ANECDOTE HOUR
In 2000, I was asked by the arts department of a local authority to
deliver a storytelling and poetry project to a group of older people
each of whom was suffering from some form of Alzheimer’s or dementia.
This was to be a practical and participatory project delivered over
eight consecutive Thursday afternoons in a day room at a care-home in
an English village. The brief was that it had to have something to do
with WORDS. The process followed the ANECDOTE HOUR principle:
“…therefore, my aim in every one of the eight sessions was
to agitate ‘TALK’ amongst the participants - to stir it
in every way I could, to generate it, to facilitate it, to provoke it,
to tease it out and to help bring about within it those qualities of
soul searching, honesty, bravery and fun which help lift human interaction
into the worthwhile and the sublime.
And then to trust the process; indeed, to rely on it.
There were eight sessions in all, each lasting about two hours. Some
were loosely constructed around a basic theme; some were not. For example
the session on the
9 November, being close to Remembrance Sunday, treated themes of war
and peace; the session on the 23 November explored superstition and
Fortune Telling…
The session that took place on the 15 November, on the other hand, was
entirely spontaneous. I took a fancy to reading aloud a classic text,
which I had brought, of Jack and the Beanstalk (Joseph Jacobs). I was
interested to see how the clients would respond to the experience of
listening to a formal and well-known fairytale.
I wanted to know if I could induce a dream quality, and to see where
that would lead.
The result was startling. No sooner had the strains of the formulaic
utterance “…and they all lived happily ever after”
died down, than Freda, with some costly passion, posed the question,
“Have you ever lived happily ever after?” aiming the question
first one way, and then another. The ensuing discussion took us through
forests of material, and filled the entire session.
The eight or nine of us would sit on easy chairs around a table upon
which were placed a tape-recorder and a mountain of texts and poetry
books. There would be a little bit of banter across the space. Then
I would make some sort of beginning. It might be a re-cap of something
previous, or a comment on the weather, or a provocative question such
as “Does anybody here get sick of children?”… Then
the ball would be set rolling, and it would invariably continue to roll,
higgledy-piggledy, as though it had a life of its own, through as many
of the levels and textures and moods as could be encountered in the
time available before the carers brought round tea and biscuits.
Typically, the kind of thing that would happen would be that a story
would lead to an anecdote from someone. Then someone would remember
something. Then I would pick up one or other of the anthologies lying
on the table and read out a poem, which might or might not have something
to do with the last thing we were talking about. Then Dilly would recite
a long (and I mean long) monologue. Or Ann would treat us to a narration
of some happening or other from her many travels. Or Veronica might
read us something she had brought from home. This might lead into an
argument, then a dispute, then and a joke, then something entirely unconnected
… and, so the ball rolled on.
The impression was that we were engaged in long and circuitous chatter
that hardly ever seemed to flag. But the reality was that our weekly
journey together was always an adventure from the known into the unknown
and safely back again, pockets stuffed with crab apples and nuts, or
fingers twined round some fragrant posy of wild anemones or the like
taken up along the half forgotten pathways of the afternoon’s
wanderings.…
TREASURES
The group consisted of Dilly, Eunice, Veronica, Ruth, Ann, Barbara,
Freda and one man, Earnest. The oldest, I think, was Freda at eighty-four.
They enjoyed telling stories, making points, reminiscing. They exhibited
a whole-hearted sense of fun. They were tolerant with each other, patient
and understanding, often protective. They were plucky and still highly
curious about things.
A major part of my job as I saw it was to issue challenges - to incite
strong responses, (creatively, sensitively, respectfully) and thereby
unlock, if I could, the ‘word-hoards’ hidden and buried
deep like treasure. This was a risky business, requiring trust on all
sides, but it was necessary for the integrity and quality of our enterprise.
I took care that the challenges never became threats, and I do feel
that the risks paid off.
Once, I told them a most brutal and harrowing urban myth, in which my
manner of telling spared no graphic detail. It was presented as a true
account, and concerned a young boy falling into a vat of molten steel.
In the story, the father of the boy brings about his son’s speedy
demise by pushing his down and holding him under. Asked to comment on
the father’s conduct, Ann said, “… He knew that his
son had suffered enough, and he didn’t want him to suffer anymore,
and he thought he was best gone out of the world.” To me, that
expression, which I have italicised, was pure poetry! “It brings
a lump to my throat,” said Freda. “It doesn’t bear
thinking about,” said Dilly, as she tried first to absorb and
then to wipe out the image. Many of the texts I selected for reading
aloud, in common with the formal stories I chose to tell, were similarly
emotionally penetrating, and most were equally rewarding. This was due
as much as anything I think to the trust we had built up both in the
process and between each other.
Wilfred Owen’s poems Anthem for Doomed Youth and Dulce et Decorum
Est brought tears to Freda’s eyes. She could hardly get the words
out but it was important to her for us to know that she thought, “
…He was a good man, wasn’t he?”
Freda suggested that in order for a marriage to work a wife must treat
the husband and the children equally, and so avoid the canker of jealousy.
For Freda, the term To Live Happily Ever After was a reference solely
to the ideal of marriage, and to nothing else – an idea that I
had not before considered. “I feel sorry for anyone who isn’t
happy,” she once said to Barbara. “Have you ever been happy?”
she asked. Barbara said she had. Freda insisted she, Barbara, had not.
Barbara insisted she had… and so the dispute went on, neither
side giving up. “Never mind,” says Freda at last, “you’ll
both be together again, soon”! Despite the general ripple of horror
at Freda’s seeming lack of sensitivity there followed a lively
discussion around the theme of success in general, other peoples’
lives, and what it is that leads to happiness…
Victoria told a good story, a true one, from her own life. It seems
that she and her husband had ever had only the one quarrel in their
lives. He come home from work at lunchtime, and had trodden mud all
over Victoria’s newly scrubbed kitchen floor. Furious with his
negligence she had scolded him roundly, and had then flung his dirty
boots out of the door, and into the yard. Her husband said not a word,
but sat down in silence to eat his lunch, after which he proceeded to
sit snugly by the fire. Time ticked on, well past the time when, by
rights, he should have been back at work. Unable to sustain her sulk
any longer Victoria pointed out the time, and asked him what he thought
he was playing at. He calmly informed her that he could hardly return
to work barefoot! There was nothing for it. She had to retrieve the
boots, and clean them. And, from then on, never a cross word passed
between them. Or, so Victoria says!
6 CONCLUSION
Stories, jokes, riddles, anecdotes, prayers, blessings, benedictions,
poems, carols musings, monologues, rhymes, reveries, reminiscences,
confessions, memories, discussions, disputes, wit, banter…
just some of the forms our shared words took
not gone now
but like ripples in a pool
still reaching outward
through the water
Lenny Alsop
December 2000
