Alan Gutierrez

These last few weeks I’ve retreated from the City of New Orleans. Today I was at Beth’s books, a book store behind the Sound Cafe. I wondered if I could write a book. Could I write about my life and make it an interesting story? I’ve been away from the people of substance who’ve made my life rich and meaningful. It seems that I’ve found myself in the company of seekers. The runaways. People who make me think about Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, the story of an observer of Savannah, Georgia. How many of our resident voyeurs fancy themselves the trusted insider. It occurred to me that the only way for a Michigander to write about New Orleans would be write without explaining and without observing. No exposition. And yet, I can and do write about New Orleans as a New Orleanian, with authority, but not these last few weeks. It tells me that I’ve lost my way. I’ve found my way back to a person that I once was.

“I also realized—and this was more important to me—that I would consider the book or film a failure if people in these worlds took in my story and felt that I did not get their existence, that I had not captured their world in any way that they would respect.” from an Inteview with David Simon the creator, writer and produce of HBO’s The Wire.

Found this funny category in someone’s blog, someone who I don’t know. He categorizes prioritized, numbered articles in their own special category. It struck me as an idea for a blog. Everyday, take one of those articles that are the 10 things everyone should know, or the 7 things they don’t want you to know, or the 8 ways to drastically improve your whatnot, and link to it, but with a bullet list that has a maximum three word summary of each item. Dear reader, why trouble yourself with event reading the article? Have someone read it for you. Oddly, the authors of these articles would probably appreciate the incoming traffic. Via: links for 2007-05-20 by Edward Vielmetti.

Excellent writing in a story about The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel.

Today (no not today, last week, I didn’t post this then), a I met a man walking across the 7th Ward, taking pictures. He was fussing with a home that was going to soon be demolished. The home was in very bad shape. It was occupied before Katrina, but it was in bad shape then. From the looks of it, the house would have collapsed already, except that it leaned back onto a tree in the back yard.

This man told me his evacuation story. It was stunning. The story itself was stunning, but what’s more, the story telling was stunning.

At some point, I realized that I was entertained by the story. It was one thought then the next. The first thought was that was aware of the time spend telling and listening. The sun was going down. I was walking at the time I was walking because the sun was going down. It is a good time to take pictures. I thought, I had better keep going, because I was supposed to take pictures. The second thought was that I was none the less listening. I wanted to hear the story.

By now, I know the series of events for a New Orleans Katrina evacuee.

Hearing a person tell their story is like Shakespeare. You have heard the story before. You know what is going to happen next. Like Shakespeare, you want to hear the story again, with new particulars. You want to hear how this person will tell his story. Every story is unique. How individuals handled themselves is unique. The togetherness of certain agencies and non-agencies, and the incoherence of others.

In hindsight, I wasn’t aware of the time, until after I’d understood that the story would not end in tragedy. Then I wanted to hear the details. What was the experience of the different agencies? Where did you go and who did you see? How deep was the water and where?

What I’d like to say, is that the story I heard today was well told. At points, I’d step back and think about how he constructed a scene. How it was unfolding in my mind’s eye. The metaphors were carefully chosen.

Why was he so good at this? He didn’t try to control the story. He told it. He didn’t waste time setting the scene. He’d offer one piece of evidence that it was dark. Not the hackneyed hand before the face. No cliches. A point of reference. Then I was on my own to know what dark was, as he described what he had to deal with in the dark.

My take away was that, in order to be an effective speaker, I need to lighten up. That was the take away before I knew why. At first I thought that the same sort of nuance you put into telling a story that will keep an audience enthralled, will be embarrassing you if someone is not interested in what you have to say. (Which is my personal challenge to post this somewhere.) I know I’m more interesting when I allow myself to be animated and self-deprecating.

The real take away, though, is that you let the story tell itself. Let the story tell itself through you.

The two distinct flavors of blogging. The previous aside, The Mexican Fisherman, is an example of kitsch. The next one is one from before my better blogging days, and old post that is an example of snark. I search for a voice that is other.