Memory and Storytelling - The Seven Year Weave
We are actually wired to change our stories. We embellish, we diminish, we combine memories, and sometimes we create memories that never happened. And we do this, according to the work of Frederic Bartlett and several other memory researchers after him, in an attempt to “smooth out” the memory in order to make it fit in the existing network of stories that comprise our sense of reality - our version of what is so. This is why we remember things to suit our situation: we’ve smoothed the memories out to confirm that our reality is exactly that - real. We’ve used this memory to make all the more clear that what is so IS SO. Things that don’t make sense to us, or aren’t consistent with our other stories, get edited out.
And this is why I wanted to end this first season with this story, The Seven Year Weave, and its corresponding storytelling tool. Because we need to get better at listening. We need to get better at hearing other people’s stories and be able to hear something new.
You’ll hear in this story how people in this community have literal weaves of memories. Their stories make threads that are woven together into a tapestry - a tapestry that is, essentially, their story. And it is on display and unique and a part of who they are.
I like this - because imagine if you could see someone’s story - all its color and form and certain themes - and you could not only appreciate it but let it work on your own story. This is why we have the story listening tool. We have wide listening where we make ourselves available to information we otherwise would not notice, We have dense listening to include our bodies and subconscious into the experience. We have emergent listening to make room for something new and then narrow listening to help us contain it into our own story and understanding of the world. Four kinds of listening - not one. Four ways to be with other people and not only understand, but appreciate their unique story. A story that you will never hear from anyone else, in all of human history.
Thank you all for such a wonderful and enlightening first season!
[00:07] Audio Story snippet
[00:58] Introduction
[07:04] Our Story Listening Tool, a little about it and where to get it
[08:20] Audio Story - Stories From the Well - The Seven Year Weave
Memory and Storytelling - The Seven Year Weave
Full transcript
What the community didn’t know was that Adri and her mother had another storytelling practice that they did in the privacy of their own home - one that they shared with each other, but no one else. It was very special to them both and something they looked forward to. At least once a week, Adri’s mother would tell Adri a story. These stories were not the same stories passed down within the community - these were unique stories that were just for the two of them. Adri’s mother would tell Adri stories about herself. She would tell Adri stories about her life - her early life and her life when Adri was born and then stories about when Adri was growing up and all the way up to the present moment.
That was from the final story in our Stories from the Well series, called “The Seven Year Weave”. Quick note that there are several other stories in that series and you can find them all at our website howtostory.org - just look for the library tab and they are all there including several documents of other pedagogical stories I’ve produced over the years, and a few audio stories written and produced by graduates of our Restorative Storytelling training program. All there - have a listen after you listen to this, which is our final episode of season one.
I decided to end this season with this story because it is all about stories, memory and how we RE-member stories. I’m very interested in this subject perhaps in part because I’m getting older and it's a thing we older people do - we remember - but mostly it's because I am fascinated at how memory actually … fails us. Fails us in terms of it being accurate.
I mean we think our memories are accurate, but I’m sure you’ve had the experience where you’ve described a memory and someone who was there and experienced the same thing will say something completely different. “They never said that” or “No it was a truck” or “What are you talking about Dad wasn’t even there”. You know what I mean. How can this be? How can there be such a shift in how we remember things? How can a memory actually divide us?
Well…I’ve been doing some reading and some experimenting and what I’m finding is that we are actually wired to change our stories. We embellish, we can diminish them, we combine memories, and sometimes we create memories that never happened. And we do this, according to the work of Frederic Bartlett and several other memory researchers after him, in an attempt to “smooth out” (that’s the term Bartlett uses) the memory in order to make it fit in the existing network of stories that comprise our sense of reality - your unique version of what is so. This is why we remember things to suit our situation: we’ve smoothed the memories out to confirm that our reality is exactly that - real. We’ve used this memory to make all the more clear that what is so IS SO. Things that don’t make sense to us, or aren’t consistent with our other stories, get edited out.
And this is why I wanted to end this first season with this story and its corresponding storytelling tool, because we need to get better at listening. We need to get better at hearing other people’s stories and be able to hear something new. Something that might not fit into our understanding of reality or what is so. This is how empathy happens, how inclusion happens and how we become a diverse and welcoming community. We are able to listen with compassion and openness to something that is NOT US. Something that is entirely someone else's fabric of reality. Their weave, as this story calls it.
You’ll hear in this story how people in this community have literal weaves of memories. Their stories make threads that are woven together into a tapestry - a tapestry that is, essentially, their story. And it is on display and unique and a part of who they are.
I like this - because imagine if you could see someone’s story - all its color and form and different themes - and you could not only appreciate it but let it work on your own story. This is why we have the story listening tool. We have wide listening where we make ourselves available to information we otherwise would not notice, We have dense listening to include our bodies and subconscious into the experience. We have emergent listening to make room for something new and then narrow listening to help us contain it into our own story and understanding of the world. Four kinds of listening - not one. Four ways to be with other people and not only understand, but appreciate their unique story. A story that you will never hear from anyone else, in all of human history. That’s something.
As you heard me say up front, there are quite a few offerings you can get on our website howtostory.org and I want to highlight the Story Listening tool. The narrow, wide, dense and emergent listening tool is available right now. It's very inexpensive - the same cost as our pocket storytelling camps for kids - so I encourage you all to over to the website, listen to some more stories, download a few for later, and then fill your storytelling pockets with camps and tools that will make your reality a little more wide, deep and emergent.
OK, thanks all for a great first season! Here is the Seven Year Weave.
Stories from the Well - The Seven Year Weave
There was once upon a time a village in the mountains that had a very curious but powerful tradition. This town enjoyed many of the benefits of mountain life: ample game for hunting, berry bushes for gathering, cleared mountain pastureland for sheep, fresh well water from a nearby mountain spring, and beautiful vistas to enjoy all year long. The town also faced many of the challenges other mountain towns faced: harsh winters, buggy springs, occasional fires and very little level ground. The people of this town knew how to hunt and gather food, they knew how to raise sheep and use their wool for clothing, they knew how to store water, they knew how to support each other in storms, they knew how to care for and educate their children. It was a self supporting community that was much like all other mountain communities during that time.
But what separated them from other towns - and may very well have made this town uniquely calm in the face of adversity, was the tradition of the seven year weave.
The tradition was started years ago by a woman who was not a trained weaver and by many accounts was not at all good at weaving. Her name was Adrija, which meant ‘mountain born’, but everyone called her Adri. She could hunt game, gather nuts, berries and mushrooms, chop wood, mix a fine mortar for home repair and do any of the skills that were expected of mountain folk - but she did have a unique skill that set her apart. She was an extremely good listener.
In this mountain town, like in most mountain towns, people didn’t do a lot of talking. Time was of high value and it was generally used to provide necessities like food, clothing and shelter. Talking was usually valued to help those pursuits, to exchange important information or once a week to tell stories that were passed down in the community. Talking was not a highly valued skill - but listening was. A good listener helped everyone with their talking - helped them get to the point quicker and be more clear in their talking. Everyone in that mountain town knew who the good listeners were because their own talking got so much better when they were around them. And everyone in that town agreed that Adri was the best listener around. The storytellers made sure she was present for the weekly stories. Whenever something needed to be said to the full community, the people speaking asked that Adri be right up front to help them. It was an unspoken role of hers - to listen to any important talking, for it was believed the speech would be better and of higher quality, if it was around such a high quality listener as Adri.
Now Adri lived with her mother in a piled stone house near the main mountain spring-fed well for the town. Part of their work as mother and daughter was maintaining the well, making sure it was clean, that the stones were in good repair and during the long winters that it wasn’t covered in snow. It took daily work and Adri and her mother were committed and consistent in their work. Adri was very close with her mother. Her mother, as is often the case with those appointed with caring for wells, was one of the community’s chief storytellers. In many communities the well was considered a source of life and those wishing to care for wells somehow always ended up being very good storytellers. So Adris’ mother would tell stories and Adri was her chief listener.
Adri’s mother called her storytelling “spinning a tale” and when she wasn’t in town telling stories to members of the community, she would sit in their stone house and literally spin yarn out of carded wool from her sheep while she told her stories to Adri. As she spun the yarn, Adri would listen to the story and gather the yarn into a ball or spool if the yarn was thinner and more like a thread. Her mother would spin and Adri would gather. Her mother would tell a story and Adri would listen. This was the arrangement and it was a good one for the community.
What the community didn’t know was that Adri and her mother had another storytelling practice that they did in the privacy of their own home - one that they shared with each other, but no one else. It was very special to them both and something they looked forward to. At least once a week, Adri’s mother would tell Adri a story. These stories were not the same stories passed down within the community - these were unique stories that were just for the two of them. Adri’s mother would tell Adri stories about herself. She would tell Adri stories about her life - her early life and her life when Adri was born and then stories about when Adri was growing up and all the way up to the present moment. Adri’s mother would tell these stories and Adri would take a particular piece of thread or yarn, and she would weave it in her hands into a woven cloth made of the previous yarns or threads. With each new story told, Adri would simply weave in a new yarn. At first she did this just as something to do with her hands as she listened to the story, but later, when she could remember each of the stories by looking at particular pieces of yarn, it became a kind of document of all the stories. It was as if she was writing the stories down - but instead was weaving the stories together into a cloth. It wasn’t a very good weaving - no, it was bumpy and strangely shaped - but it was easy for Adri to remember all the stories - right there - in one place.
This was a tradition just for the two of them, until Adri’s mother got quite old and wasn’t able to tend the well, nor was she able to tell any more stories. Tending the well became Adri’s chief occupation - that and tending to her mother. And when the day came when Adri’s mother was dying and quietly lying on her bed, Adri used the woven cloth to tell her mother the stories that she remembered. She went from yarn to yarn and thread to thread and remembered each story - and told each one until her mother stopped breathing and was at peace.
Friends of Adri’s mother saw the woven cloth and inquired. Adri told them and they were at once moved … and interested. They thought it was a beautiful tradition they shared - and what a treasure to have a piece of cloth that represented all those stories. There was more talk about the tradition and the cloth and in time, people went to Adri for guidance. They wondered how she did it and wished to have such a document for their parents and grandparents. Adri tried to explain but found it easier to demonstrate.
The people of this mountain town loved her process and found it challenging to be able to listen as deeply as Adri could listen. She was so calm and present while she listened to stories, that they proposed an exchange. They would help her tend to the well. They would also hunt for her, gather food for her, help raise her sheep that provided the wool and make repairs or cook food for her - if she would listen to their stories and weave them into a cloth.
She agreed. She enjoyed it. She was good at it - but she was quickly overwhelmed - there was no way to listen to that many stories every day - there were too many people with too many stories. There was simply not enough time.
So after pulling back and trying to prioritize the older community and then trying to honor the people who were tending the well or who offered to hunt and cook and clean for her, she came upon a method that worked for everyone.
Her method was to listen to only one person every day. They would come to her home, draw water from the well and drink its pure water. Then they would tell her their stories - all the stories they could think of, and she would listen and spin a thread and listen and spin another thread and listen and spin yet another - and then they would take those threads home with them. It might be three or four months before they would have a chance to tell her more stories and again they would gather up the spun yards she created. And then, once every seven years, she would spend a few days working with one person. That person would spend all day with her, taking care of the well, drinking from the well, helping with the cooking and cleaning, but most of their time would be spent telling stories. One person would have her total attention for nearly a week and the two of them would go over all the stories - each thread and Adri would then weave each story with the other stories until they would have a bit of cloth - a cloth made of seven years of stories. Then they would do it all again seven years later.
It changed the town and became a way people would know each other. A person’s seven year weave was always on display and if you invited someone over to your house, they would then ask about it and perhaps hear some of those stories. The seven year weave would be an easy way to know a person in their town and to understand why they are the way they are.
Adri continued to offer the residents of the town seven year weave for as long as her fingers could spin and weave - and when she was too old to continue, she trained others in the craft - and the tradition continued to live on. The practice became associated with the mountain well next to Adri’s stone house and when Adri passed and the house was empty, the town decided to call it the Well House. Going to the well house meant visiting the well, tending to it, drinking from it, and then sitting in the stone house and telling your stories to someone trained to listen, spin and weave.
In time there were elders who had visited the Well House for several decades. They had such histories telling their Stories from the Well, as they came to be known, that their tapestries were not seven or fourteen or twenty one year weaves, but a seventy seven year weave or an eighty four year weave - such a long and colorful tapestry of stories from the well that was then passed down from generation to generation to generation.
Our theme music was produced by Javon Phelps. The story music was by Angus Sewell McCann, the story was edited by my co-teacher over at How to Story Meredith Markow. And the How to Story Podcast is produced by me, David Sewell McCann, and Marjorie Shik.
Thank you for joining us. Remember to rate and review. And we will catch you in season two.
