A Story of Love and Madness

I hope everyone has had an enjoyable Valentine's Day, however you have chosen to mark this day. This year, Sarah and I, along with a few good friends, told tales at Cafe 92 Degrees in NDG (see previous post). The two evenings of storytelling were enchanting and well-received, so we hope everyone had a great time. We're already planning our next evening of stories for the spring (maybe an evening of Wise Fools stories for April Fools Day).

I'm very excited to have had the chance to record this story which I have told fairly often over the years. I first heard this story told by British storyteller Ben Haggarty who visited Montreal a few years ago during the Festival Internationale du Conte du Quebec. Since then, I have made a few tweaks here and there and come up with my own version of Love and Madness.

News: This story was published on my new CD "The Bard's New Hat". Read more about it on my website.

Love and Madness (4:38 minutes)

If you enjoy this story, please pass this post on to all your friends!

EVENT: 92 Degrees of Love

Dates: February 12th and 13th 2010
Time:   6:00pm - 8:30pm
Location: Cafe 92 Degrees
6703 Sherbrooke West
Montreal, QC
Google Map

Join us at Cafe 92 Degrees in NDG for an evening of love stories and music with Hobbes, Shayne, and friends. We will be performing this show over two evenings: February 12th and 13th. So if you can't make one show, you can attend the other!

Admission: Free, voluntary contribution
Space is limited (30 people), so get there early!

Visit the Facebook Event pages
February 12th
February 13th

Story and Truth in 2010

Happy New Year to everyone who has blessed us with their company as we shorten our roads! I hope that you had a happy, safe, and memorable celebration and put 2009 to bed. Let's get this 2010 show on the road and I hope it's filled with great adventures and stories.

I thought it would start the year off well if I shared a bit of Truth and Story with all of you. This is a story I told at the wildly successful 92 degrees of Winter show I did in December 2009. The food was filling, the tales were inspiring, and the company was beyond compare. I'm putting together another show for February for Valentine's day called 92 degrees of Love. Stay tuned and maybe we'll see you there!

This was the first story of the evening (with Shayne Gryn on guitar) and I'm seriously considering making it a regular part of my performance.

If this story sounds familiar, you may remember that I wrote it out in May 2009.

News: This story was published on my new CD "The Bard's New Hat". Read more about it on my website.

Truth and Story (3:12 minutes)

December Story: La Befana

I just finished a gig at a Yule Fair last weekend where Shayne and I performed the Winter Tales show. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the laptop to work properly, so it couldn't be recorded. On December 12th at 6pm (Cafe 92 degrees in NDG), we'll be doing a full version of that show including a couple of invited tellers, so I will definitely record that show one way or the other.

But about this story posting, La Befana. I picked this story up from a collection by Carolyn McVickar Edwards called The Return of the Light. The word "Befana" means Epiphany: that moment when seemingly disconnected ideas come together. Not only is it a beautiful story for the season, but it reminds us how the promise of beauty can inspire us to spread beauty to others.

Happy Yule, Happy Winter Solstice, Merry Christmas.

La Befana (6:10 minutes)

EVENT: 92 Degrees of Winter

Join us for an evening of music and storytelling as we explore the joys and perils of winter with tales from around the world.

Cafe 92 degrees is NDG's newest hotspot for a warm cup to keep the chill of the night air out of your bones. They are our hosts as we offer you this magical evening of story and song.

Date: December 12th (Saturday), 6pm
Location: Cafe 92 Degrees
Street: 6703 Sherbrooke St. Ouest
City/Town: Montreal, QC
Visit the Facebook Event Page

Next Storytelling Performance: Samhain/All Saints Celebration in NDG

I've managed to double-book myself on this evening, but I'll be telling Halloweenish stories about ghosts, goblins, and maybe even the Devil on October 30th (Friday), 6.00-10.30 pm.

The Anglican Church of St. Columba
4020 Hingston Avenue
(corner Notre-Dame-de-Grace Ave)
Montreal, Quebec
(514) 486-1753
mrogers@montreal.anglican.ca

(Welsh Supper & Ceilidh)
$15.00 entrance includes supper, Celtic musical guests, seasonal storytelling, craft fair; cash bar will also be available.  Children are always welcomed free of charge. Please consider dressing up  for the party: you might come as your favourite character from Celtic tradition!

Guest Teller: The Boy Who Drew Cats (Roman Pylat)

 The second story post for October 2009 is by fellow Montreal teller Roman Pylat. I have always adored Roman's stories and the raw power of his voice. This story was recorded during a fundraiser I helped organize for the Montreal Children's Hospital back in 2005 called "Through a Child's Eyes".

This story is quite popular, and you can find many versions of it on the Internet. I have told it several times in the past year, but I have yet had a chance to record it. Hopefully, I will have several recordings of by the end of this month!

My heartfelt thanks to Roman for giving me permission share this story with you on this site. I hope you enjoy it!

The Boy Who Drew Cats (18 minutes)



Also, on Monday night, I had the enormous pleasure of enjoying an evening of stories from Allan Shain and Kim Kilpatrick called "Kissing That Frog: Disabling the Disability Myth". Such wonderful stories from two talented tellers from Ottawa. Loved it! But, if you don't mind the ego booster, when I went up to thank both tellers, Kim recognized my voice and remembered my "You Don't Know Jack" performance in the Ottawa festival from four years ago. I was floored and pleased to peaches.

There are English and French tellers performing all this week for the 10e Festival Interculturel du conte du Quebec, which the final English show being at Hurley's pub on the Sunday night. I'll be telling tales there, as will many others. I'll running all over the city, trying to take in as much of the English and French shows as I can.

If you can make it out to any of these shows, don't squander your opportunity! You will not regret it, mark my words.

Ghost Story for October: The Dead Don't Pay

I've been sitting on this recording for soooooo long! This recording was done when I visited Our Lady of Pompei elementary school way back in February of 2009.

Within every story, there are a few kernels of truth. In this story, I decided to use my old school chum Ted as the protaganist. I made this decision many years ago when I started learning this story, but I recently reconnected with Ted and was pleased to have the chance to share this story with him.

Update: I found the nice thing Ted said!

The fascinating thing about the story, for me, is the marvelous mix of fact, fiction, and perspective I find in it. The tale is so compelling that I could think it was true, or that my actual memories of that time in my life were somehow wrong, FSM knows they're foggy enough. I might even believe that "Ted" was the name I was Christened with--and it isn't, lest the Avid Fans (all five of them) wonder.

October is usually quite a busy month for me as a storyteller, and so far, I've got about 4 gigs starting to take shape. When I figure out the wheres and whens, I'll be posting them here and in my various other spots on the web. Stay tuned!

Before we begin, I want to give a shout-out to fellow storyteller Marie B. who just started her own storytelling podcast. I would love to say I inspired her to do this, but that would be lying, and I never lie. Never, never, ever.

The Dead Don't Pay (10 minutes)

Story for September: Summer Nostalgia

This post is a bit of an experiment. I tried recording the piece I wrote in the last post and mixed it with some music. Any feedback you would have would be appreciated. Is the music too much? Does it suit the story?

You can read the text version of this story by clicking here.

The piece of music is by a band called Scatter the Mud. The album is called In the Mud (pronounced "mood") and the track is A Bad Day for Brittany / Flying Plate / Whelan's Reel.

Summer Nostalgia

**This is reposted from my livejournal and Facebook Notes. I've been getting lots of great feedback on it, so I thought I'd post it here. You can listen to a reading of this piece with music by clicking here.  **

I was just listening to CBC's Definitely Not the Opera where the host, Sook-Yin Lee, asked "If you could take back something from your youth, what would it be?" (the show was about nostalgia).

So I dusted off those rusty memory boxes, cracked them open with much squeaking and clouds of dust, and padded through pictures, trading cards, and Star Wars action figures until I found a set of keys. House keys, to be exact. One key for a deadbolt, the other for the door. They are discolored green and brown, worn with age, but they slid easily in the the locks of Little House where I spent many happy, youthful days in the summers past.

Every couple of weekends, my family would drive out to the town of St. Malachie, near Frampton. This was a wee pocket of Irish and Scottish families where four generations of my father's side of the family lived after arriving from Ireland via Grosse Isle. Living alongside the Tremblays and the Langlois' were the proud Irish family names like Hickey, Murphy, O'Rourke, O'Farrell, O'Grady, and Beatty.

The Little House was owned by The Aunties, who were my grandfather's sisters. At any one time, Madeleine, Bertha, and Dot could be found bustling in the kitchen, serving tea, and catching up on the news and gossip about the far-flung members of my hoary-old Irish family. It was a tiny, two-storey house with a rickety porch and fake brown-brick panels covering the exterior walls, some half-cracked and hanging on by rusty nails and much love.

As the wooden screen door SMACK-Smack-smecked shut, it announced to the room of people that new company had arrived with the promise of news and more good conversation. Bertha would be up in a flash for a hug and a kiss, with Dot dashing down the creaky stairs, and Madeleine wiping her hands on her apron as she pulled another fresh strawberry pie from the oven. I was a shy, awkward boy in those days, but I knew to shake hands with everyone in the room and grin on cue when they ruffled my hair or commented on how tall I was. I would run my hands along the textured, dark flowers that rambled across the upholstered couches like muted wildfire. I would pick at the flaking paint on the walls until I became aware of people watching, then laughing as I tried to be nonchalant about my low-grade destruction habits.

I tried to enjoy the adult conversation, but it centred about the local news, politics, the damn Tories, and whose gall-bladder needed removing. I would eventually wander away from the living room to talk to Madeleine and maybe get a slice of her mystical strawberry pie (it frustrated my mother to no end that she could never quite duplicate that pie perfectly). She would shoo me away, promising me a slice after lunch, or send me into the basement for something she needed.

I both dreaded and loved the basement of that house. It was dark, old, and musty. I could still hear the endless conversations above, but they were muffled and distant, disconnected voices that were strange, yet familiar. I always feared basements: although I was always curious to discover the treasures that were lost in storage, I feared the creatures that might be guarding them, their eyes tracing my every move and dreaming of how delicious my muffled screams would be. I would start out bravely searching for what Madeleine needed, but tear up the stairs in a mad panic once I found it. She would then shoo me out of the house again, laughing off the sinister possibilities of toothed potentialities in her basement.

The property was tiny: just enough space for a few cars to park in the matted grass, a small wooden shed, and a couple of picnic tables. The tall grass and weeds behind the house was so thick, I wondered if I would ever find my way back to the house if I wandered into it. I spent many summers rummaging in the wooden shed, searching for a way that I could explore the jungles behind the Little House and discover their secrets.

The second floor of the Little House was filled with beds. Ornate metal bedframes, squeaky bed springs supporting squishy mattresses and soft linens that invited lazy afternoon naps. The doubled-paned wood-framed windows welcomed warm sunbeams that inched across the pages of a favourite book as I spent afternoons lost in worlds of dragons, bold knights, and the odd papercut. Even the air seemed filled with dusty denizens that were only revealed with warm sunlight as they drifted from room to room, ghosts that could only be temporarily exorcised by an expertly-wielded feather duster.

When I wasn't exploring the Little House, sipping tea, and stealing extra slices of strawberry pie, I was visiting with my cousin Andrew, who lived only a few houses away. He seemed to regard every inch of the country-side with a lackadaisical attitude that bewildered my city-based sensibilities. Whenever I visited, we read comic books and we swung in the hammock, ducking away from the occasional crab apple that would be shook loose from the constant swaying. We went fishing, explored the back woods, and debated the mystery of girls, their wildish ways, and how cool it would be if we had the nerve to prove how cool we were. We put too much ketchup on our hotdogs while we watched scrap metal wrench and fly at the local demolition derby. We dodged the angry francophone kids who despised our English-speaking ways and warned us that we should go home or else. Mostly, we assured our parents that we were keeping out of trouble and rarely got into as much destruction as they always feared we would.

And then it would be Sunday, with the sun setting in the distance. My Dad would drive up to my cousin's house to pick me up and we'd be off to the city again. I would watch the old houses disappear in a cloud of dust, wonder if the old Targ video game in Hotel Paradis had changed as we drove past, and wait to see the familiar white and green bridges that connected the South shore of Charny to the North shore of Quebec city.

Those days are precious to me. Now that I've written this, I need to go back and visit, even though the Little House has been empty for many years and lists dangerously in the wind. Maybe I can get Bertha or Dot to lend me a key and I can unlock my past one more time.