Truck drivers in Brazil often paint sayings on the backs of their lorries. Here are a few I’ve seen:

Só não erra quem não faz nada (You only make no mistakes if you do nothing)

Devagar mas to na frente (Slow but I’m ahead)

Não tenho tudo que amo, mas amo tudo que tenho (I don’t have everything that I love, but I love everything that I have)

Se você está com pressa, porque não veio antes? (If you’re in a hurry, why didn’t you set off earlier?)

 

I like this short piece of writing advice. It comes from an interview I read with a British author called Matthew Kneale. It was around the time he published his very good, travelling, historical novel: ‘English Passengers’:

“Pick your subject with care, and how you intend to treat it. Be sure it’s something that matters to you personally. Know why you want to do it. Then write. Don’t let yourself become self-conscious about what you’re doing. Don’t worry yourself about whether your attempt will be great literature. Just write. And make sure enough happens in your story, that there’s a sense of change.”

 

A friend saw Naruddin walking in the rain. He was carrying an umbrella, but he wasn’t using it.

“Nasruddin!” called out the friend. ” Why don’t you use that umbrella?”

Nasruddin told him, “It’s broken!”

“Then why did you bring it with you, if it’s broken?” asked the friend.

Nasruddin replied, “I didn’t think it was going to rain!”

 

It’s almost carnival time in Brazil. Across the country, drums are thundering as the ‘schools of samba’ step up their rehearsals. And the carnival parade designers (the carnavalescos) are in the thick of their ingenious, crazy, colourful preparations.

It’s also tropical rain time. Wild storms fill the skies most afternoons.

And sometimes that’s not a good combination.

This photo (from the Folha de São Paulo newspaper, a few years ago) tells a story about carnival.

Models being made for a parade by one of São Paulo’s schools of samba were carried away by flood water. They ended up in one of the city’s rivers, stuck below a bridge. That’s a bus going past above.

 

I was re-reading a talk given by the Canadian/American storyteller, Dan Yashinsky (The Joan Bodger Memorial Lecture, 2006.) It can be found on the internet, and raises some great questions about listening in our current day and age.

This section about the nature of listening to a story, particularly sticks in my mind:

When the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidic Judaism and a renowned storyteller, arrives in a village marketplace and begins telling stories, Martin Buber tells us what happens. A man begins to listen; then: “a second man came up, soon after a third, then ever more and more, mostly servants and poor people who begin the day early. They all remained standing, listened eagerly and called over still others from the houses. As the hour advanced, the maids came with their water-jugs on the way to the fountain and stopped, the children came running out of the rooms, and the family heads themselves left their businesses and their pursuits to hear the strange man.” (The Legend of the Baal-Shem.) The marvelous thing is that, wherever you entered the tale, you found its “red thread” (a wonderful German phrase for the inner life of a story): “His narration…was so delightfully intertwined that whenever someone came up it seemed to that person to be at the beginning, and those who earlier had not been curious were now entirely concentrated on what would happen next and awaited it as if it were the fulfillment of their most precious hopes. Thus they all had one great story, and within it each had his own small and all-important story.”

And what do these spellbound villagers hear in the storyteller’s intricately woven narrative? Buber answers somewhat mystically: “It was no report of distant times and places that the story told; under the touch of its words, the secret melody of each person was awakened …”

This way of describing an already-mysterious phenomenon only deepens the questions; yet there is something wonderfully accurate in Buber’s phrase. With oral stories, it seems to me, we are always listening for a kind of “secret melody” — that is, a distillation and expression of our own experience — our lives reflected back to us with new understanding.

 

Hot water never set a house on fire.

Go fast killed an animal. Go slow killed two.

The strength of the crocodile is in the water.

 

Every now and then I love to watch this film made by Chuck Jones, back in 1955…

https://vimeo.com/46018110

A thought from the British poet, Adrian Mitchell: “Poetry is a free country.”

 

I’ve just re-read one of my favourite books – ‘The Conference of the Birds’ by John Heilpern. It’s a colourful and fascinating story, describing a journey through northern and western Africa made by British theatre director Peter Brook, with a troupe of actors, back in 1972/3.

John Heilpern has a great eye for detail and an infectious sort of curiosity about what goes on. The strange and talented mix of international actors are brilliantly brought to life, as are their many performances.

There’s some healthy scepticism. (By the third chapter, Heilpern has managed to tell us, “I like actors but sometimes they don’t know their arse from their elbow.”) And the writing is very funny. Nearly every chapter makes me laugh out loud, at something.

As well as enjoying the writing, I like the story. The book describes a journey in search of a theatrical experience which Peter Brook himself cannot easily define.

Along the way there are moments of magical inspiration, others of complete failure.

There’s a lot of plain, hard slog.

Everyone seems bewildered, at least some of the time. (At one point Heilpern says, “Nobody knew what they were there for or where they were going.”)

There are trials and errors, risks taken, flashes of good and bad luck, and completely unexpected moments of freedom and delight.

So, although it is all writ large (30 people travelling 8,500 miles through deserts, mountains and tropical forest) it feels as if Brook and his actors are journeying through the things that anyone following an artistic dream (with its madness, desperation and beauty) will end up experiencing.

I think that’s why the book grabbed me when I first read it, as a young man, curious about what it might mean to set off on an artistic journey. And it’s probably why it still grabs me some years later…when there’s no turning back!

 

You need something to go wrong, otherwise there would be no story.

The craft of writing stories involves many things and (usually) one is making things go wrong.

When things go wrong, questions hang in the air. Characters have to react. Suspense is created. Emotions are stirred. Things change.

In other words, the simple act of creating a problem, sets in progress many of the things that us humans (for whatever reasons) find most irresistible in stories.

I was at a children’s storytelling event a few months ago. Everything started off neatly and tidily. People were drinking juice and herb tea. A big rug was spread out. Someone was running a craft workshop. Most of the children were small. They were sitting on the rug, making small clay things. The activity was led by a woman who said encouraging, soothing things to the small children. And it wasn’t just her. Everyone was being rather smiley and nice.

There were a few children aged nearer 10 or 11. Among them was a boy who seemed pretty restless, and disappointed with what was going on.

Then someone dropped their tea cup.

It smashed loudly across the floor.

The boy grinned. His eyes lit up. He said, “AT LAST! A DISASTER!”

 

Nasruddin bought himself a new donkey. It was a very rare white donkey. Everyone admired it. Nasruddin loved it. Wherever he went, he went on his donkey.

Soon everyone knew about Nasruddin’s white donkey. They all agreed what a handsome donkey it was.

But it happened that a neighbour of Nasruddin’s was going to marry a girl in the next village. He wanted to arrive at his wedding in style. And he thought people would be very impressed if he showed up riding on a white donkey.

So he visited Nasruddin, to see if he could borrow the donkey.

Nasruddin didn’t much like the idea. The road to the next village wasn’t in good condition. He was worried that his beloved donkey would injure itself.

“What do you think, Nasruddin?” asked the neighbour. “Can I borrow the donkey?”

Nasruddin shook his head. “I’m sorry but it’s not here,” he said, “My son rode to the bazaar on it this morning. And he’s not back yet.”

Just at that moment, the donkey brayed loudly from the back of the house.

“It is here,” said the neighbour. “I just heard it.”

Nasruddin stared at the man. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“That sound just now. That was your donkey braying.”

“No it wasn’t,” said Nasruddin.

“It was,” his neighbour told him.

Nasruddin stared at the man for a moment. Then he asked, “Look. Who are you going to believe? Me or a donkey?”

 

A friend of mine in Brazil, Regina Machado, called and asked if I would tell some stories to a friend of hers – Ana – who was ill.

Ana has a small daughter. She used to give English classes based around art history. She was writing an MA thesis. Then, on the day she was due to present it, one of the assessors didn’t show up. The presentation had to be put back to a later date. That night, Ana suffered a massive stroke. The part of her brain which sends ‘motor’ messages to the rest of her body was wiped right out. All she can do now is blink her eyes.

I said yes. Regina took me there.

Ana was at her mother and father’s flat. It was full of beautiful paintings, clocks and artwork on the wall, though there was something a bit stuck about the place, as if everything had been in exactly the same position for decades.

Ana’s small daughter bustled about with scissors and toys. She showed me her room, overflowing with dolls, and told me their names.

I went down the corridor to the room where her mother lay, imprisoned in a paralysed body.

When you think what has been taken from Ana (the ability to speak, walk, feed herself, write, turn in her sleep, reach out a hand to comfort her daughter…) it makes most of problems we find ourselves struggling with seem very petty.

I told Ana some stories in English. Rain burst out of the sky behind us, down onto a world she cannot turn her head to see. I could tell she understood the stories well. A few times she made a slight, gurgling chuckle.

Regina said that after I left she cried and cried.