storytime — Crystal Street

The Art of Storytelling and Why I Love the Academy Awards

by cstreet

I love the Academy Awards. There, I’ve said it.

And not for the red carpets or the high glamor- though Sandra Bullock looked stunning and Clooney is simply fine. No, I love the Oscars for the art behind the glamor. I am the person who actually likes to see the editing nominees and the best sound mixing awards. I even take notes. I’m a geek when it comes to storytelling.

Tonight’s awards gave tribute to a film maker who had the opportunity to shape so many young minds of my generation. We Gen X’ers came of age in the glory of John Hughes films. I had forgotten the impact these stories had on my young formative teenage years until I saw the cameos of all his films played on the big screen for the audience. Ferris Bueller. What can I say. I watched that damn movie so many times I’d memorized all the lines. I even read the book over and over again. Tonight, it dawned on me that the final few lines in that movie- brilliantly presented by a young Matthew Broderick- might have just implanted the simple mantra which I guides my life to this day. “Life moves pretty fast- if you don’t stop to look around every once in a while, you might miss it.” Brilliant.

We often forget that somewhere, someone is laboring over the scripts, the scene editing, the costume design, the cinematography and the directing that will take a writer’s story and give it a life. Someone, somewhere is watching a scene unfold in front of their eyes and saying, “wow, this would be a great movie.” Several years ago, the screenwriter of Juno won the Oscar for her storytelling. Prior to winning the Oscar, she was a stripper.

One of the featured directors in the short film category made a comment that just had to be scribbled in my notebook. Short films are “the jewel box of storytelling. The tools never make a great film, the story makes a great film.”

One of the thirty second speeches that resonated the most for me came from the winner of best musical score. His father gave him a 8 mm movie camera he asked for at age 9 and never once told him it was a “waste of time” to use it. And no one in his life ever told him that it was a waste of time to pursue his art. How often can we say that in our own lives? I was blessed enough to have parents who recognized the value of art and supported my endeavors- but not many can say the same.

John Wayne looks over my usual working spot at the local espresso outpost in Quartzsite.

Sadly, I had not seen many of this year’s nominees. I realized that films have not been at the top of my agenda the past 6 months when many of these movies were released. But I did see Blind Side and was rather happy to see Sandra Bullock receive the award for this movie. And based on a true story and an excellent one at that.

But the overall winner for the evening was a movie I have yet to see and had barely heard of prior to tonight. Hurt Locker won multiple awards, including best screen play, best director and best film. And to hear the writer stand on stage and tell of being a journalist and basing his screen play on his experience covering the Iraq War, well, that’s inspiring on many levels. Another award acceptance that gave me goosebumps, was Monique from Precious and Oprah’s tribute to the nominee for best actress from the film. I haven’t seen this film either, but it is now on the top of my list.

So, my little reporting excerpt on the Oscars will conclude with the focus on the story. Hollywood merely takes our stories and the narratives we live everyday and creates art. Even the more elaborate animations and computer generated fantasy movies all return to the simple human narratives we live everyday.

Love, pain, struggle, suffering, triumph, perseverance, death, grief, sorrow, war and peace. These are our stories, they are our narratives. And while this may be an unpopular sentiment with some, I applaud the Academy for awarding those artists who use their power and their talent to create movies that go beyond simple entertainment and reveal the human narrative that we experience everyday and filmmakers who tackle the issues that plague our modern society. If I want simple entertainment, I’ll rent an Adam Sandler film or watch a weekly sitcom. I watch movies because they evoke thoughts, they stir my own emotions, they cause me to question my assumptions and they expose humanity at such a raw and intense level. I watch movies because they are art. And it is refreshing to see that the art of the story is still celebrated in the entertainment industry.

Not a big fan of the host’s performances, though. Can we bring back Hugh Jackman or John Stewart? Maybe Stephen Colbert should have a shot at it next year. Jude Law would be nice to look at for 4 hours as well. I’m just saying.

Filed Under: photography Tagged With: creativity, philosophy, storytime

An Empathetic Crystal and Saying Goodbye.

by cstreet

“I was walking along, looking down at the ground and there was this crystal. Looked just like a tear drop. A teardrop from God, just for me.” My aunt’s friend held out this crystal she had found just moments after she and her husband had to put their 16 year old dog out of her misery.

“He had to shoot her. Not the way I would have done it, but he felt it was his obligation to her. She just laid her head down for him when it was time and he sobbed like a child afterward. Then we buried her out in the desert and I found this crystal.”

I told my aunt’s friend that a crystal appears when the person needs it, the crystal finds the person, not necessarily the other way around.

I looked at her crystal and recognized some properties or ‘personalities’ of the stone. She had found an empathetic crystal, and one of its properties is to help a person suffering from grief or a loss. I told her this and her face brightened, and she was comforted by her crystal finding her at that moment.

My aunt and her friend spent the afternoon making jewelry and turning her crystal into a necklace, and I’m sure she will be wearing it as she grieves for the passing of her four-legged loved one.

Things are a little different out here. Life and death seem to be a part of the daily dialogue in this retirement community. So often the conversation drifts to so-and-so and his recent heart attack or so-and-so and their trip to the hospital or so-and-so and the passing of their husband. Death is just hanging out here in the desert as the Great Generation reaches the end of their years and exits this world.

A couple walks to Tyson Wells in Quartzsite, AZ.

Another friend of my aunt’s stopped by the other day and was telling us about the dog her friend brought over who needed a home.

“He’s too full of piss and vinegar,” claimed the friend. “He is a young one and I had to take him back. My daughter was giving me grief about getting a puppy. She knows she’ll have to take care of him once I go. I need an older dog whose at the end of his years like I am.”

Everyday, a little man a few doors down from my RV takes his tiny white pug out for a walk. The dog just sort of stands there, not sure of which way to go. He looks up at his owner, and his owner looks down at him, and they just sort of stand there for 5 or 10 minutes. The unspoken words between the two of them speak volumes. I happened to by walking home one day and passed them in their daily ritual. His owner told me his companion should have died by now. The little pup was old and suffering from congestive heart failure and totally blind. But he’s still going, and everyday they walk out of the RV and look around at the world passing them by.

I passed them this evening as I was driving down the road and he was driving out of the RV park. The little pug was curled up on the dashboard going for a ride. I hope they were going somewhere special and the little pup was enjoying his final days with his master.

Filed Under: the walkabout Tagged With: contemplating life, storytime, the walkabout

Turning off the Grid- “Things were better before there was television.”

by cstreet

Canning for Survival

Last week, the RV park gathered for their monthly donuts and coffee breakfast. About 20 old-timers sat around over glazed donuts and talked about their world; knitting, beading, quilting, RV roof sealer, which vendor had the best deals on lawn chairs, and on, and on. The women all gathered on the porch and showed off their latest creations and the men stood around the coffee pot and talked about cars, politics and the weather.

When I say old-timers, I’m referring to the median age of 70 and up. I’m the youngest by 40 years or so, which makes the conversation even more interesting for me. It fascinates me to think of the time span my fellow breakfast mates have lived through and the moments of modern history they experienced.

Happy J's RV park residents gather for their monthly soup luncheon.

“Things were better before television,” one tiny little lady commented when the conversation drifted to stories of their childhood.

“We didn’t have electricity until I was in high school.” Another lady stated. High school- can you imagine? I always proudly state, “back when I was in college, we didn’t have cell phones or email.” But wow, no electricity, and many of the ladies agreed with her.

“We didn’t get hot water until I was 16,” stated another woman.

“One summer, when I was 15, they pulled me out of summer camp to go home and can for the summer. Mom was sick, and they came and got me and I had to can all the vegetables for the coming winter. Took me all summer. If I hadn’t canned the food, we wouldn’t have eaten at all that winter.” Carol the quilter made this statement and I just had to pause and take that in for a moment.

If I had to can my entire family’s food for the winter, we’d be in serious trouble. I can’t even bake a loaf of bread properly, that whole patience and baking gene was not passed down to me. Imagine the summer when you were 15 years old. Canning vegetables for survival couldn’t be any farther removed from my reality at that age, or even now.

From the Great Depression to the Great Recession

The irony in so many of these folks lives is that they entered the world during the time of the Great Depression and now they are beginning to leave this world under the time period of the “Great Recession”. But they know survival, they know sacrifice, they can create and they can endure.

And when I look at my generation and our troubles and woes through their eyes, I don’t quite know what to think. On the evening news tonight, a story about long-term unemployment spoke to the rising trend in my generation of people who will spend years in unemployment. And as I’m listening to this in the same room with my 87 year old uncle, who has spent a lifetime starting small businesses and making a living any way possible- and doing a great job of it. I can’t help but wonder about our motives from his perspective.

Granted, we are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but politics aside, what does his generation think of a younger generation that sits around and waits for someone to hand them the same job they just lost? When you spend a summer canning vegetables for survival, what runs through your mind when you hear about people spending 2-3 years or more out of work and resigning to the inevitability of joblessness? And, I guess coming from a service industry background, I have to wonder why we can’t just go get any job when the one we want is not available. I know it requires swallowing quite a bit of pride and shoving aside our egos, believe me, I’ve done it, often. But when we did we become so beholden to inevitability, rather then just changing our reality and seeking our own solution.

Conversing over coffee before the soup luncheon at Happy J's RV Park.

Finding our Survival Skills

When did we lose our survival skills? When did we resign our fates to our bosses and supervisors and CEOs? Why are we so afraid to seek the unknown and find a new skill or a new profession? Why are we unable to just shift gears when troubles arise and plow forward into the unknown?

What will we do if canning food in the summers is our only means of survival? I wonder if one day, we’ll be sitting around a table of donuts and pots of coffee reminiscing about the time the televisions went away and we learned to can our food and generate our own power. I wonder when we are approaching the end of our years if we’ll sit around and compare our masterpiece quilts and handmade jewelry and talk about what life was like before cell phones and recessions.

Or will we be talking about the time we lost our jobs and failed to seek a better destiny for ourselves? Will our conversation drift to the time when our government failed to function and we turned to ourselves for survival? The time when we returned to community, farming and family and rebuilt lives filled with sustainability and self-reliance. Lives where the television was turned off- permanently- and we learned to can vegetables from our own garden, build our own homes and knit our own sweaters.

I wonder if we’ll sit around our coffee and donuts at the end of our lives and say, “life was better after the television went away.”

authors note: I wrote this article Sunday evening during a windstorm with the RV swaying in the gusts and tried to publish prior to bedtime but could not access the internet. The following morning I wandered over to my trusty outpost with wifi only to find that the entire town had lost its internet, phone and ATM capacity during the storm. Oh, the irony!