WORD OF MOUTH STORY SLAM
LIBERATION
Thursday, April 4th 2013 at Hillel
Doors at 8:00 pm, stories at 8:30
Word of Mouth is back for our final event of 2013. Never been to our slams before? Audience members tell five-minute stories from their lives related to a theme. The friendly competition includes appetizers and live music.
In collaboration with Hillel, this month focuses on stories of Liberation. In light of the recent Passover holiday, which recognizes a historic Liberation, we’ve chosen the theme. But it does not have to pertain to history, Judaism, or religion at all. Perhaps the theme is pertinent because graduation is on the horizon, or summer vacation.
If you have stories of release, renewal, letting go, or breaking free, come share them at our slam!
You should notice that we’ve moved! If you’re used to seeing us at Work Gallery on State Street, don’t fret. We are trying a new space. The UM Hillel is located just off campus. Click here for directions.
Can’t wait to see you there!
In the meantime, check us out online:
To get emails about more upcoming events and workshops or to join our planning crew, shoot us an email.
(Source: ummaannex)
WORD OF MOUTH STORY SLAM: BEFORE AND AFTER
WORD OF MOUTH STORY SLAM
BEFORE AND AFTER
Wednesday March 13th, 2013
The Gallery Project
Doors at 7:00 pm
Word of Mouth is back for our second event of 2013. Never been to our slams before? Audience members tell five-minute stories from their lives related to a theme. The friendly competition includes appetizers and live music.
In collaboration with The Ginsberg Center and their program Alternative Spring Break (ASB), this month’s theme focuses on stories of Before and After. Having recently returned from their spring break trips, ASB-ers will be full of stories of how their their expectations, impressions, or understanding of the places and people they encountered changed from Before to After.
But the slam is not just for ASB! If you have stories of transformation, change, or time passing, come share your tales of Before and After with us!
You should notice that we’ve moved! If you’re used to seeing us at Work Gallery on State Street, don’t fret. We are trying a new space. The Gallery Project on 4th Street is a gorgeous, not-for-profit art house that features contemporary art from local creators. Click here for more info on the gallery and here for directions.
Can’t wait to see you there!
In the meantime, check us out online:
To get emails about more upcoming events and workshops or to join our planning crew, shoot us an email.
DANCE MEDITATION
Dance Meditation is a meditative, community dance party happening in Ann Arbor this Sunday. Originated by Michael Patrick Peters, the practice started in Detroit and has migrated toward our town for the weekend. Based on the yogic movement techniques, the practice is inspired by an experimental healing ideology called Transforming Tension Through Creativity. Dance Meditation involves letting loose and moving the body however it needs to in order to expel tension or creative blockage.
For an energetic, cathartic, liberating, rejuvenating, creative evening of dance, don’t miss this unique opportunity to let loose and be free. The event will start at 5:30 pm on Sunday February 24th at Concourse Hall (4531 Concourse Drive). $15 at the door includes space to dance and tea following the meditation. Check out the Facebook event for more details and directions. See you there!
Modern Stories of love-at-first-sight
Australian illustrator Sophie Blackall on her book::
Missed Connections: Love, Lost & Found
(illustrations of Craiglist’s missed connections)
soundcloud.com/brainpicker/sophie-blackall-missed-connections
often the missed connections are hurried :: succinct & misspelled but here Sophie Blackall speaks about one of the most moving:: stories::http://soundcloud.com/brainpicker/sophie-blackall-whale-at-coney-island
The Whale at Coney Island
M4M — 69 (Brooklyn/Florida)
A young friend of mine recently acquainted me with the intricacies of Missed Connections, and I have decided to try to find you one final time. Many years ago, we were friends and teachers together in New York City. Perhaps we could have been lovers too, but we were not. We used to take trips to Coney Island, especially during the spring, when we would stroll hand in hand, until our palms got too sweaty, along the boardwalk, and take refuge in the cool darkness of the aquarium. We liked to visit the whale best. One spring, it arrived from its winter home (in Florida? I can’t remember) pregnant. Everyone at the aquarium was very excited — a baby beluga whale was going to be born in New York City! You insisted that we not miss the birth, so every day after class, and on both Saturday and Sunday, we would take the D train all the way from Harlem to Coney Island. We got there one Saturday as the aquarium opened and there was a sign posted to the glass tank. The baby beluga had been born dead. The mother, the sign read, was recovering but would be fine. We read the sign in shock and watched the single beluga whale in her tank. She was circling slowly. Neither of us could speak. Suddenly, without warning, the beluga started to throw herself against the wall of the tank. Trainers came and ushered us out. We sat on a bench outside, and suddenly I felt tears running down my face. You saw, turned my face towards yours, and kissed me. We had never kissed before, and I let my lips linger on yours for a second before I stood up and walked towards the ocean. It was too much — the whale, the death, the kiss — and I wasn’t ready. Forgive me — I don’t think I ever understood what an emptiness you would create when you left and I realized that that kiss on Coney Island was the first and the last. Are you out there, dear friend? If so, please respond. I think of you, and have thought of you often, all of these years.
the full interview with Design Matters on her illustrations & other stories:: https://soundcloud.com/designmatters/design-matters-with-debbie-133 (via brainpickings)
Comedian Anthony Griffith: The Best of Times, the Worst of Times
Heartbreaking and extremely powerful— well worth the time.
Ann Arbor Moth StorySLAM: Clumsy
Our former parent, The Moth, has a StorySLAM next Tuesday, February 19!
Details:
Hosted by Satori Shakoor
Prepare a five-minute story on “Clumsy.”
How it Works: At 6:00pm, sign up to tell a story, volunteer to be on a judging team or just sit back and listen.
At 7:30pm (SHARP) - We’ll pick the first name and the show will begin. Each teller will have 5 minutes to tell his or her tale. After each story, the judges confer, and give a score. The teller with the highest score becomes our StorySLAM winner. The winner will compete with the year’s other winners in our next GrandSLAM Championship.
Be Forewarned: The Moth is for TRUE STORIES. OK, there won’t be a fact-checker there, and the FBI probably won’t dig into your files to verify the names and dates and places, but please know, emphatically, The Moth is not for fiction stories. The tiny fictions and lies we tell ourselves ARE part of our “true stories” but that one about you, Obama, Gandhi and Einstein up in a spaceship eating brownies… not so much.
The Moth is NOT a venue for readings; it is a venue for tellings. No notes, papers, or cheat sheets allowed. Contestants are judged on sticking to the five-minute time frame, sticking to the theme and having a story that sticks — one that has a conflict and a resolution.
Story tips: No standup routines please: The Moth LOVES funny people but requires that all funny people tell funny STORIES. Steer clear of meandering endings: Your last line should be clear in your head. Start in the action and set up the stakes.
Time Well Wasted: Our very own Tom Goss.
Courtesy of annarbor.com
UM SOUP: A Dinner Funding Micro-Grants for Creative Projects in Ann Arbor
UM SOUP: A Dinner Funding Micro-Grants for Creative Projects in Ann Arbor
UM SOUP is inspired by Detroit SOUP, an organization founded in 2010. Like our counterpart, we provide the unique opportunity for your vision to be funded and supported by your community. UM SOUP encourages everyone—student organizations, faculty, Ann Arbor community members, non-profits,entrepreneurs, artists, musicians—to submit a proposal.
SOUP is: a collaborative situation, a public dinner , a platform for connection , a theatrical environment, a democratic experiment in micro-funding , a relational hub bringing together various creative communities, a forum for critical but accessible discussion , an opportunity to support creative people in Ann Arbor
How to SUBMIT your proposal: Please fill out the proposal application and send to imorris@umich.edu. Submissions will be due one week before the SOUP dinner, March 23th, 2013. There are no rules for projects — we only ask that ideas are creative and focused on helping better the Ann Arbor and University community.
WHEN/WHERE is SOUP?
How To Stay Sane: The Art of Revising Your Inner Storytelling
“Our stories give shape to our inchoate, disparate, fleeting impressions of everyday life. They bring together the past and the future into the present to provide us with structures for working towards our goals. They give us a sense of identity and, most importantly, serve to integrate the feelings of our right brain with the language of our left.
[…]
We are primed to use stories. Part of our survival as a species depended upon listening to the stories of our tribal elders as they shared parables and passed down their experience and the wisdom of those who went before. As we get older it is our short-term memory that fades rather than our long-term memory. Perhaps we have evolved like this so that we are able to tell the younger generation about the stories and experiences that have formed us which may be important to subsequent generations if they are to thrive.
I worry, though, about what might happen to our minds if most of the stories we hear are about greed, war and atrocity.
[…]
We need to look at the repetitions in the stories we tell ourselves [and] at the process of the stories rather than merely their surface content. Then we can begin to experiment with changing the filter through which we look at the world, start to edit the story and thus regain flexibility where we have been getting stuck.”
Philippa Perry, “How To Stay Sane”
Read the full Brain Pickings posting on Philippa Perry’s new book, “How To Stay Sane” here: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/02/05/how-to-stay-sane-philippa-perry/
Niche Genres
I just visited the local Barnes and Noble and was blown away to find, without looking too hard, three novels about knitting: The Friday Night Knitting Club, Knit One Pearl One, and Knitting Under the Influence, which included recipes for half a dozen knitting-inspired cocktails such as the “Striped Cropped Sweater”, “The Cozy Brown Afghan”, and “The Tangled Skein”: ”Drink too many of these and you’re likely to end up in a complicated situation that’s difficult to untangle”.
It’s not that I have anything against knitting—I first became aware of the phenomenon of knitting novels when searching for knitting patterns on the Midwest Collaborative for Library Services—but the existence of these stories is thoroughly surprising. What is it about knitting that is so compelling that it’s inspired an entire genre of novel? Not even just a genre, but a genre with thriving subgenres as well? A quick google search will reveal plenty of knitting novels with variations on the word “death” or other ominous phrases in their titles: A Deadly Yarn, Needled to Death, Dyer Consequences, Dropped Dead Stitch, Death by Cashmere, Knit Fast, Die Young, A Stitch Before Dying, Knit, Purl, Die, Died in the Wool, Knit One, Kill Two, Double Knit Murders, A Killer Stitch, While My Pretty One Knits, A Fatal Fleece, and my personal favorite, The Knitting Circle Rapist Annihilation Club. Till Death Do Us Purl is deceptive, but actually fits in with a subgenre also including the novel The Wedding Shawl; equally heartwarming are Christmas knitting novels such as A Holiday Yarn and Knit the Season. If you want your knitting novel a bit racier and more suggestive, check out How to Knit a Wild Bikini, Dirty Sexy Knitting, or the Chicks With Sticks series. In fact, there are a lot of popular series of knitting novels: The Friday Night Knitting Club was followed by Knit Two and the aforementioned Knit the Season. A particularly daring series explores the intersection between knitting and magic in such titles as Casting Spells and Laced with Magic.
I list these titles not to mock them but to explore the questions raised by their existence. Why are knitting novels (apparently) so engaging? Why do so many authors choose to write knitting novels? Why are there so many novels exploring just one hobby, and why am I so sure that I could find just as many novels related to chess, or golf, or bicycling?
Part of the answer, I’m sure, is that knitting serves as a point of common interest, a simple way for authors to engage their readers. Part of the reason is that people like to combine their hobbies, and if knitting and reading can be united, all the better. But it’s still a question worth asking—why are stories about knitting so common? What do we gain by telling our story through the lens of a favorite hobby or activity? How does the introduction of an unusual lexicon into storytelling make it better or worse, more thoroughly inclusive or exclusive.
These are big questions, and ones I’m sure I’ll think about for a long time. Until I can answer them, however, you can begin your own search for answers in Knit Lit: Sweaters and Their Stories … and Other Writing About Knitting.
If you want more information about the stories listed here or other knitting novels (and I sincerely hope you do) visit this goodreads page.
