ORAL HISTORY
working definitions
Meditations on
the larger world
consciousness
the nature of reality
time
history as dream
history as backdrop
THE BLOG:
a place for stories, journal entries, photographs, videos, movies, collage
remembering
a virtual rehearsal space for an upcoming oral history-based multimedia exhibit--May 12, 2014
(Slonim Living Room)
ORAL HISTORY-- A HIGHLY STRUCTURED INFORMAL CONVERSATION
IMPROVISATION WITHIN A SET FRAMEWORK OR STRUCTURE
START BY TELLING ME WHERE AND WHEN YOU WERE BORN
AND
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR EARLY LIFE
TELL ME SOME OF YOUR EARLIEST MEMORIES
TELL ME A STORY ABOUT YOUR MOTHER
YOUR FATHER
GRANDMOTHER
DESCRIBE YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD
TELL ME A STORY ABOUT AN INTERESTING NEIGHBORHOOD CHARACTER.
WHERE AND WHEN WERE YOU...TELL ME A SAD STORY...TELL ME A STORY YOU'LL NEVER FORGET...TELL ME...DESCRIBE...AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED....
WHAT WAS PLAYING ON THE RADIO
I REMEMBER...AND THEN I REMEMBER...AND THEN...I REMEMBER
FROM AN INTERVIEW IWTH JAY SWITHERS:
Well, I could remember being much younger, and maybe eight years old, and I
remember visiting a family member at the hospital and I was too young to go up. At that
time, you had to be a certain age to go up to the room. And while I was waiting outside,
this guy sort of went to climb up a fence and his ankle got caught on the picket and he
kind of dangled there bleeding to death for like a few minutes before anybody helped
him. I always remembered that, because I think I—after a little while watching it, I
walked to the curb and I threw up. I never forgot that. I never forgot that.
Then there was another time in my training where I was just becoming an EMT and part
of being an EMT you had to do rotations in the hospital. You had to observe like maybe
one or two tours and there was a little kid, maybe three years old, that had a laceration on
his scalp, and I remember it like it was yesterday, where the kid was screaming, the
mother was screaming, he was bleeding, and they said okay, they put him down, and they
tied him all up, let him scream, and they started putting needles into his wound with
lidocaine, so it wouldn’t hurt so much when they would be sewing it. What looked like a
little laceration to begin with, it became—they started to take a needle and thread and sew
from one side to another and pull, kind of like a little more blood would ooze out. Just
watching it for maybe like fifteen minutes, I started to—you know I’m watching the kid
scream, I’m watching him only making it worse, while making it better, I started to
second guess whether or not I could actually watch it—deal with this blood and guts if I
could barely deal with a little laceration that was maybe an inch and a half long.
Okay, well, upon graduating the academy and having been promised that
somebody would pull the right strings and I’d be working either at Coney Island Hospital
or—the last day, all the boys from Bay Ridge were sent to Harlem. It was kind of like...
MORE REMEMBERING/GERRY ALBARELLI--YOUNG, OLD
Think of the past as a movie constantly playing in an old (boarded-up) Times Square movie theater--a theater that never closes. Some old projectionist periodically changes the film reel up in the projectionist's booth; a woman in a cage out front sells tickets all day and all night; men who have nowhere else to go sleep in the worn plush chairs of the decrepit theater. Some people actually show up to see the featured attraction. However, most are here for reasons that have nothing to do with the movie on the screen. Most of the people wandering around inside this theater don't know exactly what they are doing here. They're not even sure how they got here. They know only--or they think they do--that they are here. They seem to have forgotten some of the important things they once thought they knew. It's as if the theater operated according to its own esoteric manner of measuring time. One is never quite sure what's playing on the screen--only that the objects and characters are vaguely familiar. And then this happens: I suddenly recognize with sharp, surprising clarity what I am seeing -- yes, I recognize that apron, that tumbleweed, the look in the leading man's eyes. I recognize them in a way that no one else ever could; and it is precisely for this reason--because these are my particular memories and no one else's--that others will recognize them too.
No comments:
Post a Comment