Place for Story—The Plan before Exercise One—An invite to all storytellers, writers, and other imaginative thinkers who want to explore how place can be used in their work.
As creative people, do we take the time to place ourselves in creative spaces? This can mean travel to physical places that can lead to rich narratives when we visit them. However, it can also mean putting yourself in the mind or ‘in the right place’ to be creative.
Sometimes, we don’t even have to travel to create. However, we do need to be in the right space for it to happen. This might not involve flying or driving somewhere, it simply asks you to let go, --play so that you can travel where the memory of the place takes you. This is true even when that means coming back to home. As the poet T. S. Eliot said, “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
As Eliot notes, perhaps we just need to revisit the place to see a new story.
The invitation: Although I am a writer and strongly believe in writing, I want you instead to think of the work that we do to bring you to a memory. When I studied with Dorothy Heathcote, internationally known British process drama practitioner, she reminded me that all stories are episodic.
Note: Episodes are a series of segments that are not always chronological or linear that have the possibility of connecting to a narrative. (This is based on my study with Dr. Brian Edmiston, author of Imagine to Learn and Dorothy Heathcote who is responsible for bringing the idea of process drama to the United States from England.)
Each image reminds you of an action and by concentrating on the image, if you allow it, can bring you to new awareness and action. These are critical spaces where story happens.
The Invitation:
I will follow this format in this blog.
· I will speak to what I am doing regarding creating a sense of place for story to happen.
· I will share some pictures that remind me of an action that I took or a story of an action that I remember from the place.
· I will issue an invite for you to use the images to help you move into the world of story. I might show a picture of a statue and it might bring you back to a time you interacted from seeing a statue. Share the episode.
You can join us as we explore by signing up at my website and at the bottom of the page it states "join our mailing list." Find it at www.kevincordi.com
You can share your ideas and reflection within the comments section at the bottom of each blog. You can share it for you. You can send me pictures and your account of the episode and send it to me at kcteller@sbcglobal.net (I may share this in future blogs with your permission.). The important thing is that you don’t think I must have a whole story from this, I simply want to start with an episode and let it build from there.)
Finally, I will reflect on what I have learned from the experience and invite you to share.
Date for new Invitations: I will share my reflection every Wednesday and invite you to engage in the work and/or share it. And based on responses continue them if they provide me sparks for stories and /or I hear from you about your work with them.
Working idea: It is important to know that I advocate that one must play in the world one is creating, a technique I call “word dancing,” before putting words to print. Otherwise, one often is trapped to the words of the page. Play is the real work that we do to make the stories happen that stories be realized.
Tomorrow I will post my first reflection, we hope that you can join with us as we travel to new places at www.kevincordi.com. www.kevincordi.com . You can sign up to join us at the bottom of the page where it states sign up.
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