Off the Beaten Path

Spent last weekend in Derby (pronounced DAR-by) otherwise known as the middle of fucking nowhere. The city really had nothing to offer except things like this:

So instead I spend my time doing things like this:

Nonetheless, I ended up having a great weekend at the Amber Valley Storytelling Festival, even with the 30-minute walk to the bus station, the 30-minute ride to Shipley, and the 30-minute walk to the park that it took me to get there and back every day. Tack on me getting lost for an hour on Saturday, and me missing the bus back to Derby on Sunday and having to wait 2 hours reading Haunted and eating fish and chips in the yard of an abandoned hospital, and all in all I spent 8-9 hours simply going to and fro. But oh my, was the festival wonderful. It was a small storytelling festival for children with some very big names attached, so I it was a great opportunity to mingle with established performers in an intimate setting. I spent Saturday introducing myself and going to nearly all the performances, while Sunday I sat down and interviewed Sophie Snell, Debbie Guneratne, and Pete Chand. Pete just so happens to organize Festival at the Edge, the UK's largest storytelling festival, and promised me an introduction to any performer I wanted there, which is is such a lucky connection. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to speak with Bharit Patel, a fantastic mask performer who wins my favorite telling of the weekend, but hopefully I will be meeting up with her in Birmingham before I leave. In the end, a great weekend of storytelling with lots of wonderful connections made.

After Derby it was onto the Isle of Man, a tiny little place located right in the middle of Ireland and Scotland's oceanic border. In fact, on a clear day, you can climb the Isle's tallest - and only - mountain to see Ireland and Scotland at the same time. More on that later...

My dear friend Will Halicks is in the UK studying the legend of the black dog, and the Isle of Man is known for being the point of origin for one of the world's most famous black dog stories. Knowing this, I meet a storyteller named Kit in Birmingham who is from the Isle of Man, hear a couple of tales in the native "Manx" tradition, and you get me and Will meeting up for 3 days of Manx Mayhem. I shipped out on Monday by ferry from Liverpool, only to have Will miss his ferry from Dublin and get delayed a day. I took the surprise alone day to curl up in my bed and breakfast, start work on a story about a man who sells balloons, and enjoying splendid views of the ocean:

After a gigantic English breakfast at the B&B I headed to the Manx National Library and Archives for some joint research with Will. I spent a few hours there by myself before Will arrived working through a number of Manx storytelling collections, which draw heavily on tales about deceptive ferries, or "Them Ones," as the locals like to say. The whole island's history is rich in the storytelling tradition, and Man's founder is even thought to be a 3-legged wizard who shrouded the island in a blue mist so it could never be found. He could also throw defending ships into the ocean whenever he wished, and whether you believe any of this or not, it's true that the Isle of Man was never conquered by the Romans even when all of its neighbors were, and you still have a 3-legged man on the country's flag. Upon Will's arrival we started digging into black dog tales for a few more hours, explored the coast for some magical footage for his documentary, and spent all night in a pub catching up about the study abroad experiences that made this the first time in 8 months we'd seen one another.

The next day Will and I made it an early day so we could conquer Snaefell Mountain, the point where you can see Scotland and Ireland, and England and Wales, and heaven and Earth (according to local tourism ads), all at the same time. We took an hour-long train ride to the top, leaving the bottom with clear skies and the best of hopes. We ended our journey in a haze of fog that wouldn't let us see more than 10 feet in front of our face. The conductor said it was maybe the third "bad view" day that had all year. So much for luck. Instead we ate delicious cake and drank tea in the mountain's coffee shop to warm our bodies and souls and then headed back down to make it to Peal Castle by bus. We roamed the town for some more doc footage and then hiked a mountain where we could see Ireland. Take that, fog. After a delicious Chinese dinner we took a ghost tour of the town with plenty of black dog lore and then had a pint with the tour guides afterwards, adding a totally new perspective on what realms storytelling encompasses.

Now I'm in Edinburgh to visit the Scottish Storytelling Centre and get my fill of haggis. I have already seen many a man in the traditional kilt and hope such sights continue.

The Adventure Begins

Here I sit in my Birmingham hostel, eating fajitas and listening to The Ting Tings. There are a few others gazing at me as they eat their Ramen, and a pair of girls are watching The Craft on a couch behind. I've spent the day sleeping in, getting breakfast at 2 in the afternoon, shopping for Brit music around the city, and cooking the delicious feast in front of me. All of this brings me back to a blog update, because this is the first day of my UK adventure that I've had free since I arrived.

My first 9 days were spent in London, mainly being a tourist. I was centered out of Clink Hostel, a nice place with a great location to the train and Tube stations. I took a free tour of the city on Thursday, saw all the palaces and important things. Took advantage of of seeing two free plays courtesy of Julie Fishell, who's leading a UNC-based London program, both of which were about middle-aged woman fucking with the minds of others to deal with their own midlife bullshit. Only one woman invented fictional characters in her head and pretended they were her own family, and the other forced a broken shot glass into a guy's neck. I liked the latter a bit more. I spent a night walking the Thames River and looking at the city from the top of the London Eye, all part of a sweet little man date with my friend Tony, who's also here for the summer. I spent a whole afternoon in Hyde Park, watching people rant and rave about the Iraq War and the coming of the Antichrist at Speaker's Corner, watching swans and searching for an elusive Peter Pan monument. I spent time in an area called Elephant and Castle, where there was plenty of elephant paraphernalia for me to stare in awe of. I went on a double decker bus. I went to the Tate Modern and saw 10,000 pieces of silverware hanging from the ceiling. I ate a full English breakfast. I ate bangers 'n' mash. I was witness to thousands of British teenagers drinking on the Underground in protest of the new law banning alcohol consumption on public transportation immediately on June 1. And, yes, I was even witness to a drunk's "personal relations" in my hostel room. I'm sure he was probably at the Underground party.

All this time in London, however, was building up to a storytelling workshop led by Ben Haggerty, one of the UK's most prominent and successful performance storytellers. There was 10 of us in the group, all from wildly different backgrounds - a student, a minister, a musician, a theatre director, a child psychologist, a librarian, a couples counselor, an interfaith mediator, an educator, and a play worker - yet we were all searching for a useful way to place storytelling back into our own individual lives. Ben was an outstanding teacher but an equally compelling human being, fitting the stereotype of the charming British gentleman in every way. Over the course of the two days we played games, shared personal stories, analyzed fairy tales, discussed the dynamics of performance, and took the stage with a memorized piece of our own. It was striking to see the strange balance that storytelling rides between theatre and writing, and all in all many of Ben's teachings deeply resonated with the way in which I see my own artistic aesthetic. Long story short, I'm knee deep in one of the greatest learning experiences of my life, stretching myself into a new medium in order to help strengthen and define what my own creative ideals are. As Ben says, "The more choices, the more freedom."

Now I'm in Birmingham, where I spent the last night two nights watching two separate storytellers perform. Birmingham is like a calmer London - most all the same cultural benefits, half the noise. Regardless, I still got lost both nights. It's a curvy road-system they have here. From what I can tell, there is giant music scene in Birmingham, and I might return at the end of the month to see The National again. Yesterday I went to a "Myths and Monsters" exhibit at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery that had giant animatronic dragons and yetis. There I learned that the word "concessions" does not, in fact, refer to food. It actually refers to discounts. So when someone asks if you would you like concessions, then immediately take the offer. You're not paying for food, you're getting a cheaper ticket! So after turning down several "concessions" in London and spending lots of money I didn't need to, I finally figured out how to get a student discount when it came time to see the magical creatures. Today I also went flea marketing, and an 81-year-old woman gave me a kiss and a Mickey Mouse airplane for free because I was a sweet little American boy. I leave tomorrow for the Amber Valley Festival, a weekend of storytelling for children, and then onto Edinburgh for a week after a brief trip to the Isle of Man, where my dear friend Will Halicks is studying the Black Dog ghost story. Castles and the Highlands await, and I couldn't be more excited.

So really, all is grand. Besides storytelling, I spend the rest of my time reading and writing. I go to lots of museums, look at a lot of art. I drink at 5 in the afternoon because that's just what they do here. I make strong use of the public transportation system. I try to avoid crazy people - one man in London asked me if I had a big cock, another threw change at me. I take lots of pictures. I sketch in my journal. I learn. I journey. I adventure.

I search for choices.