"This is our Talking Stick," he explains, for the sake of newcomers. George holds a stick, proffering it like a wooden antenna for receiving and transmitting tellingware. Nowadays, perhaps, it's the non-stop and ill-considered microsoftening of the world. In Boccaccio's time it was the Black Death that forced people to seek a shelter for - and in - their storytelling. Still, I imagine Harry Bailly - or Chaucer himself, for that matter - would feel right at home here. We're drinking bad coffee instead of Chaucerian mead or Homeric sea-dark wine, the folding chairs aren't as comfortable as the cushions in a king's hall, and the host will unromantically remind us at the break to leave four bucks in the hat to cover the rent. "For trewely," says Chaucer's irresistible innkeeper, "ne confort ne myrthe is noon/ to ride by the wey doumb as a stoon."Īnd speaking of 14th-century story jams, there was that villa near Florence where, in the middle of the Black Death, Boccaccio's superb Decameron host Pampinea gathered 10 plague survivors and made them tell each other stories ofĪmore instead of brooding on their ruined city. We could be back in the Taberd Inn with Harry Bailly as he convinces the Canterbury pilgrims to swap yarns as they travel. If it weren't for the buzz of a light plane banking toward the island airport, we could be at a Neolithic campfire, or in the court of Homer's King Alkinoos as he reassures Odysseus, "I could stay up until the sacred Dawn/ as long as you might wish to tell your story" (Fitzgerald translation). A quiet space, firelight, attentive listeners, a welcoming host: These elements have always been the frame and force field for the teller's art. The storyteller's natural habitat hasn't changed much over the centuries. Even in a wired world, humans remain tuned to a narrative frequency, still willing to travel at the speed of tongue to the realm of wonder. For all of our modern ways, the instinct to listen to stories runs deep. George turns off the lights, picks up a carved stick, and stands behind the blaze of candles by the storyteller's stool.Īs often as I've been here, I still marvel at how the room transforms into a haven for the spoken word. Sometimes he tells Anansi stories from his Caribbean heritage, and some nights he tells Jataka tales about the Buddha, beginning with a Jamaican-accented Sanskrit invocation: "Įvam me Sutam " (George has told me, over a beer, the real-life story of how he wound up, all 6 foot 3 of him, as a begging monk in Thailand - certainly the tallest black man they'd ever seen in a saffron robe.) He's a retired psychologist who now follows his passion for storytelling. Open sessions need good hosts, and George has the gift of making a group of strangers feel as if they're in his living room. As he lights the candles, everyone hurries to the kitchen to replenish their coffee. Welcome to One Thousand and One Friday Nights of Storytelling, a weekly event that began in 1978, in a café called, appropriately, Gaffers. They help put out the folding chairs, daring each other to try telling a story tonight. Dennis Mann has driven in from the country with bright red suspenders and a bag of true-life yarns.Ī group of young people stroll in, carrying bike seats and helmets, jewellery dangling from surprising places. She's famous in storytelling circles for her tellings of Icelandic sagas, Carol McGirr is in her usual spot to the right of the storyteller's stool. A Maritimer, he relishes spooky tales of forerunners and ghosts. Meryl is a computer whiz who works at one of the dailies. Murray is a retired banker who comes most Fridays, bringing a well-aged stock of vintage drollery. Murray Garrett is talking to Meryl Arbing over by the piano. Just past the cloisters in the shadow of the old tower - it survived a fire and is said to be haunted - is the room where we gather: young and old, nose-ringed and white-haired, newcomers and old friends - a diverse crowd in a city that tends to coalesce in predictable categories. George the Martyr Church, the most medieval corner of Toronto, as evening begins to darken.
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