I Wish Garrison Keillor Were In My Family

“[Storytelling] is a premier performance art in which the purpose is to gain intimacy with people whom you will never, ever know.  To become intimate with strangers is the purpose of storytelling.” – Garrison Keillor

-Image from the Honolulu Star Bulletin

Last night my roommate (the famed Tim Dallman)  and I went to see Garrison Keillor speak at Zellerbach auditorium at the University of California,  Berkeley.  For an hour and a half he told a stirring and utterly captivating stream of conciousness tone poem, seamlessly interweaving a’cappella, poetry, and personal narrative, and touching on his typical topics of  life, love and death.  If those topics sound broad, it is because  that to narrow them to specifics would escape the universality of the stories he tells.

Keillor opened the evening with an unaccompanied gospel-esque tune with lyrics referencing his Lutheran roots praying to God to not turn out to be a hoax should Garrison happen to, in the near future, merge with the infinite.  His characteristic blend of the comic and the serious leaned more toward the somber on this occasion as he reflected on a stroke he had had just a few weeks prior to this performance.  Describing his thoughts on confronting his own mortality, he emphasized his gratitude that the blood clot landed in what his neurologists called the “silent” part of his brain, leaving the elements of his memory — bits of a country song from the 50’s, a story about his Aunt Eva’s tomatoes (superior to heirlooms in his opinion), the defining relationships in his life — intact.  This, I think, is a microcosm of his radio show and his storytelling ability.   He gathers these artifacts together spinning them into stories that are frequently hilarious and insightful, but just as often penetrating and haunting.

While listening to him speak, it struck me that he is the antidote to the current wave of our disaffected art culture.  He delivers his stories without a hint of irony or artifice.  There is no quirk, snark, or whatever derisible buzzword happens to be popular on any given day (or months later in the Style section of the New York Times).  He speaks plainly, with a quiet tone and a steady cadence, for us, of us.  He is a masterful raconteur and I found myself imagining what it would be like to have him as relative, to be able to converse with him and listen to him speak at great length about the warm beating heart of humanity.

Keillor concluded his monologue with a story regarding his quest to leave Minnesota behind for New York City in the attempt to gain a position writing for Talk of the Town at The New Yorker magazine.  While there he met a girl, Jessica James, who would introduce him to the country music of the time — previously dismissed by him as less cool than the bohemian Jazz scene of NYC for which he had left his home town — and would encourage him to visit Nashville to see the Grand Ole Opry.  He recounted that it was here that he formed the idea to host his own variety show.  He had met a wonderful girl who had given him all of this advice for free and had changed his life in the process.  Coming full circle to the stroke that unearthed these memories, he wearily reflected that he was so glad, so glad that the blood clot left him that memory, that memory he hoped to never forget.

For those who don’t know Garrison Keillor, or those who are not very familiar with his particular brand of earnest storytelling, or even for those who don’t necessarily care for his sometimes goofy old-fashioned style, I insist you listen to this story he told in 2008 which can be found in the link below.  It’s not a long story (just around 8 and a half minutes) but it illustrates everything I love about what he does and who he is.

http://odeo.com/episodes/23631499-Garrison-Keillor-Lessons-in-Swimming#

~James