Season of Listening

A great idea for the holidays—or, really, anytime—from the redoubtable StoryCorps: Take some time to sit down and interview someone you love.

In case you’re unfamiliar, StoryCorps is a nonprofit that has been recording people’s stories since 2003 in booths in New York, Milwaukee, and Nashville; in several trailers that travel the country; and most recently in a wing of San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum. They have sponsored special initiatives to record the stories of people with memory loss, people affected by 9/11, and African-Americans. Their stories have been broadcast regularly on NPR and are archived in the Library of Congress.

Over Thanksgiving StoryCorps launched the National Dav of Listening, encouraging people to record interviews with loved ones at home and contribute them to the project. This has now morphed into more of a National Season of Listening, with the website announcing that “StoryCorps is extending the National Day of Listening through the holiday season.” Go here to read more about it and to download their do-it-yourself guide to preparing for and recording an interview.

It goes without saying, or should, that the stories of your family and friends—especially the older ones—are resources that aren’t going to be around forever. A few years ago I recorded a similar type of interview with my grandfather, and it was a remarkable experience. I had always been curious about his service in World War II. He would talk about it in passing, and I knew that he had been on Okinawa, but it was not a subject he cared to discuss much. One holiday afternoon, though, I finally convinced him to sit down and talk to me on tape.

After that it didn’t take much prompting from me; he talked pretty much straight through for almost two and a half hours, as if he’d just been waiting for the chance to tell his story. After the war stories he was on such a roll he talked about sports, his family, and his thoughts on God and the afterlife. When it was over I knew him so much better, and myself a little better as well; after all, the acorn doesn’t fall etc. etc. Today it is the only recording I have of him.

Tapping a well of stories you never heard before can’t hurt creatively, either. Recently I read a great book by David Benioff, City of Thieves, which was based on Benioff’s interviews with his own grandfather about WWII. The resulting tale about the siege of Leningrad, a cat-and-mouse game with Nazis in the Russian countryside, a beautiful lady sniper, and a quest for eggs is almost too much to believe, and in fact Benioff admits in his prologue that there may have been some embellishment. Well, so what; your interview subject will probably embellish as well. Isn’t that part of any great story?