There is something about the oral tradition of storytelling that pulls the strings of memory, personalized emotions and undivided attention in a uniquely uncluttered way.
I’m not talking about sitting around a campfire weaving tales where the touch of the flickering flames meets the curtain of darkness as the storytellers canvas.
I’m talking about the full immersion of listening to an Ira Glass podcast with buds in my ears at the gym at 5am to start my day.
I was raised in the era where radio gave way to TV, where we listened to baseball games while we did our homework. Where talk radio on car trips was the backdrop to our family life driving discussions about science and sports.
Where the natural cadence of speech and the craft of the repeating refrain, the ending with a take away summary became—and still are—the cadence of a well told yarn and the dynamics of finding the pulse for a thought.
It made me want to be a writer.
It drove me to work in pirate radio during my college days. It was my view of global politics and culture during my hippy back to the land phase in British Columbia where radio was my sole listening post to an outside world.
And for all the years of building businesses and communities on the web, driving engagement around blogs and idea walls, designing conferences and workshops, and weaving in video as a shareable object, I had simply forgotten the power of this quietude.
Till just recently.
A series of year-end promises and randomly searching out an old Ira Glass podcast that had been in my head for years have opened a perceptual door for me.
I’m rediscovering the power and whispering eloquence of waking up to shared stories in my head.
Stories that waft into my very being in ways that unfathomably fill my head with innuendos and language cues that are driving me in unexpected ways.
It is the complete opposite of starting your day looking for something of interest on the social nets.
Podcasts are an oddity in today’s fully visual world.
It’s not at all like listening to the audio of a video stream while working.
It’s more like committing to a call, yet unlike a call or a post or movie, it requires no suspension of disbelief. It’s immediately real.
It’s yours from the first moment of silence and embrace of the words.
After a few weeks now of starting my days with tales of Sinatra, or a Taliban prisoner, or a father who recorded every phone call of his kid to manipulate reality to keep him off drugs—it’s changing my attitude completely.
It’s like food for your brain that makes you smarter.
What’s unique about this medium is that besides the cadence of thoughts and language, it encourages you to do something else with your body (like workout or walk).
The mental takeaway is also counterintuitive.
I listened to the famous Ira Glass podcast on Sinatra from the mid 90s yesterday while doing intervals at the gym.
Beyond the amazing story of how he redefined himself from a struggling torch singer to a rhythmic super star and became the jazzy epitome of cool masculinity for an entire era, my takeaway was almost orthogonal to the subject matter.
With oral storytelling the medium is the message completely.
It’s like understanding the power of breathing in athletics or playing a wind instrument. Or the importance of relaxation and poise when presenting.
What I learned is less about Sinatra and more the embrace of nuance, of rhythm and the importance of saying less when telling a story or communicating an idea. Of insuring that you embrace the pauses in language and the vagary of thought.
It’s akin to the communications truth that you need to allow the reader to find themselves, not you, in their response to what you are saying.
It’s the craft of sharing subtlety and innuendo by inpsiring the listener with open expressions of your thoughts that invite them in not shut them out.
I make my living as a communicator. My mediums are blogs, emails, the social nets and often a stage with a podium. These settings encourage too much synthesis, too many lists and a fear of leaving things open for interpretation.
I’m relearning the power of leaving open spaces and things unsaid. The importance of sharing the innate subtlety of ideas as the true power of connecting.
I’m liking where this is taking me.
I’m not inspired to become a podcaster but by listening to others—and please share your favorites—it’s made me a more careful communicator.
And a better listener not just to others thoughts but to my own.
