Memories

 

Over the winter holidays, looking for something else at my in-laws, I came across my father-in-law’s Kodak Retina from the early 1950’s. As someone who went to college, studied photography, and made it their career for a long time, I had to see if it worked. I bought some film and ran it through the camera, and it does. It’s a 35mm, fully manual camera. By that I mean you have to pay attention to taking a photograph, it’s not point and shoot in any manner or form. Ideally you want a light meter to tell you what settings to use for shutter speed and aperture, and a tape measure to measure the distance between camera and subject. All of these settings (aperture, shutter speed, and focus) need to be done manually on a few dials. Fortunately, having grown up in the age of film, I wasn’t too bad at the exposure, but found I either completely forgot to focus, or that I need to work on figuring out distance-by-eye!

 

As I looked over the blur, the grain, the light in these photographs of family members, I wondered at how my wife’s siblings had changed since the camera first recorded them, playing as kids, going on holiday, and at school events. All those moments in lived stories which had shone through a lens onto a bit of film base covered in a gelatin emulsion.

There are some cultures where having your photograph taken was seen as taking a piece of your soul away. (I look at famous people these days, and wonder if that’s actually true!) These moments that are captured and saved are moments of storytelling, fragments which can prompt memories. People can look at a photograph and something that they may have forgotten about suddenly floods back. Looking at family photograph albums we look at people. Some things we may remember and others we don’t. What stories happened to have such memories? What stories happened (or didn’t) that caused us to forget.

We don’t make photograph albums anymore. Do we? Well, most people don’t - my mum still does! And so do I, but for me these are smaller albums of events, highlights, and are not the whole big picture of what was going on with notes and names always. My mum created a photo album for each of my kids. She collected photographs of them growing up, wrote next to the photos, and built the albums over the first sixteen years of their lives and then gave the albums to the kids on their sixteenth birthdays. They were both genuinely bowled over by this. For when they were too young to remember, the notes explain what was going on in the image, and where.

The stories we tell are made up of fragments which we piece together. What pieces do you have that you’ve pieced together? What stories do they tell? Do you see things clearly, smell the smells, hear the sounds? Reclaim these stories of your past and share them with other family members.

 

 

All photos and writing by Simon Brooks © 2024

The Big House

 

A ten-minute read unless you use your finger!

Through my work with CLiF, the Children’s Literacy Foundation, I have made a few visits to New Hampshire prisons. Most of these have been for Family Day when the inmates get to hang out with their families. There are activities, special foods (ice-pops, and cotton candy - which I admit I am assuming are not regular food items in prison) and CLiF gives the incarcerated men or women books to give to their kids. Other visits are presentations with the inmates alone, helping them learn about choosing books for their kids, biological or not, teh importance of reading and how, through books, very important connections can be made with their children. Some of these people are giving books to grandchildren, nephews, nieces, younger siblings, cousins even. It’s not easy work. Some of these men and women are there because of one mistake. Sometimes that mistake lasts for the rest of their lives. I have even been to visit with the men who are kept in solitary most of the time - together in one room with my back close to the door and guards. Having said that, I have never felt safer - once the ice was broken! These powerful-looking men are covered in tattoos. One had a very large word tattooed on his forearm, half hidden with other words and images, and of course I had to ask what it meant. He told me. It was something so viscous, and nasty, I blocked it out of my mind. After he told me this, and the men saw the look on my face, I shared my cute little fox tattoo, and that made the laughter of the men louder, breaking the ice.

My first visit for a Family Day was a man sitting at a table on his own. All the other men at their own tables had family around them, chatting, laughing, hugging. I went to join the solo inmate and we talked. After I asked if he minded if I joined him, and him agreeing, he told me that his family were usually late, as his 15-year-old daughter had a hard time visiting with him. He told me he was trying to make sure that his children (he had a son and another daughter) did not follow in his footsteps and follow what had been the family business. He told me his father and his father’s father had been in same ‘business’ but he was done. He wanted out, big time, and he wanted his children to have a better life.

It struck me how lonely these folks are, behind bars, and how hard it must be for children visiting their incarcerated family. It has to be utterly heartbreaking for everyone.

A few weeks ago, I went to do one of these presentations for male inmates with CLiF founder Duncan McDougal. Some of these men recognized me from previous visits, most knew Duncan, who has been going to these places regularly for 20 years. We sat and talked with the men, helped them choose books, chatted. A couple of the men, once I had started talking and my English voice gave me away, came over to say how much they had enjoyed what I did for the family day visits. It was good to hear, and I sat down with them and gave them some storytelling tips. But that’s not important. What’s important is that these inmates, the women or the men, connect with their children, or the children of their partners on the outside. By being able to talk about the books they send is a starting place for a conversation. Being able to tell each other what they thought about the books, or even something in the book that might have been a shared experience for the inmate and their family before they became incarcerated. Books are invaluable for these people to have a relationship outside of prison. And this helps them when they have done their time and they are out. These relationships help them succeed and contribute, positively, to the community they end up living in. This visit was on a Monday.

That Friday, four days later, I was gallivanting in a completely different part of New England to tell stories at an elementary school. As one group of kids came in, a young lad called out to me. “Hey! I’ve seen you in prison!” Not something one normally hears coming from a fourth-grade kid’s mouth! It took a nanosecond for the penny to drop, and I waved him over and we had a chat. I remembered his dad’s name, and face, and told the boy that I had seen him on Monday. It was a little moment, like a birthday, a surprise party, Christmas morning an unexpected, welcomed family member showing up for Kwanza or Hanukkah. And it became something the boy can connect over when he next speaks with his dad. If he remembers!

Back to Monday. I was talking with a few of the men, and was talking about one of my all-time favourite authors - Jason Reynolds. He wrote the Track series - Ghost, Patina, Sunny and Lu. He also wrote As Brave As You (absolutely brilliant book), and Miles Morales: Spiderman (one of my all-time fave superhero books). He also wrote A Long Way Down. I get the privilege of sometimes being able to grab some of the CLiF books if they are not taken, to take home and read myself, so I can talk knowledgeably  to kids when giving the books away. I read the graphic novel A Long Way Down, and then the novel itself. Both are incredible books. And not at all easy reads. Brief synopsis - spoiler alert - a boy’s brother is murdered, shot to death. The street motto - no tears, no snitching, revenge. So the younger brother finds the older brother’s gun in their high-rise apartment, and gets in the elevator to go down to kill the kid who killed his sibling. At each and every floor, the elevator stops and in steps someone; someone he realizes he knows; someone who was shot to death. One of these people was shot accidentally, the rest mostly revenge killings. At the bottom of the long ride down, the young boy has to make a decision: Will he go and shoot the kid who killed his brother, or not? I was talking about this book to one of the inmates. That’s my story, he said.

Let’s take a moment to pause there. Let that sink in. That’s my story.

After a moment we talked about the book, the story it told, what it meant to him, what it might mean to the child he might send it to. Would it help them understand their father better, or would it make things worse? These moments I stumble on, sink deep beneath the skin and into my heart. One bad decision. A good person, who does one bad thing and their life, and the lives of all those around changes in a moment. A good job, a family, prospects, and then prison.

And all these other thoughts come to mind - my privilege, my luck, my own choices (and not all have been good, some far from good). And here I sit. I can call my family when I want and get to talk to them (when they actually pick up)! I can visit them when I like (or when I can afford to - flights to the UK are not cheap). We can video chat and send each other books and magazines, photos and the like.

Someone recently asked me what my joy was. Or is. Children’s unadulterated, pure, belly-filled laughter, was and is my reply. And my family. All of it. My wife and kids. My brothers, sister, cousins, nephews, and nieces; few remaining aunts and uncles; my outlaws, my wife’s nephews and nieces, aunts and uncles; our parents. Of course. And friends. Some of my friends give me a great deal of joy.

My joy is telling stories, and to see kids and their care-providers/parents laughing in a world, that for some, has little joy - and my family. My great, big, crazy family. So, while we gather at this time of year, be grateful that you have people in your life that you can call on, talk to, be with, laugh and cry with. And give away books, lots and lots of books.

Have a great Holiday and even Better New Year!

Simon

Getting Better All the Time - hopefully!

 

These words taken from the Beatles’ song “Getting Better” resound with hope and I carry them with me often. They also inspire.

I just returned, on Sunday, from Sharing the Fire, the North East Storytelling Conference hosted and run by North East Story Telling, or NEST. It’s been going on for years, starting in the late 1970’s I believe and still going strong. It’s moved about it, and the format has changed, but for as long as I have been going to it it’s pretty much been the same: Keynote, featured teller, annual meeting of NEST members, an olio (showcase of storytellers) and closer, and in between all this, many workshops, and a few fringe performances. The keynote is usually very good and this year was no exception. Adam Booth came all the way from West Virginia bringing with him a flock of herons.

Adam and one of his many herons.

 Adam is a great storyteller and many of his tales are Appalachian. This weekend he told a new story which used many of the motifs found in folk and fairy tales, myths and legends, a story that was very original. As he created The Heron’s Journey he worked with a quilt maker, a paper artist, puppeteer and dancer, all of which informed and, in some cases, changed the story. The tale itself took the arch of a creation myth but Adam reversed this arch, making something very compelling. It was a tale of re-birth, community, transformation, The People, and was filled with surprises and compassion. At the beginning of what felt like the last third of the story, the flock of herons took flight and flew through the audience. Okay, this is where the paper artist came into play; the herons were made of paper. They were huge, with a wing span of maybe two or three feet. They had vertical handles on them, and were passed through the audience by the audience, and was incredibly powerful. The quilt, which Adam carried in at the beginning, decorated with a crown, and with some of the Underground Railroad motifs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Railroad) sewn into it, suddenly took on a new meaning, a greater meaning. Later in the story the quilt was reversed and became another powerful part of the tale Adam was sharing with us.

The Underground Railroad in Concord, NH which helped enslaved people escape to the North and Canada.

 

The story was told with grace and not rushed, but still I feel it is a piece that I need to see again because they were so many layers in it - I am sure I missed a few!

In the keynote, the next morning Adam challenged us to look at working with other artists, something I have been thinking of doing for a long time and tried out when Megan Wells and I performed The Magic Flute as a storytelling piece. Working with the quilt maker, Adam gave them some free-reign within the parameters of what he needed, and the image on the reverse side of the quilt caused the story to alter a little. The paper artist created the herons and when he was working on talking to them, he realized that addressing one instead of the group worked better. The dancer informed his movement on stage which in turn helped him find entry to parts of the story he struggled with.

There are a couple of other projects I want to do myself, beyond The Magic Flute. One is slowly coming together this year. This challenge Adam threw down, as it were, was a gauntlet of sorts, thrown down to help us create better work. We don’t have to work with paper artists, dancers and quilt makers but collaboration can help us see our own work in a new light. It might shine on areas where we have weakness, and working with another person can help fix that.

The gang on Tuesday night. We used a recording of Norm who was with Anne in Norway

 

Tuesday night Paul Strickland came over and we shared my garage to broadcast our stories in our TBD Concert with Antonio Rocha, Jeff Doyle, Ingrid Nixon, and Norm Brecke. Anne Rutherford, another member of the group, wasn’t telling stories that night. Paul told a folk tale, as straight as Paul can. He is a surrealist, of sorts, and a self-declared post-modernist! To hear Paul tell a folktale like he did make my mind creak in a new direction. It made me think of ways I can be better, get better and improve my craft. And we can all do this.

Find people who inspire you, watch their work, see what they do. Look at photographs and artwork, to inspire you. You can find prompts in things like this, even from photos in magazines or on-line - a glance or poise in a picture might make you think of a way you could portray a character in your stories, and this can apply to writing too. Go to plays and see how the performance is staged. Seeking out others can only improve your art and craft, no matter what it is.

Anyway, I am guessing you’ve spent enough time away reading this, rather than doing what you should be doing, so I will lay off and let you go.

Thanks for reading this, and being here with me on this journey of life.

Stay well.

Peace,
Simon