Ep 61: The Heart of Storytelling: Laura Simms' Impactful Journey

Do you have a story that made a deep impact in your life? In episode 61, Laura Simms, an internationally acclaimed storyteller and writer takes us through her unique journey into storytelling, influenced by childhood experiences with legends like Baba Yaga. Our discussion centers around how one brings a story to life, the architecture of engagement, and discovering why the essence of the experience of the story is invaluable in the world today. We also discuss the transformative power of stories in addressing social issues and promoting healing, drawing from Simm's humanitarian work and educational initiatives. An excellent and fun episode you won't want to miss!

Links:
Laura Simms website

• 🧚‍♀️ Laura Simms' Storytelling Journey (05:00 - 12:00)
• Laura blames Baba Yaga for her storytelling career
• Childhood experiences with Baba Yaga stories and recurring dreams
• First storytelling experience in Central Park at age 20
• Dropped out of graduate school to pursue storytelling
• Worked at American Museum of Natural History as a storyteller
• 📚 Storytelling Techniques and Experiences (12:02 - 21:34)
• Discussed the difference between oral and written storytelling
• Explained the architecture of engagement in storytelling
• Shared experience of telling 'The Juniper Tree' to children
• Importance of narrator's presence and ability to engage audience
• 🌳 Storytelling in Different Contexts (21:34 - 31:33)
• Discussed storytelling in indigenous cultures and epic storytelling
• Importance of deep listening and audience engagement
• Shared experience of telling stories in hospital settings
• Emphasized the power of stories to provide rest and healing
• 🌍 Teaching and Humanitarian Work (31:35 - 41:01)
• Laura's work teaching storytelling to various organizations
• Experience working with UN NGO on hunger issues using bread stories
• Work in Haiti with International Medical Corps using storytelling skills
• Importance of storytelling in addressing pressing global issues
• 🍞 Storytelling for Social Change (41:02 - 52:04)
• Shared a story about bread-sharing in a village without hunger
• Discussed the emotional impact of stories on listeners
• Explained how stories can address complex issues indirectly
• Laura's work on 'Finding Gold in Your Story' course
• 👥 Storytelling in Education and Conflict Resolution (52:05 - 01:02:04)
• Adapting stories for different audiences, especially children
• Experience telling 'The Giant with No Heart' to third graders
• Using storytelling to address bullying in schools
• 📖 Fairy Tales and Modern Audiences (01:02:06 - 01:11:18)
• Should original fairy tales should be told to children
• Laura's approach to adapting stories for modern audiences
• Importance of understanding the function and journey of a story
• Balancing symbolic elements with audience sensitivity
• 📝 Laura's Publications and Future Projects (01:11:20 - 01:18:45)
• Upcoming book 'The Story of Wildenhouse Rose'
• Working on a book about how to tell stories

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Transcript

Vanessa Rogers: 0:10

Welcome, welcome, folksy folks, to fabric of folklore. I am your hostess, Vanessa Y. Rogers. And this is the podcast where we unravel the mysteries of folklore. It's really a show about humanity, and that's really what folklore is. Our stories, our passions, our art, our music, our legends, these are the elements that bring us together as a people and bind us as human beings. I found a quote recently. The world is not made of molecules. The world is made of stories. And the person who said this was William Irwin Thompson. He was a cultural historian, philosopher, and poet known for his interdisciplinary approach. And it is a reflection of the power of narrative and myth in shaping human experience and understanding. And that's really what the heart of this podcast is about, understanding our own folklore, understanding that of others, so that we become better humans and better people together. So if that sounds like a podcast you want to continue to listen to, hit that subscribe button. Whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcasting platform, like I heart radio or Spotify or Apple, you can find us on any podcasting platform, and you'll get notifications every week when our podcast drops. We have a fantastic show for you today with Laura Sims. She's an internationally acclaimed storyteller, writer, and educator advocating engaged storytelling as compassionate action for personal and community transformation. She offers in depth classes, coaching, and a powerful performance of stories that address the most pressing issues of our time with dignity and joy. Today we're going to be talking with her about how one brings a story to life with the knowledge without being didactic, and discovering why the essence of the experience of the story is invaluable in the world today. So thank you so much for joining us, Laura.

Laura Simms: 2:19

You're very welcome, Vanessa, you've had a.

Vanessa Rogers: 2:24

Very illustrious career in storytelling. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got into the storytelling field and when you really felt like you, when you felt the calling of a storyteller?

Laura Simms: 2:40

Well, I want to blame two things on my storytelling, and there was no storytelling field when I began, which was almost more than 50 years ago, really. And I noticed that on your beautiful website, you feature Baba Yaga, great russian mother nature deity archetype, and I could blame her on my career.

Vanessa Rogers: 3:14

Oh, I have to hear more about this.

Laura Simms: 3:16

Well, when I was a little girl, I grew up in Brooklyn, and my father was the neighborhood dentist, and his office was in the front of the house. So I often went and sat in the waiting room, partially because my mother was convinced that if people could see through the window that there were people there, that it would generate more clients. But really, for me, I would read children's magazines, and in highlight magazine, month after month, they had these spectacular fairy tales which featured Baba Yaga. And at night, I would take them upstairs and would read these stories to myself. And then in order to go to sleep, some of the images of the story would actually fill my mind, sort of take me away from whatever the troubles in our very, actually, in some ways, difficult family was. And that would sort of carry me like a horse up a steep mountain to a crystal palace in order to go to sleep. But I had a recurring dream about Baba Yaga. I dreamed over and over that I had climbed this mountain and there was a palace, and the palace was on fire. And I saw it. And then running out from the palace was Baba Yaga holding in one hand her broom. She would leap onto her iron cauldron, and I would race down the mountain and wake up just as she was about to find me. And my pillow would be hot. So turn my pillow over and I would say, story. Story, until the cool cloth of the pillow would let me sleep. You would think that I would really be terrified of Baba Yuga.

Vanessa Rogers: 5:31

Yeah.

Laura Simms: 5:32

But I was actually more drawn to her. Who was she? So, in many ways, I've spent my whole life trying to know this aspect. Baba Yaga often called a witch in these kind of colonialized, rewritten fairy tales, which make her evil to find out who she was and to make friends with her. So I have been telling stories sort officially since I was 20 years old. It was an accidental event in Central park. And I literally did tell a story, a russian fairy tale in which there was a witch. They didn't mention baba Yaga in this story, but something happened during that remarkable event. This was, you know, like, 1978, and the audience that gathered, actually in front of the Hans Christian Andersen statue in Central park, where now I am the curator all summer long, of storytelling for all ages. This wonderful audience arrived, and I told the story. And while I was telling this story, everything that I was interested in through university, through graduate school, that I dropped out of the next day, and the interest I had in life and so forth in questions I was taking experimental theater classes at night, all seemed to be related to what happened during the storytelling, which is that the way that people listened to the story and the way that the air changed between us made me think that there was something so special about engagement that I dropped out of graduate school because I thought I would take a little detour and maybe spend six months or a year and find out what was this that happened between myself and the audience when there was a vehicle or framework of a narrative that was unfolding. And I'd always loved stories as a child, as you know, from my little anecdote about Baba Yaga and my dream. But that interest is what has sustained me and really colored my work and supported my work as a performer, as someone who deals with the hearing arts. I go into businesses, into NGO's, into schools all over the world to help people to use the skills of a storyteller, the sensitivity and understanding of the storyteller to increase not only their own life force and imagination, but in some ways, to restore Baba Yaga back into our world. She who is like the great mother goddess, the one who knows death.

Vanessa Rogers: 9:00

Why do you feel drawn to her?

Laura Simms: 9:05

Because the story that saved my life over and over again, the story of Vasilisa the beautiful, was the first story before Demeter and Persephone and others that I had read, in which there was a kind of female journey, in which a girl who had so much basic goodness inside of her could journey through the forest and confront Baba Yaga. If you confronted Baba Yaga properly, with regard, she gave you a skull on a bone, and the skull's eyes were on fire and it could light. Just all this is symbolic talk, isn't it? She could light, return the light to the world, the inner luminosity, the life force energy of the world. But if you went to her, it was an arrogant, bully kind of character. She could destroy you, trick you, send you in circles, seeking more and more and more. She was just a wonderful character. And also her imagery always fascinated me. Her one iron tooth, her wild hair, her metal cauldron that she flew in, the broom. She used to sweep away the traces, like sweeping away footprints of obstacles in the world. And I just adored her. She owned three horses, one red, one black, one white. They were her servants day, night and early dawn. She somehow just embodied so much of what I felt was lost to me in my life and maybe to many of us. So that's part of why I like her so much. I mean, I respect and fear her. Yeah, I do respect and fear the power of the feminine, but she is like the great tricksters of indigenous stories. She's also the great mother who can fool you, but who can feed you and has knowledge.

Vanessa Rogers: 11:26

Yeah, we did an episode about Baba Yaga, and I was just so in awe of how complex a character she is. So I love that you're talking about her because she is such a fascinating character and it's very widespread throughout. We think of it as a russian tale, but it's throughout a lot of european tales as well. Did you find that as well?

Laura Simms: 12:01

I think the fundamental feminine principle arises in almost every actual culture as both compassionate and fierce, and then it splits up into different goddesses, and then those goddesses become the wives of gods, and then they become beautiful women and then they become fairy tales and then they become beauty pageant girls, completely removed or like little pretty, you know, fantasy women that we like to see on television and so forth.

Vanessa Rogers: 12:47

So let's get back to your storytelling journey. So you decided to take a break from graduate school. Did you end up ever going back, by the way?

Laura Simms: 12:57

You what? I never went back. I'm so. You never went back. You're still on break, still becoming a storyteller.

Vanessa Rogers: 13:08

So what, so ended up happening? Did you just become to start telling stories and people came and listened?

Laura Simms: 13:18

Well, it's a long, you know, it's a long journey, I think. I think it's a life path to be a real storyteller. And I was thinking about all the quests, wonderful questions that you sent me once. I had this curiosity about what happened between myself and the listeners. And it's something I really wanted to understand. And I got a job, quite accidentally, at the American Museum of Natural History here in New York as a storyteller for the people center. And so I got to meet people like Colin Turnbull, anthropologists Margaret Mead, Joseph Campbell, folklorists, you know, wonderful people. And I had to tell stories every weekend on Saturday and Sunday. So I had access to the museum and to these remarkable people who didn't think it was a kitty or fairy tally thing to be a storyteller. They really took this work seriously. I was very lucky. But so they were there and I could ask questions if I should be so fortunate as to have access. And I was very shy, by the way. But there were two libraries there, and there's the outer library that anybody could go to. Behind it was a research library where there was more than 100 years of PhDs and missionary papers and research that folklorists, ethnologists, archaeologists, so forth had done. And I would, you know, it was only on the weekends that I had any work. The rest of the week I worked as a roller skating waitress in the chess club and which I learned some very important skills anyway. But in that library, I would just read about missionaries who had met storytellers and shamans and really were in other cultures that at the time that they met them, were. Still had some cohesion to them. So I was fascinated by this. And so I would spend hours seated on the floor reading. But you asked about telling stories. In the beginning, I began to telling fairy tales because that's what I grew up with. And I. Right across the street from where I lived, I attended a workshop that I was invited to when Joseph Campbell left Sarah Lawrence. It was the first workshop. And except for me, there were very important people there right now. And why am I going to forget her name now, which is a very important writer? She worked for Parabola magazine, actually founded Parabola magazine, and very formidable Englishwoman. And everybody did a go around. Joe would say, you know, what do you do? What do you do? And there were scholars and publishers and so forth, and, you know, people interested in his remarkable, you know, grasp of this kind of global view of story symbol and so forth, very highly regarding CG, etcetera. And. And they asked me, and I said I was becoming a storyteller. And a very formidable woman said to me, well, have you ever told the story of the June butchery? And I said, no. And she said, well, then, don't call yourself a storyteller, and told you.

Vanessa Rogers: 17:14

Wow.

Laura Simms: 17:15

So then I had a little job with a children's center for underprivileged children up on the Upper east side, and I decided I would tell the juniper tree. Now, this is before I had any sense of the architecture of engagement or how images are interrelated, how a character is only is not a full blown character, but a part of a whole ecology of a story and so forth. So I just kind of learned it. And I would make an outline of the story and sort of learn it, because one of the things that I began to be aware of when I was at the people center meeting, actually people who had grown up with storytelling, was that in great traditions, mostly people didn't memorize texts. They knew the story. So I didn't. I wanted to learn how to be on my feet. And true to, you know, the only access I had was usually text, which those are quite, you know, manipulated over time, but all stories have been. And so I told there's a very big audience of, like, young children and older children and people who work there and people who were curious at the center. And I started to tell the juniper tree. And I was very nervous, besides not knowing what I was doing, I was very nervous about telling this part of the story where the stepson had to put his head in a trunk, and the stepmother was going to slam the trunk down and behead him. And so I came to that part. I could feel my heart like, ting, ding, ding. Really beating, beating. But I had been told, this is the story I had to tell. So then I lifted my hands, and boom, his head went down, and the child in front of me just started to cry, and I didn't know what to do. So I just popped out of the story and just said to the child, it's just a story, and if you get afraid again, you can just get up and you can go to the door, and then if you're really scared, you can leave. So my entire audience, all the children, stood up, and they all went to the tour. I just went back into the story, continued telling it, and then slowly, they all kind of came back and listened. I thought about this for years, actually, and it really brought home to me was the beginning of my really investing myself in understanding the relationship of the narrator as opposed to the story and how. Because I was so aware of that child, and also I wasn't. I was being the narrator, you know, who the narrator is sort of in the past tense and is there giving the story out. And then, you know, if you have a kind of moment in which you become something, it's more that you embody it, and then you go back to being the narrator who's really there for the listeners. I was there for those children, maybe accidentally, really. I didn't know much, but I realized that I could come out and I could speak to them and then go back in, and they just went right back into the story as well. So they were. They were visualizing and creating the story as I was telling it, but I wasn't lost. So they had somebody there. And that really served me all these years that I've done a lot of work, you know, in difficult situations that I'm there. So in one hand, you'd say, oh, that's nice. But on the other hand, there's a secret to it also that I could then say, you know, and the mother chopped off his head. And I was saying it. I didn't say the mother chopped off his head, which then was like, they would be terrified of me, right? So they were in this story, and then they could come out and they could have this immense fear, but also drop the fear and then have immense emotion. And drop the emotion. So I realized that this was so helpful and so nurturing for children who were not growing up in a tradition where you learn to work with strong emotions, and you learned the difference between your emotions and yourself in some way. You learned to navigate. So that was so, all these things. And I can't say, well, I understood it that day. You know, this is a journey. I've committed myself to it completely because, as you were saying, it took a character, or in a rising aspect in the story, like Baba Yaga, that Jung called an archetypal character. They are complex. They're complex because they. An image is so powerful, because if we don't define the image, this means that then the image can hold more than itself and it can hold opposites, and we can relate to things in a very direct and vivid way without harming ourselves. All the things like the baba Yaganus of the world, we tend to really suppress or ignore, try to control, like we try to control the nature, then you can actually begin to encounter it, but also maintain some detachment so that you have your sanity and you have some capacity in your life to feel intense emotions, but not Beefe devoured by them. So for me, that's the power of these stories. Besides the fact that they're so enticing, they're so unusual. And the way that a story, a fairy tale begins, or the way that a storyteller begins, is that we want to know what's going to happen next. The storyteller has breath, the storyteller has pause. Timing is aware of their audience. So there is a kind of incredible trust. Then you can relax and you can actually imagine and feel without feeling threatened, and the storyteller is there for you. So it's very. I think it's so healthy in our world today because many of the things that we're not being taught that are not upfront in the culture, particularly with so much emphasis on digital technology, that the magic, which the Egyptians called heka, so it's nothing, not magic like fantasy, but magic like that, which is not explainable, but filled with life force and intelligence and intuition, is available to us through this. So that's. So when I teach, because I know you wanted to ask about that there are many things that I'm doing in the teaching, but usually what I do is, first of all, what I've started doing the last 20 years is braiding stories I tell. I think I sent you some of that. I'll tell personal stories for a fairy tale, and inside will be pieces of a fairy tale or a personal story. So we get to know the very depth of personal experience of a fairy tale. And then I don't have to explain something because there's nothing more damaging to the direct perception. Then starting to explain what is so much more powerful than an explanation, but also might have an explanation inside of it, but its felt sense is directly intelligent. So I'll usually work with a single story, a fairy tale, or I'll have people create a personal story, and then I'll work with them in looking at the images. And I've kind of figured out some things, although I think I'll never figure the whole thing out, just not the nature of it. So I'm really interested in sort of the architecture of how people become engaged in a story, of how a story functions, and also the deep regard for the structure of a story. So before I change character or change something in the story, I really have to understand how it's functioning in the story, because it's like the world. It's all interrelated. It's not. This is separate from that. And that I could turn the man into a woman or the woman into a man. I have to look at how they're functioning. And sometimes it's very evident how a story has been changed by an editor who, writing it down, wants to make it more literal and so forth, or someone who wants to make it only fanciful and childish and, you know, those kinds of things. So I look at what's the essential story that's there in the text, because that's what holds a narrator, you know, a listener to you. You don't want to say, what happened? Where was that? Who is that? You want to just be like, whoop, you know, journeying. And I can come in and out. And I love doing that with personal stories because. Yeah, go ahead.

Vanessa Rogers: 28:02

Do you find that the structure of a story is the same for writers as it is for oral storytellers, or do you have to change that structure somehow?

Laura Simms: 28:15

Well, first of all, I don't think any of us are oral storytellers anymore. I think we. We're all very schooled by literature and writing. So even the structure of the text, which I'm distinguishing from the story. No, I don't think. I think writing, which also I write, is different from telling. Telling is on the spot in relationship to a living audience. It's different. It has the sound, it has breath. It's a reciprocity, it's an occurrence. It's not a performance for me, where when I'm writing, I want to. I have certain other ways in which I'm working with the written word, which ultimately, you know, I read out loud, but so different. You're alone when you read it. You do have a relationship to it, but it's not as vividly happening between yourself. You know, there's some storytellers, because we have this contemporary view of storytelling, and it's a big, you know, popular name for many things. So people who memorize the personal stories or recite things that they've read, monologists and all of that one person shows often call it a story so that it has a personal quality to it, a sense of journey, which is very beautiful. But for storytelling itself, I think it's very unique in the way in which a story engages. But no, I have to work very differently, revise a thousand times when I'm writing to try to infuse it, to bring about something similar. But it has a very different world. It's a different context. Everything has context. Storytelling takes place in the moment that it's taking place.

Vanessa Rogers: 30:33

Yeah.

Laura Simms: 30:33

And you know, that. And also, I think, because we have dismissed and damaged so much of indigenous cis principles and perceptions, that there is a kind of deep regard that I have to have for the culture of each story. I can never be the Roma man. I'm going to tell you a little story later. The Roma man who took a. Told somebody a little story in, you know, the 1850s, I can never understand from where he came or also why he's telling that story to, you know, in being an informant for somebody who's in Romania who might be a scholar or an editor or collector or like you and I. So I can't know that, but I can. But I can regard that these are peoples who we have maligned and projected onto so thoroughly. So a powerful story, a beautiful story. Then, just as a reminder of the regard for some of the wisdom, you know, everything is based on wisdom, even though we're so disconnected from it now. So this been, you know, this is my whole life you're putting in a teacup here, which is. It's like a story, you know, like a story is an entire universe.

Vanessa Rogers: 32:13

Let's go back a little bit to the architecture of engagement. Can you talk a little bit about how you discovered that and what that looks like?

Laura Simms: 32:24

Well, I think I told you the story of when I began to discover it. I'm still just. I think that the spoken word is so potent that it, you know, I may have several lifetimes ahead of me to continue to understand the nature of sound and so forth, but. But in a very general way, very. This is very general, you know, the second that you take your place. It shifts something in the room and your relationship to the audience because there's a focus. Now there you are, like, look at your beautiful earrings and your bright face. You know, we're just gonna look at you like, oh, that's interesting. And I've decided to be here, or I passed by, and this looked pretty interesting. So there's a kind of shift. And then depending on the capacity of the teller and their commitment to the art form or relationship to it, there could be a moment of really just completely being embodied and present. And that also is like an electric shift for the audience because it arouses more interest, because you're feeling there's so much that goes on unseen, unheard and uncategorizable in a way. And when you begin, you make a first word to an audience. There's the sound of your voice is either really in. Genuine or genuine, or you, whatever you're expressing, it could be that it's not ingenuine, but it's you're preparing people for an experience. And the beginning of the story and how you introduce it. You're making a relationship to your audience. You're arousing their interest and also giving, like some, like putting the plate on the table or they are in a theater and the lights gym. So then the story begins as a moment in every story, when suddenly it shifts everything because something changes. And then we want to know what's going to happen next. The. There could be in my own childhood stories of saying to you every single day, my mother had me water a rose bush in our backyard. So. And I tell you a little bit about the backyard, so we. That's not that interesting, but you're curious. And if I do say, one day she sent me upstairs to find a photograph, then it's like at that moment, first of all, you've been visualizing the backyard, me and my mother. However, you are in the rose bush. And at that moment, something happens. And so the mind is expanded. You want to know what's going to happen next. You're depending on the storyteller to tell you. You're trusting them. And I brought the photograph downstairs to my mother, and the photograph was filled. It's a little black and white. Remember those old photographs? You might be too old to remember them. Black and white. It was just filled with rose bushes and vines. And in the distance, I could see a window behind a curtain. The formidable presence of my grandma, who I never knew who came from Romania. I said, mommy, why are there so many roses in Grandma Molly's backyard. And my mother said, lorraine, that garden was your grandmother's Romania. So I set you up. Then something happens, and the mind opens from within, and we go further. We're making the story with the storyteller, not seeing what the storyteller sees. Nobody sees my backyard in their own backyard. And at that moment, the heart opens and that we're in there. And very long stories take you episodically, whether it's a true story or a fairy tale. Episodically keeps you moving, keeps you deepening, imaging, feeling. Sometimes people laugh out loud, cry, and then something else happens. And all of the preoccupations that we had of our everyday life sort of start to fade away. They don't disappear, you know, depending. But sometimes when I'm telling stories to people who are in terrible situations of pain or dying, suddenly they're sitting and smiling. And it's not I'm making them better. It's I'm releasing them to be in the midst of whatever is happening, to experience a sense of involvement, being alive, imagining, feeling. And then the story comes to a close in the same way. You know, I might say that's it.

Vanessa Rogers: 38:36

So you mentioned that when you got started in storytelling that there wasn't a field of storytelling. Do you feel like this field has broadened, has grown? Is oral storytelling having a revival period, or is it still a dying arthem? What is your thoughts on that?

Laura Simms: 38:59

Well, I think there's a. Well, look, we're having a podcast here, and you're asking me about storytelling that wasn't happening in 1967, and when it was, it might be a children's magazine wanting to know about storytelling only for kids or so forth. So I think that there is the possibility of something very powerful returning, you know, because I've studied for so long, and I think about it not very categorizable in terms of what's oral. I think. I don't think of myself as an oral storyteller. I think of myself as a storyteller. I don't really know. Before all the different stories are gathered and picked out and become the Iliad and the odyssey, which is, you know, using stories from hundreds of years to glorify certain characters and so forth and create a history, I didn't really know what it was like, what the mind was like, what the sound of the storyteller's voice was like, how the those stories were told, if they were anything like the way I'm telling the story, but I'm living now. And so I work with a certain kind of structure of engagement because I have regard for the fact that we're not storied. I remember my adoptive son came here from Africa, and sometimes, you know, we're telling one of the stories I was working on. And what amazed me was I suddenly see almost another face appear inside his face, a face of such immediate and deep listening. Because he grew up often visiting his grandmother's village in West Africa, where storytelling occurred in the evenings, in certain seasons. And he listened to. He listened to stories so differently. He listened to them with a kind of immediacy that almost made me fall off my chair. I would have to like, whoa, put my feet back on the ground. And so I. So I. So I'm very invested in having a conversation like this and trying to speak more about the importance of really looking at what a story is, what storytelling is, how it can function, how we can have regard for other cultures, and also, same time, look at the history of images and symbols and metaphors that were all very different fruits. And so I think it's wonderful that it is coming back into the mainstream. But as usual, because we're so literary and we're so organized in a particular way, we want to mistake storytelling for branding or for making a point, or for teaching a particular lesson or selling something so that aspects of story can be used for those things. But the actual storytelling that engages is my particular path, and it's what I love to share with people in any situation, educators, healers, business people, ordinary human beings, so that we have some interest in what happens. You know, how often at the end of a story, I'm sure you have this experience, somebody will say to me, what happened? Can you tell it again? When I was younger and people would ask me out on dates after storytelling, and I thought they really wanted to get to know me. And then I realized, that's such an amazing experience. They want to have that experience again. We all want that experience of being in our lives, you know, and having. Opening up the doors of capacities that we may not have experienced, that allow us to have more intuition, more abiding calm, be able to listen more deeply, be able to hear what people are saying rather than what we're thinking. So I'm answering your question.

Vanessa Rogers: 43:52

I forgot what the question was at this point, but what you were saying did bring to mind something that I read from your writing that you sent me, and it was about the origin of the cedar, and you mentioned that you had heard the story once before, and it was told in a twelve minute storytelling session. And then you heard it again and it took an hour.

Laura Simms: 44:24

Oh, no. It's, here's the situation. I was very fortunate to have a kind of adopted grammar in a salish elder. Vai Takshukla Hilbert in Seattle. She heard me tell stories at early women's literature conference at the university where she taught her people's language, which is called the shoot seat. And so I spent a lot of time, as much time as I could with Vi. And she took me to an event on a reservation, so maybe 3 hours north of Seattle. And in this event, in which she was honored, actually, I was talking to a man who she told me was a great storyteller, native man. And he then was called and told the story, Salish story of the origin of the uses of the cedar tree, about a young orphaned girl who was set out in a canoe and so forth. And she ended up the cedar spirit of the cedar tree, showing her everything of its uses and how best to use it and when to use it, so forth. But I knew, like, a little piece of the story, and then he told it, and it was much longer. And I asked him about that, and he said, oh, that. When he was a child, this was a story that could go on for days, because all the knowledge that you have to have about the spirit world, about the cedaR, about relationships, about weather and so forth, was all in the story, in images. And also he said, oh, nobody can listen like that anymore. Tell it these other versions. But that was, you know, and I never heard the two day story, although there were occasions where by had taken me with Johnny Moses, who's still a great salish storyteller, very funny and great, but very profound storyteller in northwest coast would have epic weekends, and he would tell one epic story over two days. But there, too, it was. I wouldn't say it was interrupted. It was highlighted with dances and songs and eating, sometimes conversations. And I was young enough that my knees lasted the whole thing walking. And, you know, sometimes he would play the drum. He knew how to play the drum. And so it was a very, you know, I tried to learn as much as I could, experientially, so that since I was not going to do anything else in my life, I never went back to graduate school, because I kept having these encounters with people who knew something. And also I've just fallen in love with the whole process of looking at these stories. And how can I tell them now so that they benefit us? Because in a certain way, they speak so directly to things, but they're indirect enough that we don't have to have biases and opinions in them or my interpretation. I may have a really big interpretation, you know, inside me that I attempt to let this story live. I'm sure it infiltrates my voice because voice is like a fingerprint of everything, but, you know, and I make choices. But I was very lucky and continue to be. Look, I'm having this conversation with you. How fortunate.

Vanessa Rogers: 48:38

When I read that story in your chapter, I was really struck because I. That in my bones, we are such a busy society, it feels wrong to sit for too long and to not have something to do with our hands. I'm a mom of three, and so I always have to be doing something or things are falling apart. Things are falling apart anyways, even when I'm doing things. But so when I read, you know, that element, that part of your story, I just kept thinking, like, what are, you know, are people in that time period when these days long stories are happening? Are women, you know, still preparing food while they're listening? You know, things need to continue. Like someone has to feed people. Like, how does that even work? How do day long storytelling work unless, you know, people are actually working to eat and live and survive?

Laura Simms: 49:44

Well, I do think that survival is major everywhere. And, you know, I can't answer all these questions because I don't know, but I do from the little experience I've had, know that sometimes a story, you know, long epic is not told, like among the maori people in New Zealand. It wouldn't necessarily that you hear the story of Maui Otafaki, who was another sort of great character that you would hear it from beginning to end. It's that over a lifetime you might absorb the story. But I do think that people have the capacity, more developed capacity to deeply listen. And I find that part of my subversive work is to tell our and two hour stories to people who can't sit still. And through the listening, they begin to listen. And I'm not angry at them if they get up, because I'm still there. And I can say, well, maybe everybody needs a break now, but come back. I want to tell you what's going to happen next. But you have. Yeah, go ahead.

Vanessa Rogers: 51:18

I was just saying, do you have techniques to redraw people in? Since we do have shortened time frames in our brain because we, you know, we're always on screen. So they've done studies that show that we, our attention spans are much shorter than they used to be. Do you have techniques to help, you know, reengage your audience.

Laura Simms: 51:43

Speaking from the heart, pausing, being aware. For me, it's not a performer. Like, I have the story, and then I've got to get the whole story out. The engagement is part of the. Is the event. So, you know, it can be. It can be different in different situations. If I give you techniques, then you say, oh, this will work. And you depend on remembering that. But if in my training, you develop the sensitivity to pay attention, then you always know what to do. So it's, you know, for me, storytelling is alive, and I don't analyze text. I'm interested in it. But my focus is on bringing a story alive, people, and that's a mutual event. So, you know, I know I have friends with Baba Yaga enough that there are moments where I'll say no. And other times I would say, well, I was once, when I was younger, in a hospital, ran a project at Beth Israel hospital, and one day in this little claustrophobic room that they gave me to tell stories, lots of people were wheeled in, and I started. I was working for Lincoln center at the time, telling stories in the schools, and I was telling a 45 minutes fairy tale that I sometimes ended after 25 minutes and sometimes made more than an hour, depending on the school and the kids and so forth. And I decided to tell it to this group of people. And about five minutes in, everybody was snoring. It was like, oh, my God, they're totally uninterested. And I said, I can see everybody's falling asleep. Would you like me to stop telling you this story? And the people up in the room said, no, please continue. So I continued, and, like, the lots of people were closing their eyes during it, and I was young, so it was like, what is going on here? And afterwards, when it was over and I was a little bit undone, but I had to deeply hold on to the story and my sense of connection, even though there were snorers and people with their eyes closed and they seemed to be totally disinterested with me. I just had this sense, like, an inner sense that they were there and I was speaking to them. And when it was over, an old woman took me by the hand, and she said, you know, I haven't slept in days. And while you were telling this story, arrested. So that's how I learned. I learned to, you know, and there have been moments where I have stopped and said, this doesn't seem to be working. I could try a different story, or I could leave.

Vanessa Rogers: 55:35

Yeah, tell us. So tell us a little bit about the work that you do besides just storytelling for audiences. And in front of the Hans Christian Andersen statue, you do courses, and you also do some humanitarian work as well. Let's start with your teaching. What type of teaching do you do?

Laura Simms: 56:05

Well, sometimes I'm just hired to teach storytelling for an organization that wants to just doing something for a hotel chain. They really felt that they wanted their executives to relate to each other more intimately. So it was at the beginning of a long training day, so I told them a story, and then I had them tell stories to each other to just open up the channels of communication, get to know each other in a different way. That's very simple. And sometimes it's, you know, going before a group of nurses or doctors to talk about listening to stories so that they could hear through the images and through the way that somebody's speaking something more about what's going on. And so. And also training people to create stories with people. Or, you know, people come to me if they. Somebody's writing a memoir and feels that they would like there to be more depth in this memoir, and they are thinking of weaving a story inside of it, a traditional story, or they're writing about something that feels more sacred or more intimate. So I might help them with that. Then I teach one of my favorite courses at present is called. Called the great story immersion. And people come and we all work one story, usually, and then we research it. We work on how you prepare to look at a story, the structure of the actual text, research, and then work with the architecture of engagement, mapping the story. But we work really uncovering how this story really might have meaning for listeners beyond the surface interpretation of the things that happen in the text, what's really going on in the story? What's the experience of it? And there we braid in a lot of, I'll have them make maps and go to a place in the story and associate with a memory. And then how do you turn a memory into a story that's valuable to tell? A story is a special kind of species, but it's not something that you can, like, list this, that, and that is a story. Those things may be part of it, but because of its living nature, we have to experience what a story is. How do you choose from the myriads of details? How do you choose during a presentation that really brings your audience alive? Recently, I worked for a UN NGO in a situation where they're having a high level diplomatic meaning on hunger. And this NGO wanted to deal with bread. And so I told a variety of stories there and then encouraged people to tell their own stories from their own countries about bread, which have to do always with a multitude of ingredients, with sharing, with eating together. So a lot of the aspects of things that they were talking about, which are very data bound and complicated. The heart of it was something that we talked about together. It was very refreshing. My work in Haiti was first with international medical corps, in which I worked with Haitians who were going into the camps and was giving them storytelling skills because people were. Had lost everything and were living in such a displaced situation. And how. So I worked with them for three days, and then went to different camps. And where I told stories, I was with the translator. They could see what happens when you're enlivened again, help people to share with each other, to not be devoured by despair of what had happened. You know, there are lots of different things like that have. I'm going to tell you this one tiny story that I told at this un NGO side meeting. So it's a story that was. It was from. From somewhere like the north of England or Scotland, about a woman who baked breads every morning. And then she put them in a basket, and she covered the basket with a cloth, and then she went from one house to another. And people would come out the door, and they would lift the cloth, and they would put in a bread, or they would take out a bread and then cover the cloth. And no one asked who put in the bread or who took out the bread. And in that village, there was no hunger. We talked about that story because then you. It's not pointing at you or something, but you're talking about what happened there. What is that? And plus, hopefully, through the telling of the story, like, what did you feel during that story, Vanessa? What did you feel?

Vanessa Rogers: 1:02:06

You know, our modern politics, wherever people like to point fingers a lot of times and say, these people are constantly taking from you, and we should stop. We should stop helping them is, you know, incredibly frustrating for me. And so it brought me to modern times. In what is happening in our modern world right now, what are the reactions that other people have?

Laura Simms: 1:02:38

Well, what did you feel while you listened to it? What were the emotions that I think is quite rich and beautiful. What did you feel? What happened to you while you listened to it?

Vanessa Rogers: 1:02:50

My chest got tight, and I felt hurt for those people in our world that are constantly struggling. Yeah.

Laura Simms: 1:03:06

So you could. So that tightness, what happened? I told a story in that situation. Was that a lot of that tightness was loosened, and some people felt exactly what you felt. And I tried to keep them from not talking about their thought about it, but their feeling about it, so that they could stay in their bodies. It's very difficult to do all this online. But. But anyway, I just thought I pop in a little story. No, no, but I think that's. That's. That's the point. What you said is the point, that's where we go. So actually having. Replacing that with the possibility of something else is a little door opening. But, you know, it's. So I. The other thing that I am working on is something called finding gold in your story. I do that once a year, and then people bring a story they're working on, whether it's a personal story or a fairy tale. And I work on a kind of step by step process of really looking into the structure of the story and learning about storytelling. And then I have them telling stories to each other and so forth and so on and looking for what's the goal? Why, like what you said, why are we telling this story? Why would we tell this story at this moment to an audience? What really can possibly happen? Like, I saw that you had Rumpelstiltskin. When I was asked if I would be part of a group of storytellers. Telling Little Red Riding Hood was never a story I would ever thought of telling. So I decided that I would actually think about that story and retell it as I would. And it was really fun to reinvest the old woman with a relationship to wolf and her red riding hood, not as psychological, but as a kind of robe. And so I had a lot of fun telling it. And my brother was dying at the time, and he's a scholar of ethnology and literature, and he wrote an essay to me about my telling of the Little Red Riding Hood, which was wonderful. And also, I got to tell it to him while he was dying. So I got to. In these many phone calls we had, I realized that telling him a story just relaxed him and also let him think about other things. Not that I want to, you know, we shouldn't think about dying or feel our pain, but that in the midst of it, one could actually journey internally like that and find some calm or joy in the midst of chaos.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:06:27

That brings me back to another thought that I had at the very beginning of our conversation, when you were talking about telling the juniper tree to a group of children. And this is a discussion that I have with my co host. When we do the fairy tale flip episodes once a month, and we kind of look at it, take a fairy tale and turn it on its back and look at its underbelly and try and understand its context. But we often have this conversation about whether or not the original fairy tales should be told to children, because children of, you know, today, the fairy tales today are much, especially for american culture, are much more muted, right? They're less aggressive, they're less violent. And we have this mentality that we want to protect our children from the roughness that the world can and has been in the past and is in other places. What are your thoughts about that?

Laura Simms: 1:07:38

First of all, I don't think there is an original fairy tale. I think that we have written texts that are written down by, you know, combination of who collected it, who translated it when it was told, who told it, what the editor wanted, what the, you know, Grimm's brothers believed as they rewrote the stories over many years. I think it depends on the storyteller. Vanessa. If someone is capable of taking somebody through a difficult story, then that's a different kind of storytelling with someone who's not trained to do that. Like, if you're just memorizing the text and you haven't really looked at the alchemical transformation that constitutes the journey of the story, then it is sort of sensational violence. But when you understand how the story functions, then you have a different relationship to the telling you want to take people through so that they could expand their ability to feel things. But also, there are times like there was a story, I was in residence at the United nations school, and I told stories to third graders every week. There was a story I loved from Norway. The origin that I know of, the written origin of this story is norwegian, and the story was called the giant with no heart.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:09:24

Oh, yeah.

Laura Simms: 1:09:28

So while I was telling. And, you know, I did enough work on that story because I had told it enough times, you know, different situations, and researched it, so forth, and did my thing with it. But when I was telling the story, there's a moment close to the beginning where the horse says, you know, kill me and feed me to the fox. Or is it the wolf? I can't remember now. And the prince kills him in the story. But I looked at these kids because I was there telling the story, and I. And, you know, the horse said, you know, oh, the fox says, you know, kill your horse and you can ride on me. And I just saw these kids. I didn't know if these kids, who these children were, really, but I didn't want to take out the. Such an incredibly important moment. The foxes killed the horse, and you can ride on me. So I said, the horse was an old horse. First of all, he rode as slowly as a three legged horse, so we knew he was an old horse, the horse. So I looked at these kids and I said, well, the horse looked up at the prince and said, I'm very old. Let me die. And so the prince cut off the horse, and the horse lay down and died. Then the fox wolf ate the horse and the prince. So I did in that sense of mediate that story, but I didn't take away or the exchange away, so I wanted to keep, because it's such a brilliant story in, it's in the journey of what takes place for a listener, what can really occur. But I did. I changed it. But I didn't change it because I understood. I didn't change it rampantly. I changed it on the spot because, you know, if you're really relaxing, you have a lot of space in your mind, even on the moment. So. And that seemed to satisfy everyone. Nobody said to me afterwards, did the horse have to die?

Vanessa Rogers: 1:12:07

Right?

Laura Simms: 1:12:07

And in fact, those kids, I never asked them anything. I said, well, one kid said, was that true about something that happened? And I said, well, what are the other things that. That happened in this story that didn't seem to be true? And they all started saying, and we had such a good time because they were, you know, the quality of sort of disbelief because you're listening symbolically, you're not listening. You're listening imaginally, you're not listening literally. And that's part of our disaster in the world, is that we're always listening to everything literally. There is literal reality, but also within that, there's possibilities of things and nuance and feelings and emotions. So there's a quality of allowing some of that to be in the world with us so we don't have to say, I know that's true. And you don't agree with me, you're out of here, right?

Vanessa Rogers: 1:13:07

Yeah.

Laura Simms: 1:13:08

So, you know, I was in school, I was hired, and the principal said, maybe you could do something about bullying. We're at our wit's end. So there was a great story called the Dreamer, and in it, there are some brothers who are really bullies. So I told this story. I never talked about bullying. And when I went in, you know, the bullies were one side and the rest of the classroom the other side. I mean, they have their zoom. It was so obvious. I just went in, told this story, and then I said, well, what do you think? And one of the boys in the bully area raised his hand. He said, that brother was so mean. And I said, well, what made him so mean? He said, somebody must have hurt him when he was a kid. So I wasn't giving a lesson about how not to be a bully or having a technique. It was just generating this conversation. And then they sort of moved over to listen altogether to the next story, whether they were aware of it or not.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:14:23

Well, this has been wonderful. Is there anything that we haven't had? There were a lot of questions that we did not cover that I had. But is there anything that you feel that we didn't talk about that you wanted to?

Laura Simms: 1:14:40

No. I really came on here wanting to answer any questions you had to ask me.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:14:52

Well, you have a book that's coming, right? Or that you're working on. Does that have published?

Laura Simms: 1:14:57

I have a book that is already out, which is called. I have several books, but it's called our secret territory, the essence of storytelling, published by sentient Books. That's been out for a while. I just finished writing a book, which now I'm bringing to another publisher called the Story of Wildenhouse Rose, summoning the restoration of the world, how story heals. And that's all based one fairy tale. And then I'm working for a small publishing company, and I thought, I would never do this, but it's how to tell a story, which are clues, suggestions for people who would like to be storytellers in lots of situations, both in situations of telling personal narrative retelling and adapting traditional stories of one kind or another, or putting them together. And so there I'm giving some suggestions so that people could have a sense of the difference between the narrator, the text, and the storytelling engagement and where the story occurs. So that's it.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:16:23

Can the listeners find all your books on your website?

Laura Simms: 1:16:27

Not the ones that haven't been published yet, but I have a blog and my website. Usually when I upkeep it, classes and events that are occurring and so forth, so you could see those. And that's just very simple. Www.laurasims.com people can write to me at storymentor 20 tenmail.com if you're interested in my coming in to work with you or an organization, and that's it. Well, thank you. I'm so happy that you are on this path and that as a young person, you're really interested in learning to be a storyteller and to bring stories into the world. It's really wonderful.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:17:30

Well, thank you. I love the work that you're doing and have done, and it's very inspiring. And I think a lot of our listeners will find it inspiring as well. So thank you so much for coming on fabric of folklore.

Laura Simms: 1:17:45

Thank you.

Vanessa Rogers: 1:17:46

And thank you, folksy folks, for joining us on this storytelling journey today. All the links that she mentioned, her Gmail and the links to her website will be on in our story, in our podcast notes, which can be found at my website, www.fabricoffolklore.com. So all of those links that she mentioned will be there as well. And I want to encourage everybody once again to make sure you hit that subscribe button if you're enjoying this show, whether you're listening or you're watching, so that you get notifications and you are able to continue to follow the journey of fabric of folklore. We're on social media, mostly on Facebook and on Instagram, but we are a little bit on LinkedIn and on Twitter as well. So if that's your jam, you can find us there. Thanks so much for listening to Fabrico folklore. Once again, my name is Vanessa Y. Rogers. And until next time, keep the folk alive.