The cartoon, which is thought-provoking and informative, is a response to a recent book (recent as of 2012) by John D’Agata and John Fingal, The Lifespan of a Fact. In his cartoon essay, Gessner reflects on the question,
Is it ever okay to not be entirely accurate/factual/truthful in creative non-fiction?
I don’t have time to write about or reflect on Gessner’s responses to this question right now, but I wanted to archive the source. Here’s his conclusion:
note: Before reading Gessner’s cartoon essay, I was not familiar with D’Agato’s/Fingal’s book. I’ve just requested it from my library and look forward to checking it out.
I’m starting to think about how to mark the occasion of my 4th anniversary of running. Realistically, I don’t have a lot of time to create a big project–of course that doesn’t stop me from dreaming too big about what I could do. At this point, I’m in the research/planning phase. Here’s a story project from the New York Times that I just discovered:
This project is from 2009. In it, different runners contribute their stories about training for and/or running marathons. The format is a voiceover recording combined with a series of photos that the user clicks through as they listen to the story.
Yesterday morning, STA and I ran in a 10K race. I’ve been wanting to run in this particular race, which is right by our house and follows our regular training route, for three years now. But, because it’s early in the spring, we usually aren’t trained up enough to run the 6.2 miles. This year, partly due to the mild winter and partly due to our refusal to stop training over the winter, we finally ran it! This small victory has inspired me to think about my running and how it has transformed me over the past (almost) 4 years.
I started running on June 2nd, 2011. To mark the occasion of my first runniversary, I crafted a digital story:
My 4th running anniversary is coming up in about 6 weeks. It’s time to create another story that reflects my ever-evolving relationship to running. What should this story look like? What kind of footage do I want/need to get? Should I make it into a mini-doc (probably too much) or just a digital video?
In my current story project (the Farm), I’m focusing a lot of attention on remembering and not forgetting. I think about these concepts often. So, when I was listening to the radio this morning and heard the lyrics “I drink to remember, I smoke to forget,” it made me curious.
In my project, I’m particularly interested in working through the differences between the acts of remembering and not forgetting. While they seem the same, I see subtle differences that influence how we use storytelling to perform each of them. In contrast, the lyrics I heard, which are the opening lines to “Two Fingers” by Jake Buggs, are about remembering and forgetting. But, as I listened to the song and then read through the lyrics, I realized that both my project and Buggs’ song struggle with, in sharply different ways, questions about our past/heritage. What should we remember? What do we need to forget? Can we forget our past when it shaped who we are now?
Two Fingers
I drink to remember, I smoke to forget
Some things to be proud of some stuff to regret
Run down some dark alleys in my own head
Something is changing, changing, changing
I go back to Clifton to see my old friends
The best people I could ever have met
Skin up a fat one, hide from the Feds
Something is changing, changing, changing
So I kiss goodbye to every little ounce of pain
Light a cigarette and wish the world away
I got out, I got out, I’m alive but I’m here to stay
So I hold two fingers up to yesterday
Light a cigarette and smoke it all away
I got out, I got out, I’m alive but I’m here to stay
He’s down in the kitchen drinking White Lightning
He’s with my momma, they’re yelling and fighting
It’s not the first time praying for silence
Something is changing, changing, changing
So I kiss goodbye to every little ounce of pain
Light a cigarette and wish the world away
I got out, I got out, I’m alive but I’m here to stay
So I hold two fingers up to yesterday
Light a cigarette and smoke it all away
I got out, I got out, I’m alive but I’m here to stay
There’s a story for every corner of this place
Running so hard you got out but your knees got grazed
I’m an old dog but I learned some new tricks yeah
So I kiss goodbye to every little ounce of pain
Light a cigarette and wish the world away
I got out I got out I’m alive but I’m here to stay
So I hold two fingers up to yesterday
Light a cigarette and smoke it all away
I got out I got out I’m alive but I’m here to stay
Hey, hey it’s fine
Hey, hey it’s fine
Hey, hey it’s fine
I left it behind
In Buggs’ lyrics I see some ambivalence about remembering and forgetting. Mostly he’s resolved to forget and to honor his own survival (he got out), but a few lines (like, “but I’m here to stay”) suggest that he doesn’t want to entirely reject his roots/past. His conflict between remembering and forgetting reminds me of Dorothy Allison’s work, especially in “A Question of Class” and Two or Three Things I Know for Sure.
The StoryCorps app—a free mobile application—seamlessly walks users through an interview by providing all the necessary tools for a wonderful experience. You will receive help preparing questions, finding the right environment for your conversation, recording a high-quality interview on your mobile device, sharing the finished product with friends and family, and uploading your conversation to the StoryCorps.me website.
StoryCorps.me
I love this idea of giving people a tool for listening to others’ stories. Not only does the app provide the platform, but it also educates the user on how to listen to and interview others. I’m looking forward to trying it.
