Wellington LitCrawl

True Stories Told Live - Six masterful storytellers weave tales on the theme of Moving On.

The first story teller revealed the internal battles and struggles of becoming a father, and creating a relationship with his newborn daughter, and the eventual beautiful realisation that they were deeply connected by the shared momentary experience of moving rapidly through space and time together. That evening, sitting on the front lawn underneath the stars, he recalled an awareness that they were both beautifully interwoven in the moment that would eventually tear them apart.

If we are completely engrossed in a project, we loose track of 'normal time'. As a professional writer, the second story teller explored how his world becomes smaller and smaller as he become more focused and concerned with his work alone. The movement of time becomes marked by small events and changes in the small worlds of our daily lives, such as the blossoming of beautiful buds in the backyard and the arrival of the spring frogs, rather than moving hands on a clock. Perhaps we all have our own clocks and measures of time, but once a project is finished, we seamlessly fall back into sync with the collective passing of time.

Should we focus our thoughts on the horizon stretched far ahead, or rather at our feet, watching every step?  Talking us through her own life and struggles, the third storyteller showed us how every event has two meanings and we choose which to acknowledge: do we see this as positive or negative? Are we bitter or are we content? These choices of focus will come to define us, or consume us.

The Venezualan epic allowed us to peak into a stormy adventure across the Andes on mule-back, a story of fear and being utterly engrossed in the moment. Fear was a luxury that was not yet available when dodging avalanches and high in the mountains - life was right now and it required focus and perseverance.  Fear, shock and awe hit in later - the storyteller and his companions had escaped the adventure and began to celebrate with an evening out and a bottle of sweet wine, only then did his hands began to shake uncontrollably.

As part of the Historian's project, he mentioned that soon he would begin to make Wikipedia pages for long lost Wanganuians. From the 1920s til now, the historical young Wanganuian Mayor can still have a future digitial footprint.  Although the storyteller focused on finding out about our own histories and the histories and stories of others, and how these always weave together, the brief discussion of time and what it means to be remembered were most interesting to me!

The last storyteller was personable, powerful and wove beautiful words together as she opened herself to the audience. Awoken at 3am, hungover and still slightly drunk, she told us of the broken promises to herself to cut back on her drinking and how last night 3 years ago, she had hid a bottle of wine from her husband.  The person she was now and the person she was in hiding that bottle of wine were strangely somehow the same, she recalled, but what was different was the alcohol - she was not the problem. In that moment, she could move forward.


And after the 6th, it was over, and onto poetry Off The Page. Spoken word poetry and the room was silently mesmerized. I could have stayed and listened all night.