Top 10 Most Important Aspects of Storytelling

Odds bodkin storytelling live

 

The art of storytelling is an ancient craft, practiced by mystics, troubadours, and bards alike. A common question I get, and a challenging one at that, is Odds, how do you do that? In short, it requires building a world inside your imagination and reporting what you see as you proceed down the narrative’s road. If you would like to start to develop your storytelling skills, I’d like to help demystify the process by contributing some helpful tips.

 

Discover Your Imagination

 

Imagination is the key skill of the storyteller. Your imagination is your memory, just taken a step further into “dreaming while awake.” For instance, make a picture in your mind of your bedroom. Focus on the bed. Now, imagine there’s a blue ball of light hovering above it. You’ve just added a bit of imagination to a familiar memory image. If you like, you can make the blue ball hum in a friendly way. You can make it float up to the window. So if you think of your memories as a palette of bright paints, imagination is taking your memories and painting with them. You can invent landscapes, events, characters and actions. It takes practice, but once you’ve learned to train your imagination, it can produce anything—and become your storyteller’s most prized tool.

 

“But I don’t have a good imagination,” you might say. I’d respond, “No, you have an undiscovered imagination.” Ever had one of those long, complex dreams at night, filled with amazing detail? Most people have them all the time. Sometimes these dream narratives outdo cinema and video games in their vividness. If your unconscious mind can produce such amazing stories as you sleep, then you have that authorial power in you somewhere. It doesn’t need to remain locked away during sleep. A storyteller’s job is to dream while awake, and to use words to describe those visions. It’s not inspiration, it’s a skill.

 

Use your Five Imaginations

 

To truly immerse yourself in imagination, learn to use all five of your sensory imaginations:

 

Visual – the chief driver of your imagination. Learning how to imagine settings in three dimensional space in real time is your most important skill to hone.

Auditory – imagining how things sound is critical, especially if you’re making sound effects.  Believe it or not, this too can be taught, but it starts with hearing the sound you’re trying to mimic in your mind.

Kinesthetic – movement is key in storytelling. This is perhaps what sets it apart most from storybook readings, and creates a much more dynamic telling as the world moves within your mind..

Olfactory – when telling stories, sharing how something smells is one of the best ways to evoke  a memory in your audience’s minds, and thus a visceral response. Practicing smelling and describing scents is a great way to practice this skill. 

Gustatory – similar to your olfactory imagination, taste is directly linked to memory. As a storyteller, utilize this in your stories by describing what a character tastes to tap into your audience’s  imaginations on a deeper level. .

 

Let’s take the example of the blue ball hovering above your bed. If you make it hum, that’s adding auditory. If you make it smell like peppermint, that’s olfactory. If you walk up to it and touch it and it’s cool, that’s kinesthetic. If you lick it and it tastes like peppermint, that’s gustatory. If you can learn to combine all five of your imaginations while you tell stories, it’s lots of fun and gives you many more ways to remember your material. That, and it provides a richness that is almost like being there, even if it’s all just imaginary.

 

Internalize the Story


Painters keep a notebook full of sketches. For storytellers, it’s a notebook full of story sketches. Modern people have all kinds of devices to help them remember things nowadays. Voice memos, text messages, hard drives, cloud storage, all of these things hold data. However, when it comes to learning to tell new stories, nothing can replace the simple paper diary or journal for keeping them in one place where they can grow.

 

I tell over a hundred stories, some of them long-form, an hour or longer – Beowulf. The Odyssey. David and Goliath. Hercules in Hell – what I call feature-length tales. I’ve written down my own versions of them in my journals and still keep them to this day. Each of these long tales I’ve found in literary sources, but since I follow the ethic that these tales must emerge in my own words (no plagiarism or ChatGPT allowed) to escape any previous author’s words, I’ve taken each story through a process that allows me to make the story mine.

 

Firstly, I read a new story from start to finish and make mental images as I go. However, those are another author’s words and they may be elegant, but I don’t want them. Instead, I want the imagery—an inner movie of the story itself. Next, I read it again, but I take notes, brief phrases that describe key events, scenes and characters. I make a character list, too, so I’m familiar with the cast of players in the tale. I try to imagine what they look like and how they might sound. Again, I’m careful to jot these ideas down in my own words. After that, I put away the book (or books) I’ve used to find the story’s essence, and work from my notes from there on out. I call this “Escape from Word Land.” Now I’m free to craft my own version in my own words, not somebody else’s.

 

Build Your Wordless Outline

 

Storytelling isn’t reading, it’s creative remembering 

 

Of course, since storytellers are not actors who memorize lines, just like in a stage play they still need to parse the stories into scenes that follow one another in order to make sense. If, say, in Hansel and Gretel, you put the witch’s gingerbread house in the story before the opening scenes where the kids’ father leads them out into the woods to abandon them, then the story collapses. So I write out my stories, scene after scene, in those same brief phrases. That’s my written outline.

 

Bear in mind, we’re talking about spoken word storytelling, and so a Wordless Outline made of pure imagination is what you need to build next. Other than finally telling your story before people for the first time, this is by far the most mentally taxing part of the creative process. 

 

Here’s an example. Years ago a teacher sent out a letter to storytellers in New England asking if they could tell an episode from Homer’s The Odyssey. I didn’t know the story and hadn’t read Homer’s classic, but I wrote the teacher back and told him I could tell the entire tale. Just hire me and I’ll do it. Yes, it was a false claim but I had faith in my process. He hired me. I had three months to prepare a three-hour version. My reputation was on the line, so I read it, sketched it in my journal, and began the arduous imaging work of creating my Wordless Outline. In other words, I needed to create a movie of the story in my mind, one that would play in real time as I spoke.

 

In the end, I built a Wordless Outline with 42 episodes and practiced and practiced. Living with this entity growing in my thoughts for those three months, my journal notes were a constant companion. While rehearsing, if I forgot what came next (which I did often while learning the story), then I cracked open my journal and there the next episode was sketched. “Oh, yes, that’s the next scene.” 

 

At last, the three-day residency arrived. Before each hour-long performance I was buried in my story sketch and Wordless Outline until the second before I went onstage. But storytelling isn’t reading, it’s creative remembering. Once out there, I began and the story started to flow.  As I’ve told students in the past, “You really learn the story the first time you tell it.” So true. The school invited me back to tell The Odyssey for many years after that. Each time I told it, it became easier. Since those early days I’ve told this story a thousand times for a thousand audiences. I leave my journal at home now.

 

Learn to Trust Your Muse

 

Because storytellers are spoken word artists, unless they record their stories, their tales live only briefly in space and time. Audiences may carry them away in their hearts, but performances are ethereal things and only last as long as the teller is there. On one hand, that’s show business and is true of many performing arts. On the other hand, that transitoriness gives your Muse a chance to flourish and take chances with even tried and true tales.

 

What’s your Muse? Simply put, it’s inspiration in the moment. It’s a state of mind where some superior part of you seems to take over during a performance and things become lucid and unhurried. Athletes speak of being “in the zone.” In storytelling, it means you or your characters say things you’ve never said before, and they amaze even you. When eloquence—that ability to string words together beautifully and convincingly—shines through you and you forge ahead into wonder, that’s the Muse at work. “Am I even saying these things?” you ask yourself. “Is this me doing this?” That’s a very interesting question, because there are those who are convinced that, at certain times, it is not you who is doing them.

 

Consider this quotation from Carl Jung, the great psychologist:

 

There are literary works, prose as well as poetry, that spring wholly from the author’s intention to produce a particular result. He submits his material to a definite treatment with a definite aim in view; he adds to it and subtracts from it, laying on a touch of colour here, another there, all the time paying strict attention to the laws of form and style… Nor need I cite examples of the other class of works which flow more or less complete and perfect from the author’s pen. They come as it were fully arrayed into the world, as Pallas Athene sprang from the head of Zeus. These works positively force themselves upon the author; his hand is seized, his pen writes things that his mind contemplates with amazement. The work brings with it its own form…he is overwhelmed by a flood of thoughts and images which he never intended to create and which his own will could never have brought into being…as though he were a second person; or as though a person other than himself had fallen within the magic circle of an alien will.

 

Calliope (cal-lie-oh-pee), who among the Nine Muses in Ancient Greek mythology was the Muse of Eloquence, is the inspirational figure you want to consider. According to Homer and Virgil, she came to help them out quite regularly. Calliope remains an active force today in the imaginative lives of artists. Some people prefer to call this source of inspiration the Holy Spirit or the Presence of God. Those terms work just as well. Others prefer “the life force” or “the collective unconscious.” Whatever you want to name it, this inspirational force is quite useful in artistic endeavors, even if you don’t believe in it.

 

Choose a Story You Love 

 

If you’re not writing a story yourself, but instead you’re choosing a story from “the canon” of public domain stories, be sure to read a lot and find a story that speaks to you. Make sure there’s something in the theme, or something about the characters, that you find fascinating. If you love the story, your audience will sense that. Remember, every story that you can tell in 12-15 minutes needs a beginning, a middle and an end. Stories give emotional rewards. They don’t need to be new; old stories work well. Even new stories are just old stories authors have changed around a little. Superhero movies are old myths in new technological clothing. You’ve still got the same “payoffs” as screenwriters call them. Love triumphs. Bullies get put down in the end. Kids grow up. Heroes protect the helpless. It takes courage and perseverance to live this life. Free will will always struggles with destiny. On and on.

Consider these categories for performance tales:

  • Children’s Stories
  • Fairy tales
  • Traditional folktales from your region
    • Old myths from various traditions
    • Bible stories, or other sacred tales from your religion
    • Legends
    • Supernatural or spooky stories
    • Fables
    • A personal narrative from your life

Develop Your “Storytelling Voice”

 

 

Some people ask, “What about my voice? What if I don’t like my voice?”

 

People listen to all kinds of voices in the media nowadays, and are fairly open to just about any intonation. My voice has changed a lot over the years. At one point, I spoke with a pronounced Southern twang. And my voice was much higher pitched than it is now. The best advice I can give is to avoid using your informal voice, the one you use around the house or when goofing with friends. Instead, try to find your “elegant” voice. That means paying attention to your diction, above everything else. If you’re working in English, no matter your accent, make sure your sentences start and finish properly. And that your verbs and subjects agree. Consider this your “storyteller’s voice.” Try to avoid using “uh” and “like” and “you know” during a story. That’s just filler language. Sometimes it’s hard to learn not to do that, but it’s better simply to pause in silence while you think than to use filler language. And believe me, while telling a story, you’ll need to pause to think. People will appreciate that, and they’ll wait for you. It takes mindfulness and practice to do it, but the more often you remind yourself, the easier it gets.

 

Choose Age-Appropriate Stories for your Audience

 

Young children are very tender, and if you’re telling stories to them, always bear in mind that you can actually scar a child with the wrong story material. Educators and families have trusted me with their young audiences for decades because I tell stories that are safe for them. Even if, to your adult mind, a children’s story seems silly—anthropomorphic animals learning life lessons—know that children’s minds live in these realms and kindergarteners have no need to hear about violence, monsters, sex or death. Lessons about sharing, perseverance and friendship are all they really need. That, and simply to be told stories by trustworthy adults. Listening to stories stimulates their brains even more than picture books do, because as they listen they’re assembling “what-ifs” in their minds and developing neural networks and lifelong cognitive powers. Studies have shown that while being told a story or engaged in creative play, children’s prefrontal cortexes blaze with activity in a way unrivaled by the stimulation of books or television.

 

Basically, for 3-7 yearolds, animal stories and fables work best. For ages 8-9, children’s brains develop to where they can take in simple creation myths, Bible stories, complex folktales, benign legends and fairy tales. For ages 10-11, their mental sophistication admits to more complex plots and grown-up themes. Characters can face death, loss or injury, and tales that feature gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines facing dark challenges are appropriate. Evil characters teach them that the world is not all goodness and light, and that good tends to prevail over evil. Supernatural tales just thrill, but don’t frighten them deep down. Kids are able to follow long stories now, and understand humor much better. Once they reach the age of 12 and enter puberty and the teen years, most have seen enough TV and movie and videogame sex and violence that stories without these elements no longer interest them. Telling stories to teen audiences is highly challenging, but highly rewarding: they still need to hear adult, moral tales to reinforce their sense of right and wrong.

 

Practice Your Story

 

As I mentioned earlier, you won’t really learn a new story until you tell it for the first time. A wondrous alchemy between memory, your Muse and your listeners takes place. One word of advice: memorize your opening line. After that, you can work from your Wordless Outline, but always have that first line ready to get you started. Remember: telling a story means you need to gather listeners together who are willing to sit still and go on this journey with you. So that means friends and family, mostly, unless you are in an academic setting. Or else join a storytelling circle where novice storytellers test out their projects among others doing the same thing. Google a storyteller’s circle in your area and join. They exist in many communities around the world. Go to storytelling festivals and try the open mic. Once you start searching, you’ll find plenty of opportunities to get started.

 

Use Comic Relief

 

I’ve been a professional storyteller for a long time and some of the stories I perform are rugged indeed. As an example, one of my best tales is a version of Beowulf. Overall, it’s an intense and serious story with lots of death, monsters, heroism and sacrifice. Remaining fairly true to the original Old English poem—The Nowell Codex—my version begins with the predations of Grendel, a giant wolf-like demon, who terrifies the king of Denmark and his people every night. Grendel’s magical fur protects him and he can’t be killed, and so he devours hapless Danes for twelve long years. In the opening scene of the tale, the music is moody and scary. Grendel’s roar is terrifying. His actions are graphic and awful. The Danes descend into a darkness that just won’t stop and it looks like all hope is lost.

 

Fun, right?

 

Still, we’re only a few minutes into the tale. My next job is to introduce Beowulf the hero, back in his land of the Geats, sitting at a feasting table with his thanes. The first words Beowulf speaks are: “When I was five, I killed my first bear.” The music has shifted to bouncy and light-hearted. The audience chuckles.

 

His cousin Wyglaf replies, “Oh, Beowulf, you know that’s not so.” 

 

Good naturedly, Beowulf replies, tongue in cheek, “I hate when people know the truth.” This gets a laugh from the audience. Heaven knows, they’re ready for a comic line. Beowulf then follows up with, “No, no, you’re right, Wyglaf. You’re right. I was eleven.” Laughter. After this, the tale grows serious again, and has plenty of room to do so.

 

Using comic relief humanizes dark moments, bringing levity to your audience. I use it to comfort the audience, and will oftentimes ad lib a moment of comedy if I see the audience needs it. Use it as a touch point, however, never lean on it–unless you want to be a humorist. Plenty of storytellers are masterful humorists, and they thrive.  Think of humor as a breath of air taken while swimming a long distance. 

 

Character Voices, Music and Vocal Effects

 

All these items are optional. Some people have a talent for them, others do not. You do not need these embellishments to become an effective storyteller. Many professional storytellers make use of them, but those are aesthetic decisions. More important is to know your story well and tell it in a clear, straightforward manner. If you are confident that you know your story from start to finish and use a Worldless Outline of imagery to remember it without rote memorization, you will be successful. 

 

But let’s say you have a talent for voices. Accents, perhaps. Or different pitches, like squeaky down to booming. Or gravelly. Or Donald Duck for that matter. The one thing I can say helps when using multiple voices in a story, especially when they’re talking to one another and you need to differentiate them adequately enough so that your listeners can recognize and track them (in other words,  you don’t have to constantly say “said so and so”) is this: fly your imagination into the face of your character and look out its eyes. You’ll see the story imagery from the character’s unique perspective. Inhabiting characters like this builds your empathy for them, helps bring them to life and saves you, the storyteller, from becoming confused yourself. If you can’t train yourself to do this well, it’s probably best to avoid it.

 

Alternatively, let’s say you have a talent for sound mimicry, and you want to use it in your storytelling. In other words, you want to be a bit more cinematic and go beyond straightforward first or third-person narrative, or first person storytelling, like a comic. I myself create water droplets, galloping horses, howling wind, door creaks, whip lashes, cricket chirps, bird trills, animal sounds, snapping trees, bubbles while drowning, buzzing giant bees and quite a few other sound effects. I use them sparingly, but they are effective when done tastefully. They’re simply a way of offering imagery directly with a simple sound and audiences enjoy the surprise and creativity of it. And it can make your story more vivid.

 

Lastly, we have the question of musical accompaniments. I create scores for almost all of my tales, and play the music as I tell them. It’s like movie music. Fast. Slow. Minor. Major. Creepy. Relaxing. Joyous. Heartbroken. I mostly compose on 12-string guitars in modal tunings and on Celtic harp. For long-form tales, I develop full-blown leitmotifs for the story, themes that return again and again to help anchor my listeners’ emotions. And that’s what music adds: emotions. It’s like a second storyteller working with you, and over my career music has been my constant companion. The other thing I’d add is that for me at least, nothing is mapped as it is in an opera or a musical. Since I’m alone onstage, and I’m the writer, the cast and the composer, I’m free to extemporize and drop in musical ideas as I go. This relieves an immense burden of memorization and gives it up to fancy and the Muse. I’ve never told a story exactly the same way twice in all my years in the business. If the characters don’t say something new, then the music probably will.

Sources:

1.On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry”. Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 15, edited by R. F.C. Hull, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966, pp. 65-83. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400850884.65

A Storyteller’s Guide to Accessing the Muse

A STORYTELLER’S GUIDE TO ACCESSING THE MUSE

As a professional storyteller, in the past I’ve told stories that last four hours. Often, after long story performances, people ask me, “How did you memorize all that?” My answer is always the same: “I don’t memorize anything. I work with my Muse.”

All right, you might ask, what is the Muse?

Our familiar words “music”, “museum” and “amusement” derive from it. It goes back to an Ancient Greek word that described the Nine Muses, the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts in Greek mythology.

“Inspiration” means “to breathe in.” And that’s exactly what the Ancient Greeks thought happened when an artist, let’s say a storyteller like Homer long ago, started to perform one of his long tales. Homer would call upon the Muse named Calliope. Her name means “beautiful voice”, and she was the Muse of Eloquence. According to the belief, she would appear invisibly behind the storyteller and breathe ideas into his head as he spoke.

But before starting off, he would ask for her help. He would “invoke the Muse.”

The first line of Homer’s The Iliad reads:

“Anger be now your song, immortal one,
Akhilleus’ anger, doomed and ruinous,
that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss
and crowded brave souls into the undergloom,
leaving so many dead men…”

Homer is about to “sing” a very long story about how Achilles, the greatest warrior at Troy, became furious with the Lord High Marshall, Agamemnon, for daring to take Achilles’ girl. Homer is also about to pluck a lyre while he’s singing his story. He’s what the Greeks called A Singer of Tales. He and others like him were the cinema of the day around 700 BC. There wasn’t much else in the Bronze Age.

But notice that Homer isn’t saying, “I am now beginning my poem.” Actually, he’s surrendering responsibility for his act to “the immortal one”–to Calliope, instead becoming her vessel. As he begins the daunting task of performing a poem over 15,000 lines long, he’s asking for the Muse’s inspiration.

According to the myths, Calliope was the daughter of Mnemosyne, the Titan of Memory, and Zeus, the King of the Gods. Quite the pedigree in those times.

Homer invokes her again when he begins The Odyssey:

“Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end,
after he plundered the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy.”

Centuries later, when John Milton, the English poet born in London in 1608, wrote Paradise Lost, he invoked the Muse, too. However, since the Greek gods were long gone and he was a Christian, he invoked the Holy Spirit, not a goddess, for help:

 

“I thence

 Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,

 That with no middle flight intends to soar

 Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues

Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.”

 

He was trying to outdo the “Aonian mount,” otherwise known as the mountain home of the Greek Muses, of which he was quite jealous, it appears. “Hey, you oldsters ain’t got nuthin’ on this blind Brit.”

Humor aside, what does all this have to do with you accessing your Muse? Here, in modern times? To learn to tell stories in your own words, direct from your imagination? I think we can add imagination to the long list of what the Muse is. Buried inside the word “imagination” is the word “image.”  Since imagining is the summoning of mental images, let’s say that your Muse begins to work when you consciously create mental images.

I’ll explore with you my method for developing clear, living mental imagery in later blogs.

Countless times I’ve stood backstage in the semi-darkness with my 12-string guitar, walking around behind the drawn curtain, tuning and playing musical motifs I’ll use in the story. Beyond the curtain, the low roar of the audience tells me it’s almost time to step out there, sit in my chair with my microphones ready, and begin. Since I stole this trick from Homer and Milton and many others, I invoke my Muse. “Oh Muse,” I’ll say aloud, “please come to me tonight. I’m just a tiny human being and all these nice people are waiting. Please help me.”

Now you don’t have to believe in the Muse to be inspired by it. In modern language, some might call it the unconscious mind, or human creativity, or the soul, or the Holy Spirit, or simply imagination. Whatever you’d like to call it, I perform this simple ritual anyway to make myself feel better.

And usually, it works. The imagery pours into my mind and I step into a movie I can see, hear, smell and touch. After that, the words begin to flow.

More to follow.

May the Muse be with you.

 

–Odds Bodkin

You can find my stories at my online download shop.

THE OLD MAN SPEAKS: A Storyteller’s History of the White Mountains

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Storyteller Odds Bodkin is Back with Live School Shows!

Storyteller Odds Bodkin is Back with Live School Shows!

There’s nothing quite like watching hundreds of children sitting spellbound while laughing, singing and using their imaginations. Odds blends soaring acoustic music with amazing character voices to create movies for the mind for young listeners.

Learn about his live school shows specially designed for K-2 and 3-5 audiences.

A Teacher’s GOLDEN RULE Review:

“My goodness, words cannot express our ENORMOUS thanks and gratitude for your time and talents on Tuesday… The students were absolutely awe-struck (as was I and the other adults!)! I’ve waited on writing you because I wanted to gather the feedback for you and the biggest feedback I’ve gotten is “He is AWESOME!!” “He needs to come back!!” — Christina Catino, Music Teacher

Learn more at:

https://www.oddsbodkin.net/elementary-school/

 

IN A WORLD OF WOE, THERE IS A CLASSIC OASIS

IN A WORLD OF WOE, THERE IS A CLASSIC OASIS

Simple, beautiful spoken-word stories from peoples around the world, all told with original, culturally flavored acoustic music.

Storyteller Odds Bodkin’s classic audio stories. A mentally healthy, simple gift for your kids so that they can understand the wisdom literature of other people.

Age coded for appropriate listening for ages 4 to forever.

THE EPIC DRIVE: 19 full-length storytelling albums.

Plug it in. Transfer files to music software. Start to listen.

“a consummate storyteller”—The New York Times

White Dove

White Dove

It was part of what used to make me very happy. Sitting in a big empty multi-purpose room in a school with my harp, guitars and PA system, with a half hour left over just to play music before the hundreds of children arrived for the show. I’d feel the harp music ripple through my fingers, filling the space with glorious sound. I’d be sipping at my black coffee. Often teachers would come in and stand to listen for a minute or so, smile and wave. “Can you come here every morning?” many would ask, as the harp music echoed down the halls. “It’s just so beautiful and peaceful.”

The children heard that music, too, in their classrooms. A faint, magical whisper that something special was about to happen.

And then close to the hour the principal would come over, or the arts liaison (usually a nice mom) and ask, “Mr. Bodkin, are you ready for them?”

“Bring them on in,” I’d reply. The doors would open.

Like goslings following mother goose, the little kindergarteners would usually arrive first with their teachers and sit on the floor about three feet away from me, row after row of them. They’d finally see who was playing the harp, and that it wasn’t a recording. Then the grades above them would arrive, sitting next in extending rows. These were shows for two hundred to five hundred kids, a growing sea of young faces. Often they wouldn’t say anything, forgetting to chitchat with their friends because of the music.

I’d finish one extemporization in a major key with a flourish, and they’d wildly applaud. I’d bow slightly, winking and lifting my finger, as if to say, “All right. See if you like this one,” and then launch into another piece in what I call Fairytale Minor, which is really just B minor but played in a certain lilting way. If kids came into the space talking, others who were already seated would shush them, which I found charming, and the most effective crowd control I could ask for.

And so as often as not, there was no reason for the principal to call them to quiet before the show by doing the double hand clap, the universal training American kids learn in school to signal when it’s time to quiet down. Since they were already quiet, at a heightened state of attention–the music having primed them for the listening–it usually wasn’t necessary. This was much to the surprise of the teachers, who I could tell were archly eyeing their problem children. What would they do? Act out? Embarrass the school? Ruin the show?

Instead, the principal would repeat what I’d asked her to say: “This is Mr. Odds Bodkin, and he’s here to tell you some stories.” No preamble about empathy, kindness, or walking in others’ shoes. “The stories will explain themselves,” I’d usually tell her beforehand. “We don’t need to mention those things.” And then I’d pull the harp aside and pick up the 12-string for the introduction. It was always the same:

“Well how’s everybody? Good?”

“Good!” they’d reply in unison.

“Good. Well, it’s a pleasure to be here. As you heard, my name is Odds Bodkin. Can you say that?”

A chorus of Odds Bodkins, or something close, would follow.

“That’s right, and believe it or not, here at the dawn of the 21st century, I make my living telling stories. Now, I have a few for you this morning, but before I can tell them, I need to offer you a thought, and the thought is this: if instead of being here at your school, you were in a movie theater getting ready to watch a movie, all you’d need to do to see the story the movie told would be to look up at the movie screen, and there the story would be. Same thing with television: you look at it, and there it is. But in what we’re going to do today, you don’t have to look at anything. You don’t even have to look at me. But I hope you’ll consider this thought: think about looking inside something. It’s your power of imagination, or your Mind’s Eye, and it’s right up here.”

At this point I’d tap my forehead. Some of the kids would wrinkle their brows and touch their own foreheads, wondering if they really did have an eye in there. “Now, I can offer you words, character voices, music and sounds. But it’s going to be up to you to be the moviemakers here. To take those things and in your Mind’s Eye spin them up into a kind of movie of your own making, and if you do that, then the stories will come to life, I’ll probably disappear, and we’ll have a really great time. So what do you think, deal?”

At this point, they’d all thunder back, “Deal!”

“Good enough, then,” I’d say, setting aside the 12-string, which I’d have been playing in an upbeat way all during this introduction. “I’ll put away my 12-string guitar, which I’ll play for you later, because my first story comes from Africa, and in order to tell it to you, I need to use this.” I’d reach down and pick up my sanza, or kalimba, as some folks call it, and plink a few notes. Instant delight on their faces. “This is my sanza. Can you say that word?”

“Sanza!” came the chorus.

Holding it up so all could see, I’d explain the instrument. “All it is is a little wooden box with a hole in it to let out the sound. And there are strips of metal of different lengths along it. The long ones make the low tones (plunk) and the short ones make the high tones (plink). And with it, I’ll tell you my first story. This sanza was made in South Africa, and so, too, this first story. It’s called The Tale of the Name of the Tree.

I’d make the sound of dry, singing savannah wind, tinkle the notes, and begin the story.

———

The reason I bring all this up is because for two years, I haven’t done any of it. Haven’t set foot inside a school to perform for kids, haven’t asked where the adult bathroom is, haven’t dodged crowds of munchkins in their brightly colored jackets, haven’t been offered cupcakes or cookies– none of it, not since March of 2020. Been on Zoom plenty of times, and Facebook Live, and recently I’ve begun doing live shows again for adults in Cambridge at a club called Grendel’s Den, but I haven’t set foot inside a single elementary school in all that time.

But now that the masks are coming off and the fears are waning, lo and behold, the schools are calling to book shows once again. Live, in-person shows. Performances in schools I visited often in that life I lived before the world came apart.

Come May, I’ll be back with the little kids, playing my harp in those big empty rooms before they file in. As I write this—as much to remember how to do it as anything else—I’m getting a lump in my throat. I really missed telling stories to schoolkids, and wasn’t sure if I’d ever do it again.

It’s as if after two long years, a magician has pulled away his dark cape to reveal the same white dove I’ve always loved, still there, still alive.

 

–Odds Bodkin

 

To book a show, go here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Power Myths of Ancient Greece: Storyteller Odds Bodkin on Zoom This Thursday

Power Myths of Ancient Greece: Storyteller Odds Bodkin on Zoom This Thursday

Master Storyteller and Musician Odds Bodkin kicks off his 3-part series, Power Myths of Ancient Greece, with a revelatory show:

EARTH OVERTHROWN: Gaia and the Titans

Thursday, March 3rd at 7 pm EST on Zoom

With character voices, narration and a full score on 12-string guitar, the storyteller takes you back to the dawn of time, according to the ancient Greeks. It’s the tale of Gaia the Earth and her Titan children. And of their terrible war with the upstart Gods of Olympus.

Storytelling for adults.

Get your tickets today!

$30 per screen

Voyage of the Waistgold: How a Performance Poem Came to Be

Voyage of the Waistgold: How A Performance Poem Came to Be

Imagine a mountaintop where a bejeweled sailing ship sits perched on wooden rails. It has been built up here, even though the sea is leagues away. Soon it will slide down those rails through moonlit forests until, at breakneck speed, it will splash into the sea.

“That would make an interesting story,” I thought to myself, living in Manhattan in my twenties. I’d jotted down the idea in my journal. “So who would build such a mystery ship?” I wondered. “And why so far from the sea? That doesn’t make sense.”

Later, in a dream state, I envisioned a pirate captain on a ship’s deck, swearing to kill a dark threat, a fell beast that waited for him in distant mists. The captain’s name came to me: Phineas Krull. He was an evil man. Then his ship’s name floated into my thoughts: The Waistgold.

I instantly understood that the ship on the mountaintop was The Waistgold.

 I now had a story with more questions than answers.

 ———-

Voyage of the Waistgold is now a 90-minute spoken word entertainment. I’ll be premiering it live at Grendel’s Den on Harvard Square this coming Sunday night, February 27th at 5 pm.

As outlandish yarns go, it’s pretty good. I hope to see you there!

The show is for adults only.

Here’s the introduction:

 

Storyteller Odds Bodkin

Voyage of the Waistgold: A World Premier

Sunday, February 27, 2022 at 5 pm EST.

Tickets and details here.

NOW IN STOCK: Odds Bodkin Story Drives

NOW IN STOCK: Odds Bodkin Story Drives. You can always download Odds Bodkin’s classic tales with original music from Odds’ Shop and get them instantly, or you can order a Story Drive to share with friends and family.

Click images for story details!

ODDS BODKIN’S CORE AUDIOS (19 FULL-LENGTH ALBUMS). Get Your Instant Download Delivery Today!

Looking for a lasting gift for your family? One that can arrive instantly, without shipping? Then purchase this collection of all Odds Bodkin’s audio storytellings, now including Beowulf, his 1 hour and 20 minute epic telling with music before a live adult audience at Grendel’s Den in Cambridge, MA.

 All Collections Instant Download Bundle

$99

 

Buy the Bundle, then log in any time to download your next epic, or children’s story, or musical adventure. Or download them all at once!

Invest in a Family Listening Tradition: Give the Gift of Imagination

Invest in a Family Listening Tradition: Give the Gift of Imagination!

Here are 4 Great Ways to Get Odds Bodkin’s Award-Winning Story Collections for the Holidays! One of them features instant digital delivery!

Parents’ Choice Gold Award. The Indie Award. The Oppenheim Platinum Award. Storytelling World Award. The Dove Award. Publishers Weekly’s “Listen Up” Award.

 

“a consummate storyteller” — The New York Times

The Master Drive and The Epic Drive ship with complimentary Odyssey Adventure Maps autographed by Odds Bodkin. A collector’s item.

4 Great Ways to Get Odds Bodkin’s Award-Winning Story Collections for the Holidays!

4 Great Ways to Get Odds Bodkin’s Award-Winning Story Collections for the Holidays!

The Master Drive and The Epic Drive ship with complimentary autographed Odyssey Adventure Maps!