Midlife Meditation

Woody, Buzz, Jessie, and Forky Warning: here there be spoilers aplenty. Sequels have been around as long as storytelling. The best storytelling is incomplete. It creates outlines of engaging characters, but lets the audience use their experience and imagination to fill them out. It does the same with the universe in which it places these characters, as well as with the plot that carries them from beginning to end. To do this well, the storyteller must trust the audience, and have confidence in their intelligence and creativity. The best-told stories leave audiences both satisfied and hungry, wanting to revisit the universe, spend more time with the characters, see it from different angles. But the best stories are so complete that sequels are unnecessary: the work stands on its own. To justify its existence, a sequel must present something so new, no distinctive, that it is a good story in its own right. Such was the case with the most ancient story/sequel pairing I ...

Last night, MaryAnn Rambo blew me away. MaryAnn has been on a weight loss journey for over a year now, and as of the last time I checked, had last 203 pounds. She blogs about it at " Repairing Me ," and reading it is well worth your time. She has also begun telling her story on stage as part of a show called "Campfire" and, for the first time last night, as monologist for a long form improvisation called "Disco Lounge." Working from the suggestion "teddy bear," MaryAnn told short stories from her childhood that were the inspiration for scenes by a group of improvisers. The players were silly, blasphemous, hilarious at times, often inspired, but none of what they did would've been possible without the offers MaryAnn made with her stories. To be fair, MaryAnn has actually been doing this for a long time. She's been running the screens at ComedySportZ, putting up images and text that comment on moments in the matches (in keeping with ...

"You're so calm. I wish I could be that way." I had just presented a quick, concentrated lesson to other music teachers at Orff 101, the annual introductory workshop put on by the Portland Orff Schulwerk Association, of which I am now vice president. Every member of the board presents at this event, and from what I saw of the others, we were all confident, prepared, and at ease. Except apparently we weren't. Though I should qualify that statement: I was, in fact, at ease, but one of my colleagues was not. I'm sure she's fine in a classroom, and her lesson was masterfully presented; but from what she told me, she was inwardly extremely nervous, probably from delivering her lesson to adults, rather than children. I'm an introvert. Introverts are supposed to shy from microphones, stages, podia, lecterns. We don't like to raise our voices, because we don't like to hear our voices. Public speaking, teaching, performing should tie us in knots of...