Mary Dessein

Peter, a Dragon, and a Candle

Posted on July 1, 201812 Comments

Peter Yarrow had his 80th birthday a month ago. He wrote ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ fifty-seven years ago when he was in college, inspired by a poem written by Leonard Lipton, about children growing up and losing their belief in magic and wonder.

Last night at the Mount Baker Theater in Bellingham, Washington, Peter invited all the children in the audience up on stage to sing it with him as the closing song for the first set. Then considering the audience demographics, he added, “And if you’re a parent, or grandparent, come up with your child. Or if you’re a child at heart.” The audience chuckled. At least fifty people trickled up the steps to join him on stage, from pre-schoolers to elders.

I felt tears sliding down my cheek as he held the microphone to a 6-year-old boy who sang solo, “Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea, And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honahlee.” Then he held the mic to a little girl who sang it, to a middle-aged woman who sang it, then to a man in his thirties who sang it, and to several others who sang solo to the enraptured audience. And of course, for the rest of the song, the audience was singing with him. Peter encouraged that throughout the concert. “Together they would travel on a boat with billowed sail.”

Peter Yarrow was himself. Calm, rich with experience, and experiences. He marched for civil rights in the March on Washington, D.C. in 1963; he was at the bedside of Pete Seeger in 2014 as he was dying; he founded Operation Respect to reduce violence and bullying in schools, and as part of the iconic trio, Peter, Paul & Mary, released something like thirty albums.

Calm, funny, relaxed, sincere, heart-touching, Peter made no attempt to break new ground. He sang what people loved and were moved by. Folks songs, songs by Hedy West, John Denver, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, as well as gems by he and Paul Stookey. He told stories nearly as much as he sang. He threw out invitations, and challenges, to build bridges and community. He was himself, doing what fulfills him.

This was about legacy. He no longer needs to prove anything to anyone. In his relaxed manner, his generosity seemed endless: he talked with scads of people, posed with countless folks for pictures, signed books and CDs. The concert went nearly three hours.

A legacy of the strength of music, of respecting diversity, of building community and relationships, of honoring our military personnel, and of speaking up for what’s right. A legacy of hope.

“Light one candle for all we believe in, That anger not tear us apart.”

I Just Had To…

Posted on June 18, 201814 Comments

“I stayed in from recess to make this for you.”

She reached out tentatively to hand me a water-color drawing she had made. She being a 6th grade student who had been in the first class I performed for that morning.

“I just had to do this. When you told the story about the two sisters with one’s name like mine and the harp made of bones, I had to draw this.”
What a picture: there was my harp, me, and three of the stories I’d told! She’d heard, she’d listened, she’d thought.
No wonder I do this.

When I was in Juvenile Detention last week, the jail facility for kids under age eighteen, I was in the library waiting for my first class of kids. One of the boys saw me from the hallway and snapped, “Oh f—.” Not the usual response when kids see me, I am happy to report, however, it was his that morning. The boys trooped in and sat down in the semi-circle of chairs facing me. He pulled his tee shirt up to below his eyes, crossed his arms, and looked down at his feet, legs stretched out in front of him. Thirty minutes of stories and music later, he was sitting up asking questions, and forty minutes later he was telling me how he would have changed one part of the folktale from Ecuador I had just told them. After the Haitian tale, “One My Darlin,” he made a comment about forgiveness, which started a discussion among the boys.

No wonder I do this.

Jill Johnson, an accomplished writer, teacher, storyteller, and actor, wrote about when she was telling to and with elders in Auckland, New Zealand in February of this year, that when she saw the elders tell family stories, the youth listening, and the priceless connection being made, she said, “THIS …. is why I do this work.”

I get it more clearly every time I perform lately – telling and making music for elementary school kids, incarcerated kids, or my neighbor. The connecting, the re-discovering the truth that people have common elements of being human be they from China, Patagonia, Egypt, Saskatchewan, or Iceland. You never know what will reach someone. My part, and privilege, is to deliver the story, keep out of the way the best I can, and let the story spin out its storyness.

Rambling on Story

Posted on April 17, 20186 Comments

I have a pale dusty-blue gauze curtain in my writing room window, which allows me to look out yet not be readily seen, lets daylight in, and makes a wee bit of a buffer for the cold air in winter.

In wondering what to launch my writing with today, I figured I’d look at one of the many blogs I have started, that await completion. Then I looked up at my curtain and there in the wrinkly texture of the fabric, I saw the word, ‘Story.’ On a forty-five degree slant down from left to right, in a jaggedy font, I saw ‘Story.’ Like a shape in the clouds, no one else may be able see it, but I did.

How cool is that? There were stories at the Board meeting this a.m., a friend has stories to tell me about the wild City Council meeting on Tuesday, always Story. My podcast co-host and I caught up our stories with each other yesterday at the radio station. The Jimmy Webb song I’m learning, Wichita Lineman, is a story and the life of the song itself is a plethora of stories. Most songs are stories.

Country music legend, Harlan Howard’s quote that “a great country song is three chords and the truth,” is oft-repeated. Harlan was interested in story early on, being an avid reader since childhood and having “an ear for a telling phrase.”

A friend told me that some in her book club thought one of the novels by T. Coraghessan Boyle, who has won more awards than I have fingers and toes, was implausible because that much bad cannot happen to one person. So for stories to be believable do they have to be similar to our own, or something we can relate to? Like the Syrian family who’s boat capsized as they fled for their lives across the Mediterranean Sea to reach Greece, leaving the young father to see his three year old son’s body washed up on shore in Turkey, later to find his wife and other son had also drowned? Many of us saw that on the news, and were not only stunned but grateful that story was not our own. The stars in the sky are easier to count than the scenarios that fit into the “how did they ever live through that?” category.

Story – contains our humanity, recalls it, records it, and reminds us of our own.
“I fall to pieces each time someone speaks your name.”

Story. It all comes back to story, often with questions. Is the story true? How could that be? What is the human component? If the actual story isn’t provably true, the story is the vehicle for the human truth contained within it. Such as Ananzi the spider smashing a gourd on the ground, which releases all the common sense stored in the gourd out into the world; an explanation for the truth, if you will, being that some people have common sense, while others appear to have little.

As a professional storyteller, after I would perform in elementary schools, often students came up to me with seeking eyes to ask, “Is that true?” Animal tricksters, gossiping trees, tall tales, legends. I would answer, “There is truth in every story I tell. Flying donkeys may not actually exist, however, there is a lesson or an element that is true that we need to know. That’s why we tell stories that are thousands of years old: they contain human truths that we need to hear.”

Is fiction really fiction? Arguably, yet it contains human truths that we need. That’s why there are best-sellers, be they romance, detective, historical, fantasy, thrillers, super-heroes, or westerns. We crave those truths, and are intrigued, interested, or captivated to observe characters going through all the machinations to get to them, while we safely turn the pages. Granted, some truths are really difficult to accept. A recurring theme for me, I’ll be coming back to this concept. Truth – belief – choice.

“I fall to pieces each time someone speaks your name.
I fall to pieces, time only adds to the flame.”
Ah, Harlan and his three chords.

Truth & Dare …

Posted on April 2, 20187 Comments

Did I mention the signals my foot has been receiving from outer space? Maybe I didn’t, thinking you might not understand.

I, too, thought they were something else.
The first one came as I was sitting in my living room reading when I felt the outer side of my right foot vibrate, like my phone does when I receive a text. Hhhm, the stereo must be louder than I realized as I figured it was the music vibrating through the floor. Then it happened again a few minutes later. I got up and turned the stereo down. Soon my foot vibrated again. This time, I turned the stereo off.

A little while later, the same unmistakable vibration buzzed my foot. Was this some weird kind of stroke? I had no other symptoms, no discomfort; nada niente nothing to indicate I was having a physical issue.

That scenario was repeated in other rooms of my home, at various times. It became clear to me these vibrations were messages meant to get my attention. Where could they be originating? It had to be from space. I wasn’t standing on my cell phone. Or on my stereo. Or my microwave. Or my portable heater. It had to be outer space.

I grew up with Rod Serling, Isaac Assimov, and Madeleine L’Engle. I learned long ago that the truth often comes packaged as fantasy. Truth is easier to accept that way when it seems to be someone else’s made-up story.

Reminds me of the movie, ‘A Few Good Men,’ when Jack Nicholson shouted, “You can’t handle the truth!”
‘A Few Good Men‘ was written by Aaron Sorkin. Ah, the truth.

In dealing with one person I am on a volunteer committee with, I am frequently frustrated by her ‘little white lies,’ her denials, her positioning herself to look important and be the boss. When I gently called this out recently from a side angle about members making decisions for the committee yet without committee input, she again lied, denied, and huffed. I got no support from the other members, yet their silence also contained no defense of her. I so wanted to holler, “You can’t handle the truth!”
I didn’t. Yet later I did wonder, are there times when that applies to me?

As to Aaron Sorkin, he knows alot about alot of things. He reports a pivotal impact in his life was from one of his teachers at Syracuse University, Arthur Storch, who repeatedly said to Aaron, “You have the capacity to be so much better than you are.” Finally, Aaron asked the famous director and alumnus of the Actors Studio, “How?”
Storch answered, “Dare to fail.”

Truth. Failure. Growth. Ask questions. Follow the thread of intuition – trust it will lead somewhere valuable. Or, it will protect.
Dare.

What was the message from outer space? Perhaps to pay attention. Trust. Watch small things, as everything has importance. Learn to prioritize.
Let whimsy lead me to the truth? Or… I have the capacity to be so much better than I am?

We shall see.

Wrinkle in Reality

Posted on March 20, 201817 Comments

A wrinkle in time. Sure, I’ve had one of those… okay, several of them. One fold happens when I look at the framed photo of my eighteen-month old curly-topped son hanging in my hallway. Then I realize he and I haven’t talked in three weeks. Oh yeah, he lives 2,500 miles from me and is thirty-five years old. My starz.

My wrinkles are not as remarkable as Madeleine L’Engle’s. Even though it was fun to remind my son of when I drove with he and his dad to Portland, Oregon when he was about four years old in order to hear Madeleine speak, he didn’t remember the trip or Madeleine L’Engle. However, it was a lovely reminder for me of the seats we had up in the curved balcony in a huge old church to see her, to hear her talk about her father’s health condition and her spending time as a little girl living in a castle in Europe. Remarkable is barely the beginning to describe her.

Ava DuVernay’s recent movie version of A Wrinkle in Time is worth seeing. It is as much about love, family, loyalty, community, belief in one’s self, and tenacity as it is about science fiction and interplanetary space travel.

In part, what launches A Wrinkle in Time is an inadvertent consequence, an unpredicted result to a pursued goal (Dr. Alex Murry, who is the main character, Meg’s father, achieves his goal of finding the tesseract and successfully tessering, however he gets trapped on a planet far away and cannot escape.) Oh my, I’ve had one or two of those unpredicted results. Haven’t you? Such as getting the promotion then getting transferred and having to leave all the co-workers who helped you get it and whom you trust. Or bringing your spouse with you to volunteer at the Food Bank, who then falls in love with one of the other volunteers, and a year later you find yourself divorced. I know, I know, “one door closes and another one opens;” and the ever popular “life presents us with opportunities for personal growth.” I do endorse those beliefs, it just takes me a little time to get back in the saddle.

In the three deleted pages from A Wrinkle in Time, released by her granddaughter in 2015, pages which the publisher perhaps thought too political or controversial, Ms. L’Engle talks about the dangers of pursuing security, that security is a seductive thing, and that the sick longing for it is a dangerous thing, and … insidious.

How are we manipulated by supervisors, credit card companies, politicians, retailers, spouses, neighbors, perhaps even our children, by their threatening our security or offering to enhance it? By dictators and autocrats? Yee gods, that list is endless and will continue to be so. Fascinating that Ms. L’Engle called this out in a conversation between a father and daughter. The father attempting to show his daughter a larger view, that questioning, exploring, and taking risks are what move us forward.

My regrets in life, the few I have, are related to what I did not do for my children. Sometimes it was that I did not set limits. My most lamentatious ones are when I did not protect them, or did not stand up for them. I was unable to de-stabilize my alleged security. In hindsight, I say alleged as it really wasn’t stable. With their dad, with my employer, with my sense of obligation to others, or that nebulous entity: what I thought others thought of me.

And another wrinkle – security and safety are not the same nor interchangeable.
None of that was within my grasp twenty-five years ago.

“Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.” Madeleine L’Engle.

Peter, a Dragon, and a Candle

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I Just Had To…

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Rambling on Story

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Truth & Dare …

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Wrinkle in Reality

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