-Z Lyrics. Web. Accessed 26 Sept. 2016.

Jones, Sascha. “Finding Your Tribe.” Huffington Post. 28 Sept. 2015. Web. Accessed 26 Sept. 2016.

Kabiri Nika. “The Value of Finding Your Tribe.” Huffington Post. 1 August 2016. Web. Accessed 26 Sept. 2016.

TheLastGoodName. “The Weakerthans – One Great City!” Online Video Clip. Youtube, 4 Sept. 2010. Web. Accessed 26 Sept. 2016.

Once, there were three siblings, sometimes brothers, sometimes sisters, and sometimes neither. They were as old as the ground they danced on, and as carefree as the blue sky above them.

One day, they decided to have a contest. The one who could tell the most interesting story won. They invited all of the animals, who would vote on the best story.

The first one told a story about the depths of the ocean, and the rivers that were its fingers reaching around to hug the earth. As she spoke, water poured forth from her hands and filled all the crevices on the earth. Some of the water leapt into the air and gathered together to make a storm cloud, and this is how she got her name, Rain.

The second one told a story about the sun’s love for the earth, and how when he kissed her, the flames of his love caught in the branches of the trees. As he spoke, fire grew up from his feet and caught in the grass, casting a warm glow on the animals. This is how he got his name, Fire.

The third sibling was the youngest, and wanted to prove themself the wiser and cleverer sibling. They began to weave an epic tale, full of vicious pain, and senseless war, and horrific death, where the hero faced an enemy so powerful, the animals began to lose hope.

The storm cloud above them grew darker, casting shadows upon the animals and rumbling angrily at the injustice.

The fire in the grass became afraid for the hero, and ran away, leaving a trail of blackened and burned grass in its wake.

And finally, as the third story came to a close, the villain crawled out of the storyteller’s mouth and into the world, and the villain was Evil. He vanished as soon as they named him, and the third sibling was not given a name, for fear of vanishing into everything just as Evil had done.

The siblings saw the potential chaos in their creations, and tried desperately to take it all back. But the storm cloud had travelled to the mountains, the fire hid deep in the forest, and Evil had disappeared on the wind, like mist or smoke.

The storm cloud raged and poured a heavy rain on the animals. The fire fled across the land, destroying many of the animals’ homes. And while Evil did nothing, the possibility of his presence was enough to fill them all with a sense of dread and suspicion.

All told, there was no winner of the contest, and each sibling had learned the power of stories, and did not tell another one for a long time.

I told this story three times, once to my roommate, once to my family, and once to myself. Each time, the way I phrased the story changed, the minute details becoming irrelevant, or I would have a more poetic way to phrase it. Sometimes there would even be extraneous details that hadn’t been in the previous versions and weren’t in the next. And each time, the reception was different. My roommate was impressed by how I told the story, while my brother was more interested in the story itself. And when I was telling it to myself, I was much less focused on the performance of it and more on talking my around to hitting all the key points, no matter how small. Oral storytelling is greatly affected by both the teller, the listener, and their relationship. And once you tell a story, it cannot be untold.

Stories are fluid creatures: their affect on the reader changes depending on a million different little things, such as when and where the story was told, and by whom, and the reader’s experience themselves. The manner in which the story is delivered is also a major influence on how the audience comes to understand the piece.

There are two main ways a story can be delivered: written or performed. In this day and age, modern technology has created new ways to consume stories that build off of these two categories. While oral performance is the most common, in the everyday stories we share with friends and family, film and the internet have developed to allow performed stories to be recorded, and re-experienced, by both those who were there for the initial performance, and those who will only ever see it on YouTube.

With the rise of the internet and today’s high literacy rates, nearly everyone in the world has the ability to put their voice out there and share their own stories. This means greater access to the stories of marginalized people, who otherwise may not have as globalized a platform from which to speak. Fanfiction is a popular type of online publication that allows minorities to create more representation in the stories they already know and love. “Headcanons” are an individual’s interpretations of specific elements of an already existing story. By writing new stories, or rewriting previously existing ones, beloved characters can change race, gender, ability, sexual orientation, or any number of characteristics. The internet provides widespread publication for these stories, as well as the opportunity for them to reach a wider audience, particularly those who crave to see themselves represented in the media.

The internet acts as a filter for stories in multiple ways. The website a story is posted on will change the expectations of the reader, which always affects the initial experience. Beyond that, for recordings of live performances, the angle of the camera and the quality of the footage affects the performance itself, exactly as if it were being told secondhand, with some forgotten or omitted details and sometimes missing the important action. This changes the story from the initial live performance, telling a slightly different version. However, this slightly different version can be told the exact same way, with all of the same differences, whereas the live performance will never be the same twice.

An intriguing variation on this is the Podcast, an audio performance of storytelling available on the internet through various venders such as iTunes, various other podcast apps, or even on YouTube. Podcasts, whether fictional or not, are most often designed, written, and/or performed to be a podcast. Similar to a radio show, this kind of performance does not change the text the same way other oral storytelling can. It is recorded the once, and any difference in the nuances of the text is entirely down to the listener.

In the lecture for 1:2, the professor established the (perhaps fading) distinction between literacy and orality. I would like to suggest that podcasts may be the meeting ground of these two kinds of storytelling, as it is an aural experience that changes depending on the location where the story is heard, and the person who is listening. Some podcasts are even designed to be connected to a specific place. (I’m thinking of a specific one set in Vancouver, but I’m unable to find it, despite my best google efforts. I will share this podcast with everyone once I’ve found it!) However, the story itself changes very little in terms of the text of the story. There is a difference between a podcast and oral storytelling, but there is also a difference between podcasts and literature.

I’m interested to see what other people have to say about where podcasts fall in this spectrum of storytelling methods. Share your thoughts in the comments!

WORKS CITED

“Adult and Youth Literacy.” UIS Fact Sheet. UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Sept 2013. Web. 18 Sept 2016.

Welcome to Night Vale. “1-Pilot.” Online Video Clip. Youtube, 14 Jan 2015. Web. 18 Sept 2016.