The Thriving Art of Storytelling at SLOLio

What’s the first thing that pops into your head when you hear “storytelling” – children’s bedtime stories, yarns spun around a campfire, romanticized days of yore, or perhaps a wistful acquiescence of the “lost art” of storytelling? 

I refuse those reductions.  Storytelling is alive and thriving.  We just need a modern day conceptualization of what storytelling is now, a realization that we are hearing and seeing stories played out every day.  The written and certainly the visual forms of storytelling flourish, but with so many bells and whistles we forget that we are in fact being told a story.  The ritualized, oral tradition of one person passing experience, history, drama, humor – life – along to another simply by talking, telling a story 'unplugged', may be less employed or maybe just less obvious these days, but it is far from dead and gone.  It has naturally evolved, grown to literal epic proportions along with our technology. 

This is not a bad thing.  It’s natural we push those boundaries.  It’s what we do and the results are spectacular.  We must be wise enough however to remember the source.  The source must be kept alive and thriving, tended well in order to fuel the evolution.  Just as the mother dough, the starter or patê fermentée, is the essence of all the wildly imaginative and delicious creations that evolve from its living core.  It is the basic element collecting wild yeast and bacteria from the environment, sparking the magical, live process of fermentation, birth.  Such is a single person standing alone on a small wooden stage in front of an expectant audience, telling their story.  And there are those who cultivate this, will not let it die; will not let the spawn of evolution turn round to destroy its own source.  And these people are SLOLio.

What exactly is “SLOLio?”  Their website slolio.org provides the definition of an “Olio” first: a mixture or medley; a hodgepodge; a collection of various artistic or literary works or musical pieces; a miscellany.  So SLOLio is then a gathering, an “olio” of true stories and story-loving people.  A “story slam” as they coin it.  Every month in downtown San Luis Obispo (SLO) CA, at a wondrous locale called Linnaea’s Café, very determined and committed people put on this live storytelling spectacular.  One person after another on a small wooden stage, an excellent mediator and host, and a willing enraptured audience.  All storytelling, all fresh, no notes allowed, each tale no more than eight to ten minutes.  A theme is provided about a month ahead of time which storytellers use to inspire their tales, which must be true.  Those are the only rules.  The evening’s stories are recorded and available on their website.  

I’ve been attending for about a half a year now and am amazed, touched, and laugh-out-loud amused each time.  There are regulars who come to tell a story each month, and there are always new faces, those brave and daring souls who embark on this adventure for the experience, or perhaps because that month’s theme touched them somehow and they have a story they simply must tell.  The stage is theirs for those few minutes and they get to tell their story, permitting us into their personal world, raw and exposed.  It is an indescribably human experience.  You pass these people every day of your life without ever knowing the amazing stories they have to tell, the experiences they have had.  Every person in this world has a story.  That simple realization shifts your perception just ever so slightly, but oh so significantly.  To have that awareness, that delightful burst of an epiphany as you become a part of this true hodgepodge of humanity and hear what they have to say, is a singularly unique and profound experience.

Per the website, SLOLio was inspired by The Moth in New York City.  The Moth organization was launched in 1997 by George Dawes Green, a poet and best-selling novelist who wanted to recreate storytelling nights he had with friends in his native Georgia.  SLOLio carried the torch of this tradition all the way West to the California Central Coast.  The host and organizer is Kirk Henning who is an incredibly dynamic speaker himself.  When he talks, you just listen.  He keeps the show running smoothly and takes care of the recordings as well.  

This is an exceedingly special, inspirational experience and I am very grateful to have discovered it.  The next event will be held January 15, 2014, at 7:00 p.m. at Linnaea’s Café located at 110 Garden Street, downtown San Luis Obispo, CA.  The theme for this month is “The Big Sell.” 

I am already sold.