Tell Me a Story

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CLICK HERE LISTEN IN TO THE FIRST FEW EPISODES:

#1 Tell Me A Story – D’Arcy Benincosa “Love Stories”
#2 Tell Me A Story – Tom Cheevers “Loss”
#3 Tell Me A Story – Ethan Persoff – “Electric Kool-Aid”
#4 Tell Me A Story Damian Hutchinson – “The Con Cons”
#5 Tell Me A Story Troy Hughes – “Hot Beer, Cold Women
#6 Tell Me A Story Everett Downing – “Sketchbooks and Aftermaths
#7 Tell Me A Story Jason Williams – “Inside Baseball”
#8 Tell Me A Story Thom Floyd – “Poo-Chucks”
#9 Tell Me A Story IX – “Selling Out”
#10 Tell Me A Story JC Carter – “Breakfast In Hell”

Tell Me a Story is simple. I call someone; they pick a theme and tell their story. I then have to share a story of my own using the guest’s theme. If no one answers the phone, which happens a lot, I will, time allowing, pull from the dusty archives of my filing cabinet, some silly thing I’ve written – from Jr. High to last week, no matter how embarrassing.

It’s pretty simple, really, except for a couple of things …

There are reasons I started Tell Me A Story.

First, in the late 90’s I broke my neck, cracked open my head, and lost a huge chunk of my memories –though I didn’t know that at the time. Now, in a lot of different directions, I have black spots in recollection, especially the parts from the late 80’s to about 1997. The memories are there, but I can’t get to them without some kind of trigger: most often it’s from hearing stories. When the trigger is pulled, the memories seem to magically appear, fully formed and realized, as if they were never hidden. It’s a terrifying relief when that happens. Most intimidating about it, for me, is that I didn’t realize that so much of my life was hidden in the dark, black spaces of my head until just a couple of years ago.

Second, a couple of years ago, I outlined the idea of a show called “Conversations”; the simple premise being that I called folks on the phone, chatted until someone got bored, recording all the while, and then posting it as a show. The technology for this idea was both expensive and hard to jimmy rig, it sounded awful, and so the idea was shelved.

Flash forward to January 2014, and D’Arcy Benincosa. We – The LEFT Show – while trying to do her a tiny solid, managed to totally garble and under-represent her project: “Where All The Stories Are Love Stories.” I was desperate to fix our screw-up, but D’Arcy was travelling. I did a pre-recorded interview for The LEFT Show where we talked about her project, about Marriage Equality, Utah, and other things. Once the 40 minute (supposed to be 10 minute) interview was over, I dusted off the idea of Conversations, realized that it didn’t have enough of a theme to work for me, tweaked it well beyond what Episode #1 actually contained, and launched it anyway.

Third, storytelling in long form is a dying medium. When our narrative is running – sprinting, really – toward less than 140 characters a story, spending time in conversation feels weird, quaint, and a bit antediluvian. I have no aspirations of Twain, Poe, or, hell, even Grisham; but I think everyone has a story or twelve to share with the world and I’m going to find a way to make it entertaining to tell them – out loud – to the world.