During the late 1950s, there was a television series called The Naked City that always ended with the following tag line: “There are eight million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them.” While a cliché, the tag line is, as is true of most clichés, a rendition of a universal Truth with a capital “T.” For everyone has a story, if only the rest of us would just take a moment to listen, just take our turn at being the second necessary component of a good story, its audience.
Our unwillingness or inability to listen, to serve as someone’s audience, is generally the result of one of two things: we become so tied up by the distractions that beggar the hours of our day that we cannot find time to listen or to expend the energy necessary for good listening to take place; or we are so narcissistic, so self-involved, that we find listening gets in the way of a constant celebration of self. This piece isn’t for those in the latter group, because I can offer those folks no words of advice other than to get over yourself, other than you should learn that a story without an audience is meaningless, admonitions that are singularly unhelpful to someone full to bursting with self. For they missed Kindergarten’s most basic lesson.
To the former group, I suggest a long vacation of the type Helen and I are currently enjoying. In our case, we are on the M/V River Aria, a 410 foot long ship owned by Grand Circle Tours wending its way from Amsterdam to the Black Sea by means of various canals and the Rhine, the Maine and the Danube Rivers. It is, in essence, a floating hotel. You check in, unpack, and your hotel then drives you to various destinations of interest. This is our first cruise and we are only three days afloat, but we are liking the concept so far.
One of the blessings of this trip is that we have no daily cares to distract us from the stories that others wish to tell. Everything we need is being taken care of by someone else, and we are free to listen without distraction, without impediment, to the other 7,999,999 stories – and even more if we wish.
The River Aria has proven to be full of stories. To be technically correct, we heard our first story before we got on the board the Aria, as its telling began before we even left the Farm in Humptulips County. Our driver proved to be a young Croatian man who began telling us about being raised in Croatia in the 1980s and living through the wars which occupied that region in the 1990s. He was not of the narcissistic type and insistent upon telling us his story, but his was a story that emerged after a few gentle questions from Helen and myself that began with the classic “Where are you from?” We exchanged many stories and thoughts during our 45 minute trip to the airport, and he left us richer for having heard his story and having learned much from him about the strength of human endurance under inherently terrifying situations, but poorer for the substantial tip we left him in thanks for the education. We got the better of the trade, however, even if he was happy with his end of the unacknowledged bargain.
This morning I rose early and dressed so I could go up to the ship’s lounge to write, and found upon arrival a fellow passenger who was also without sleep. I sat with him to chat for what was planned by me to be a few moments before engaging in my errand, but two hours later found myself still talking, still not composing. For he was full of stories about his life as a government employee and a former, reluctant Marine. Before meeting him, I would have thought the phrase ‘reluctant Marine’ an oxymoron. I wrote nothing during the two hours of conversation, but I learned a great deal about life from my new friend and fellow passenger. Our sense of mutual trust grew during that time to the point where he finally shared a concern with me about something he’d said while on board the Aria, and I found myself in a position to assure him he hadn’t given the offense he was afraid he’d given. I learned as much about him from his fear of having given offense as I did from his stories of the University of Colorado in the early 1960s.
And then there are the lessons to be learned from the wealth of stories told by my 90-year-old friend, Bob. Bob is always capable of surprising me, and frequently does. Just when you think you’ve heard all of his stories, he surprises you with a new one and reveals yet another layer to the heights to which his soul extends. Some of these surprises are about trivial matters, but some few are of startling significance.
Bob announced at dinner last night that he had arranged to have the crew waken him at 2:00 AM so that he might go out on the sun deck as the ship passed south of the town of Wessel on the River Rhine. Bob wanted to on deck when the ship passed through the area where he first crossed the Rhine in a skiff piloted by a Navy Midshipman in 1945, while on his way from Normandy to Germany courtesy of the US Army. His first visit to the area was done to the accompaniment of cannon fire, with him as the target; last night’s visit was to be on the safe confines of a river cruising ship. The surprise for me was that he had yet another story to tell of those years and the life he’d then led – a life I constantly am reminded that I possess only the outlines of, and only the vaguest notion about. That there is far more, far richer detail to that life, I am certain. That I have much yet to learn from him is clear. And our voyage together goes on. May it last for many more good years!
And so it goes. On this trip we have met Serbs, Croatians, Austrians, Dutch, Americans of all stripes, and a few others we haven’t yet placed into a convenient box of geography for storage in our memories. While it really doesn’t matter where any of the storytellers come from, their geography is a spice to enliven their personal stories. And we find ourselves with the luxury of time to listen, to serve as a good audience, and to take our turn in the sharing of stories – a human tradition that began in the first shared and darkened cave well before the discovery of how to control fire; a tradition that is of the essence of what it means to be human.
Greetings from Sky Mesa on the morning of May 18. Our view of Biz Point and its several floats with small white boats bobbing in the grey morning light is mood setting for our “partly to mostly” cloudy day.
It does seem you, Gavin, have had a “true at first light” experience, as you journey on the rivers and by-ways. Insight is stimulated by the leisure of being transported without the responsibility of deciding where and when you will go, on your “bucket list” trip.
We are pleased to hear and experience some of your observations and resulting thoughts.