When it comes to big media the answer is clear: not us.
Big media values one thing only--the profit thingy. And for them, the stories that sell are not the stories of everyday people--those stories just aren't all that important. The stories that sell are the important ones.
Something important has happened. Our own stories have become irrelevant--irrelevant in the face of relentless stories about celebrities, athletes, and the promotion of consumerism.
What if we stopped for a moment to consider the importance of our own stories? What would happen? Our guess is that we would realize that our stories are MORE important than those foisted upon us by big media as somehow being relevant to our lives.
Well, enough already. Let's take some time to listen to our own stories--to listen.
And guess what--a group called StoryCorps can help us do just that (from Democracy Now!):
Your holiday assignment is to listen to this interview--you'll be touched. And no one will get a cent.
...radio pioneer Dave Isay, who founded StoryCorps, the largest oral history project in the United States. Isay’s new book is “Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project.” We play several excerpts of StoryCorps recordings, of ordinary people telling their stories to each other, and we speak with three of the people whose stories are featured in the book. They are among the many thousands who have recorded their memories using StoryCorps since it began in 2003.
...
“StoryCorps is built on a few basic ideas: that our stories—the stories of everyday people—are as interesting and important as the celebrity stories we’re bombarded with by the media every minute of the day. That if we take the time to listen, we’ll find wisdom, wonder and poetry in the lives and stories of the people all around us. That we all want to know our lives have mattered and we won’t ever be forgotten. That listening is an act of love.” Those are the opening lines of Dave Isay’s new book about StoryCorps. The book is called Listening Is an Act of Love. It was published in November.
...As you know, we built a booth in Grand Central terminal four years ago, where you bring a loved one and you’re met by a facilitator, who serves a one-year tour of duty.
AMY GOODMAN: And this booth?
DAVE ISAY: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Describe the booth.
DAVE ISAY: Well, it’s a soundproof booth, and the inside of it is kind of this sacred space. When you go inside, you close the door. You’re in Grand Central terminal, and it’s completely silent. The lights are low. And you sit across from, say, your grandmother for forty minutes, and you talk. And most people ask the big life questions, like “What are the most important lessons you’ve learned in life?” or “How do you want to be remembered?” “What did your mom sing to you when you were a kid?”
And then, at the end of forty minutes, two CDs have been burned. One goes home with you, and the other stays with us and goes to the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress to become part of an oral history of America.
So we launched four years ago. I came to see you about two years ago when we became a national project. And right now, we’re one of the fastest-growing non-profits in the country. And, you know, as you said, we’re trying to do a lot with this project, but at its core, I think what StoryCorps says is that every life matters and the importance of listening to loved ones and turning off the TV and the Blackberry and the computer and just looking a loved one in the eye and saying “I care about you,” by listening to what they have to say.
...
DAVE ISAY: And these are stories that are really, as Studs Terkel talks about, bottom-up history. History is so often told from the top down through the voices of statesmen and politicians. But the power and the depth of hearing about history through our own voices and our own hearts, I think, gives whole other perspective and an incredibly deep perspective of life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
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