TEDxMiddlebury - Phil Kaye - Why We Tell Stories

Summary

Phil, a spoken word poet, explores the power of storytelling as a means to cope with life's repetitions and losses of meaning. He recounts personal narratives, including his parents' divorce and his own stutter, to illustrate how words can fade into insignificance or carry profound weight. Phil's journey through his family's history, from war-torn pasts to personal connections, reveals storytelling as a tool for understanding our existence, forging connections, and celebrating the complexity of being alive.

Takeaways

• 📜 The speaker uses repetition as a literary device to illustrate how words can lose their meaning when overused.
• 🌅 The sunset metaphor is used to explain how familiar experiences can become mundane without the emotional impact they once had.
• 🏠 The story of the speaker's parents' divorce is recounted to show how the breakdown of a family can leave a lasting emotional impact.
• 🎭 The speaker's stutter is described as a 'cage made of mirrors', highlighting the frustration and isolation felt when unable to communicate freely.
• 🗣️ The importance of spoken word as an art form is emphasized, with the speaker describing it as a way to share personal narratives and connect with others.
• 🌐 The speaker's work with Project Voice is mentioned, indicating a dedication to helping others find their voice and tell their stories.
• 📚 The speaker's journey of self-discovery through storytelling is shared, revealing a personal quest to understand the purpose of sharing stories.
• 🌱 The idea that stories can provide a sense of belonging and identity is explored, with the speaker reflecting on his own cultural heritage.
• 🏙️ The city metaphor is used to describe how stories can help us navigate and make sense of our lives, providing a map of experiences and emotions.
• 💔 The speaker discusses the power of stories to heal and process grief, using the example of his grandfather's experiences during World War II.
• 🌟 The final poem 'Teeth' is a poignant reminder of the importance of remembering and learning from the past, while also looking towards a future of forgiveness and understanding.

Q & A

What is the main theme of Phil's poem?

The main theme of Phil's poem is the loss of meaning through repetition and its connection to personal experiences, such as his parents' divorce and his own stutter.

Why did Phil's parents send him to the neighbor's house before their last argument?

Phil's parents sent him to the neighbor's house to shield him from the conflict of their last argument, which was a precursor to their divorce.

What trick did Phil's mother teach him regarding the repetition of words?

Phil's mother taught him that if you repeat something over and over again, it loses its meaning, using the example of the word 'homework'.

How did Phil's parents' divorce affect him?

Phil's parents' divorce led to a sense of loss and a change in his home environment, which he describes as having 'no gravity'. It also influenced his view on the power of words and their meanings.

What is Phil's profession and how does he describe it?

Phil is a full-time spoken word poet. He describes his profession as telling stories, which allows him to support himself at a relatively young age.

What organization does Phil co-run and what does it focus on?

Phil co-runs an organization with his best friend and fellow poet, Sarah Kaye. The organization focuses on traveling internationally to perform and teach spoken word poetry workshops.

What is Phil's perspective on why people tell stories?

Phil believes that people tell stories to feel alive, to share, to connect, and to make sense of the great unknown of life.

What does Phil suggest is the best way to tell a good story?

Phil suggests that the best way to tell a good story is to live a good story, to embrace vulnerability, take risks, and break out of predictability.

What advice does Phil give to those who want to start telling stories?

Phil advises to let go of the idea of perfection and to not be afraid to be vulnerable enough to tell one's stories. He emphasizes the importance of connection and making sense of the human experience.

What is the title of the poem Phil recites at the end of the script, and who is it dedicated to?

The title of the poem Phil recites is 'Teeth', and it is dedicated to his grandfathers, reflecting on the historical and familial impacts of war and hate.

Outlines

00:00

📜 The Power of Repetition and Its Impact on Meaning

Phil begins with a poem about how repetition can strip words of their meaning, using 'homework' and 'family' as examples. He recounts his parents' divorce when he was seven, which left him feeling weightless in his own home. He likens this feeling to the overuse of 'I love you' by his parents, which lost its significance. Phil's mother's trick of desensitizing words through repetition became his coping mechanism, turning painful terms like 'separation' into mere sounds. Ironically, Phil, a spoken word poet, now uses words for a living, despite having developed a stutter post-divorce. This stutter serves as a mirror, reflecting back the meaning of words that he struggles to say, making every word feel heavy and significant.

05:02

🌟 The Human Need to Tell Stories

Phil explores the universal human tradition of storytelling, questioning why we feel compelled to share narratives. He reflects on his own experiences, from performing in front of strangers to sharing stories online. Phil's search for the reason behind storytelling led him to consider simple motivations like entertainment or explanation, but he ultimately suggests a deeper need—to feel alive. He proposes that storytelling is a way to assert our existence and make sense of life's unpredictability. By sharing stories, we connect with others and navigate the uncertainty of life, creating a sense of self and place in the world.

10:03

🗺️ Stories as Maps of Life's Journey

Phil compares life to a new city where stories serve as maps, providing context and landmarks. He discusses how stories help us make sense of the unknown and give us a sense of direction. The act of storytelling is presented as an inherently vulnerable act, one that allows us to embrace risk and unpredictability. Phil encourages living a storyworthy life, to take chances, and to be open to vulnerability. He advises letting go of the pursuit of perfection and instead focusing on connection and understanding what it means to be human.

15:05

🦇 A Poetic Reflection on Family, History, and Legacy

In the final paragraph, Phil shares a poignant poem about his grandfathers, the historical and personal impacts of war, and the legacy of hate and forgiveness. He weaves together the stories of his Japanese and American grandfathers, their experiences during World War II, and the subsequent effects on their families. The poem also touches on the broader themes of displacement, the struggle with memory, and the desire to move beyond the past. Phil's narrative culminates in a reflection on the importance of remembering and the possibility of forgiveness, as he grapples with his own identity and place within his family's narrative.

Keywords

💡Repeating

Repeating is the act of saying or doing something again and again. In the video, the concept is introduced as a trick to make words lose their meaning, as seen when the speaker repeats 'homework' and 'family' until they seem meaningless. This technique is used to illustrate how overexposure to something can lead to desensitization, a theme that resonates throughout the speaker's personal narrative about his parents' divorce and his own experiences with language.

💡Meaninglessness

Meaninglessness refers to the state of lacking significance or importance. The video explores this concept through the act of repetition, suggesting that overuse can strip words of their emotional weight. This is exemplified when the speaker says, 'See? Nothing,' after repeating words like 'homework' and 'family,' indicating that the words have become empty of their original meaning.

💡Stutter

A stutter is a speech disorder characterized by interruptions or repetitions of sounds and syllables. In the video, the speaker's development of a stutter after his parents' divorce is a poignant moment that highlights the struggle to communicate when words feel heavy with meaning. The stutter is described as a 'cage made of mirrors,' reflecting the painful experience of being trapped within one's own speech.

💡Vulnerability

Vulnerability is the state of being susceptible to harm or injury, often emotionally. The video emphasizes the vulnerability inherent in storytelling, as it requires opening oneself up to others. The speaker shares his own vulnerability by discussing his stutter and the emotional weight of words, suggesting that storytelling is a way to connect and make sense of one's experiences despite the risk involved.

💡Storytelling

Storytelling is the act of telling stories, which can be a form of entertainment, education, or sharing personal experiences. The video's central theme revolves around the importance of storytelling as a means to understand and navigate life. The speaker, a spoken word poet, uses his own stories and those of his family to explore themes of identity, history, and the human condition.

💡Spoken Word Poetry

Spoken word poetry is a form of poetry read aloud often with a focus on the oral nature of the words, including intonation, body language, and voice. The speaker identifies himself as a 'full-time spoken word poet,' highlighting this art form as a powerful medium for storytelling. He uses spoken word to convey personal narratives and evoke emotions, as seen in his performances throughout the video.

💡Gravity

In the video, gravity is used metaphorically to describe the weight or significance of experiences and words. The speaker mentions a loss of gravity in his home after his parents' separation, symbolizing the absence of emotional connection and stability. Later, he contrasts this by suggesting that giving words too much repetition can cause them to lose their 'gravity,' or emotional impact.

💡Connection

Connection refers to the act of linking or associating one thing with another. The video discusses the importance of storytelling as a means to connect with others and oneself. The speaker believes that through sharing stories, individuals can forge relationships and find a sense of belonging, as illustrated by his work with Project Voice and his interactions with audiences.

💡Identity

Identity is the characteristics determining who or what a person or thing is. The video touches on the theme of identity through the speaker's exploration of his own heritage and family history. He uses storytelling to understand his place within his family's narrative and to connect with his cultural roots, as seen in the poem 'Teeth,' which delves into his grandfathers' experiences.

💡Forgetting

Forgetting is the act of not being able to remember something. In the video, the concept of forgetting is presented as a complex and sometimes painful process. The speaker's grandfather wishes for the ability to forget the atrocities of the past, suggesting that memory can be a burden. This is contrasted with the speaker's desire to remember and learn from history, indicating a tension between the need to remember and the desire to move on.

Highlights

Phil shares a poem about the trick of losing meaning by repetition.

He discusses the impact of overexposure to experiences, like watching sunsets or making mistakes, on their significance.

Phil's childhood experience of his parents' divorce and the loss of 'gravity' in his home.

The development of Phil's stutter post-divorce and the metaphor of stuttering as a cage made of mirrors.

Phil's profession as a full-time spoken word poet and his work with Project Voice.

The exploration of why humans have a tradition of telling stories and their significance.

Phil's realization that we tell stories to feel alive and the role of vulnerability in storytelling.

The idea that stories help us navigate the unpredictability of life by creating a context for our past.

Phil's advice on embracing vulnerability and risk to tell a good story and live a good story.

The poem 'Teeth' which explores Phil's family history, the pain of war, and the desire to forget and forgive.

Phil's reflection on the complexity of his family's past, including his Japanese and American grandfathers' experiences during World War II.

The historical context of Phil's ancestors, including the Jewish Ghetto and the challenges faced by his family.

The emotional weight of family legacy and the struggle with the inheritance of hate and the desire for reconciliation.

Phil's personal connection to his family's history and the impact it has on his identity and storytelling.

The powerful imagery of teeth as tombstones in the poem 'Teeth', symbolizing the resilience and memory of Phil's family.

The conclusion of the poem with a message of forgiveness and the desire to move beyond the cycles of hate.

Transcripts

Transcriber: Jihyeon J. Kim Reviewer: Elisabeth Buffard

Hi, my name is Phil.

I want to start with a poem.

My mother taught me this trick.

If you repeat something over and over again,

it loses its meaning.

For example, homework, homework, homework,

homework, homework, homework, homework.

See? Nothing.

Our life, she said, is the same way.

You watch the sunset too often,

it just becomes 6 p.m.

You make the same mistake over and over, you'll stop calling it a mistake.

If you just wake up, wake up, wake up,

one day you'll forget why.

I should have known nothing is forever.

My parents left each other when I was seven years old.

Before their last argument, they sent me off to the neighbor's house

like some astronaut jettison from the shuttle.

When I came back, there was no gravity in our home.

I imagined it as an accident.

When I left, they whispered to each other,

"I love you."

So many times over that they forgot what it meant.

Family, family, family, family, family.

My mother taught me this trick.

If you repeat something over and over again,

it loses its meaning.

This became my favorite game.

It made the sting of words evaporate.

Separation, separation, separation.

See? Nothing.

Apart, apart, apart, apart.

See? Nothing.

I'm an injured handy man.

I work with words all day. Shut up.

I know the irony.

When I was young, I was taught

the trick to dominating language

was breaking it down,

convincing it that it was worthless.

I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.

See? Nothing.

Soon after my parents' divorce, I developed a stutter.

Fate is a cruel, inefficient tutor.

There is no escape in stutter.

You can feel the meaning of every word

drag itself up to your throat.

Separation.

Stutter is a cage made of mirrors.

Every, "What did you say?" Every, "Just take your time."

Every, "Come on, kid. Spit it out!"

is a glaring reflection of an existence that you cannot escape.

Every awful moment trips over its own announcement

again, again and again,

until it just hangs there in the center of the room.

As if what you were to say had no gravity at all.

Mom, Dad, I'm not wasteful with my words any more.

Even now, after hundreds of hours practicing away my stutter,

I can still feel the claw of meaning in the bottom of my throat.

Listen to me.

I've heard that even in space

you can hear the scratch of an I, I, I, I,

I love you.

Thank you.

(Applause)

Thank you. Thank you. (Applause)

Once again, I'm Phil.

I'm a full-time spoken word poet.

And if you don't know what that means, that's totally okay.

A lot of times I say that and people say things like, "What is that?"

"Is that even a job?" (Laughter)

"How do you support yourself?"

And my people, I generally mean my family and friends... (Laughter)

And the short answer of what I do, in a nutshell, is I tell stories.

And I've been incredibly lucky, at a relatively young age,

to be able to support myself doing it.

I co-run an organization with the best friend and a fellow poet.

another TED-alumn, Sarah Kaye. No relation.

We get to travel around internationally

performing and teaching spoken word poetry workshops,

helping people tell the stories that they want to tell.

Now I said that I tell stories,

but it's bit of a misnomer.

because all of us tell stories.

I have a bit of an advantage especially in a place like this.

While I'm standing up, you're sitting down.

I'm in the place that we've all agreed is a stage.

Most of the times before I speak,

somebody says a lot of really nice things about me that I write.

(Laughter)

But we're all constantly exchanging our own narratives.

Right? We do it all the time.

We do it on the phone. We do it online.

We do it in coffee shops. We do it with people we love.

We do it with people we just met for the first time.

I'm really fascinated by this.

And a lot of the work I do with Project Voice

centers around this question of "How do you tell a good story?"

And there's a lot of very tangible elements:

Topic, structure, diction.

As I was working with more and more people,

and hearing hundreds and hundreds of stories,

I became obsessed with this different question,

this deeper question,

which is why we tell stories.

For thousands of years, almost every human culture

has been telling stories.

What moved me to get up in front of a room

full of people I never met

and talk about a period of my life

that for many years I've just wanted to wish it had never happened.

It's not just a historical thing, or an artist thing.

We all do it.

Why do we have a tradition of reading bedtime stories to our children?

Why do we get online and spill these narratives about ourselves

to people we don't know very well

or may never well meet.

And this is the real question that I really ask myself.

To be totally honest, I couldn't come up with an answer,

and I had a big freak-out moment.

Here I was. I had this career.

And I couldn't answer the simple question of "Why do I tell stories?"

Was it all just self-indulgence?

You know when I'm feeling very cynical,

and people ask me, "What's it like to be a spoken word poet?"

I'd be like, It's like the opposite of a therapist.

A therapist, you pay the money,

you sit down, you tell him your problems.

A spoken word poet, you pay me money, you sit down,

I tell you my problems. (Laughter)

Which I didn't believe.

And I thought, "Do I?"

No, I don't believe that.

Then what was it?

And I struggled.

I went back and forth.

And I searched and I thought.

I thought back to my own first experiences.

And some of my first experiences with stories were impression.

I loved it.

I came home after watching Pirates of the Caribbean,

And I started talking like this!

Mom, when is breakfast? (Laughter)

Which was weird. (Laughter)

But the reason I loved impression was because it was an immediate story.

Just by changing the tone, the pitch,

the timbre, all of a sudden, I took on this entire contexts

of belief, of feeling.

It was fun, right?

I go with my sister to fast food places

and be like, can I have a number four?

To go. (Laughter)

I thought about why I did that.

It was a pretty simple answer.

It was to make my little sister laugh.

I thought about we have a lot of times

we tell stories of these very simple intentions.

to entertain, to warn, to scare, to explain.

And that is getting me somewhere

but not down to the real crux of why we're all telling stories.

And I still haven't figured out yet,

but after reading a lot of books,

and talking to thousands of people,

my best guess is we tell stories

to feel alive.

Bear with me, right?

We like to believe that our lives are incredibly predictable.

Take me for example.

Yesterday, I woke up in my apartment in New York, took a bus to the airport,

got on a plane, and I'm here.

In retrospect, this seems incredibly linear

and incredibly predictable.

But right here is all the options of

what could have been.

I could have taken a bus, a different bus,

and met the love of my life.

Taken a different plane with a propeller failure,

and the whole plane could have gone down.

I could have woken up sick, never been here,

never met any of you, any of these relationships

that I had from this day would have never happened.

We like to think that we can plot our lives out.

But there's this big, deep, unknowing out there.

This is a deep chance.

And I think maybe subconsciously that makes us feel vulnerable,

it's scary, and in the face of that great vulnerability,

that's where that impulse to tell the stories comes from,

to share, to connect,

to figure out what it is to feel alive, to stand here

and say, I stood here with these people today.

And I want to celebrate, as Lieutenant Choi said so aptly,

I am somebody.

Story lets us carve our initials into the wet cement of this moment.

And it does it so well,

because it not only celebrates vulnerability

but it embodies vulnerability.

The act of telling a story is of a vulnerable act in and of itself.

This TED talk could suck. (Laughter)

I'm not sure it doesn't yet.

And that suckiness would ring out on the Internet for years.

And that's terrifying.

But here I am, and here are all these other people

who've been so incredibly vulnerable

and shared so much of themselves,

all here trying to figure out what it means to be alive.

In the face of this great unknowing of our future,

I think we tell stories to make a context of our past.

Think about it this way.

You're walking through a city you've never been in before.

You're taking in the sites,

walking down the avenues, looking in the shop windows,

getting the scent of these particular streets.

And later you look at a map,

and you say, "Okay, I was here and walked along here,

I saw this, and I liked this. This was not okay."

I like to think of life as one big new city.

And the people that live it well know exactly what these streets smell like.

Stories let us build our own maps.

They give us contexts, right?

They become our streets, our landmarks.

I know when my grandmother passed away,

there is a bell tower of grief in my map.

The first time I found poetry was a spring in the center of my map

and life has erupted all around it.

So what does all this mean?

We tell stories to make sense of this great unknown.

What does that mean in terms of telling good stories?

I would say it teaches us to embrace the vulnerability,

embrace the risk, dare I say.

Right? To break out of predictability.

The best way to tell a good story is to live a good story.

Talk to the person next to you on the bus. Maybe they are the love of your life.

Another piece is to not be afraid

to be vulnerable enough to tell your stories.

The biggest question I get anywhere I go,

and this is five-year-olds and seventy-five-year-olds,

is "How can I start?"

I love this art form whether it's poetry, storytelling,

nonfiction writing. But how do I start?

And there's this underlying question to that of

"What book do I need to read?",

"What certain life experience do I need to have?"

"What's the right school I need to graduate from to start? "

And my best and most simple advice is to completely throw that out.

That's not what it's about.

People haven't been telling stories for thousands of years

to all get published in Harpers.

Let go of this idea of perfection,

because that's not what it's about. It is to connect.

I think it is to make sense of what it is to be human.

And with that I want to end with this last poem.

If it's not eminently clear,

I'm desperately trying to figure all of this out myself.

And in doing so, in becoming a young man in the world

I'm thinking a lot about not only my own stories

but the stories of the people around me where I fit into that.

And this story, a poem, is for my grandfathers,

and it's called Teeth.

Ojisama is what I call my Japanese grandfather.

In 1945, his Tokyo home was burnt to the ground.

Grandpy is what I call my American grandfather.

In 1945, he was serving on the U.S.S. Shangri-La,

sending off American bomber pilots to burn down Japanese houses.

Our jaws have not yet healed.

1906, Poland.

Granpy's father is hiding in an oven.

He doesn't know the irony of that yet.

He's heard men singing on the street below.

Hyenas, my family calls them.

After celebration drinks and song, the outside town's people

come into the Jewish Ghetto for a celebration beating,

molar fireworks and eyelid explosions.

Even when Grandpy's father grows up

the sound of a sudden song breaks his body into a sweat.

Fear of joy is the darkest of captivities.

1975, Tokyo.

My father, the long haired student with a penchant for sexual innuendo

meets Reiko Hori,

a well-dressed banker who forgets the choruses to her favorite songs.

12 years later, they gave birth to a lanky lightbulb.

1999, California.

My mother speaks to me in Japanese.

Most days I don't have the strength to ask her to translate the big words.

You burned that house down, mother.

Don't you remember?

1771, Prague.

In the heart of the city is a Jewish cemetery,

the only plot of land

where Grandpy's ancestors were allowed to be buried.

When they ran out of room,

they had no choice but to stack dead bodies one on top of another.

Now there are hills made from graves piled twelve deep

individual tombstones jutting out crooked

like valiant teeth emerging from a jaw left to rot.

1985, my parents' wedding.

The two families sit together

smiling wider than they need to.

Montague must be so happy.

We can Capulet this all go.

1999, I sit with Grandpy's cousin,

90 years old and dressed in full uniform.

I beg with him to untie the knots in his brow.

He says, "Hate is a strong word.

But it is the only strength I have left.

How am I to forgive the man that severed the trunk of my family tree

and used its timber

to warm the faces of their own children."

2010, Grandpy and I sit together,

watching his favorite, baseball.

In the infertile glow of the television I see his face wet.

Grandpy sits in his wheelchair, teeth gasping out of his gums

like valiant tombstones emerging from the cemetery left to rot.

The teeth sit staring and I can read them.

Louis Birdman, killed at Auschwitz.

Sarah Leese, killed at Dachau.

William Cane, killed off a coast of Okinawa.

I will never forget what has happened to our family, Grandpy.

And he looks at me with a surprised innocence

of a child struck for the first time.

Philip, forgetting is the only gift I wish to give you.

I have given away my only son trying to bury my hate

in a cemetery that is already overflowing.

There are nights I am kept awake

by the birthday songs of children I chose not to let live

They all look like you.

A plague on both your houses, they've made worms meat of me.

Thank you.

(Applause)