dawn m. armfield
doctoral candidate in rhetoric and scientific and technical communication
where the faeries play
22 years ago
I have been thinking about storytelling quite a bit lately. I’ve been thinking about the importance of storytelling, of sharing information via tales and stories. I’ve been thinking about the modes of storytelling, too.
When Willow was four, we took a vacation to southern California together. As we drove across the hot, barren Mojave desert, she sat in her child seat in the back of the car and told me stories about the companions we had on our trip.
“Can you see them, Aunt Dawn?” she would ask. She would point to the distant mountains. “See? They are right there, keeping up with us. Running along the mountains to go to California with us.”
I know she saw them. And in some ways, I began to see them, too. I can still remember them. Horses and children running parallel to the car in the setting sun of the mountains of the desert
In this day and age, there are a million ways to tell a story. We are not limited to moments where an entire clan is situated around a fire, a dinner table, or any other gathering place. We read books, we pass things along to one another verbally, we write in blogs, on Twitter, on Facebook, and we make audio and video stories. I have experience in all of these, and I think if you took all of my stories and put them together, it might be an interesting tale. But I’m curious, would it be one full of delight and wonder, or would it be one full of the same thing that all autobiographies are full of — I’ve had to struggle to make it, I overcame huge obstacles, and I’m now successful at X, Y, and/or Z? I have a feeling, unfortunately, it would be the latter. That saddens me.
When I lived on my few acres in Arizona, Willow would spend a lot of time with me at my house. We were surrounded by others who had horses, llamas, dogs, cats, turkeys, chickens, goats, and many other animals. I had one dog. And while she loved him, it wasn’t quite the same as having a “cool” animal. So she gave me some cool animals.
All of a sudden I had horses. She told me that they were really hers, but that they wanted to stay at my house so I didn’t get lonely. She said they were great friends and they liked to run together. She asked me to feed them and make sure they were ok. She said if they weren’t together, they, too, would get lonely like the horse down the street who chased after cars along his fenced area.
I saw her horses. I encouraged her to share this story with me often. It’s good to dream.
I have always delighted in being an adult who sees the world through rose-colored glasses. Who can believe in things that defy our scientific knowledge. But when I write, that doesn’t come out. I write in a very dry and humorless way, I think. Maybe that is from years and years of academic writing. Maybe it’s from writing and editing in technical and professional areas.
Willow and I went to many movies together. It was rare if we didn’t come out and imagine living within the space of that movie. My favorite, though, was “The Spiderwyck Chronicles.” We had read all of the books before going to the movie.
After that movie, she kept asking me if I saw faeries. She told me that they were real, and that if I was a true believer, I could see them, too. I told her that I was sure I did, but it was when the sun was setting in the grasses and they sparkled in that golden light.
She said I only half believed. If I really believed, I’d see them all of the time.
Maybe I do, and I didn’t realize it until that moment.
But that’s boring! Really. Sure, I can make a set of instructions that will wow you, and make it easy for you to program your VCR / DVD player / computer / rice cooker / or any other thing you want to program. I can do that. It’s easy for me. I’m good at it. But is it fun?
“My friend and I are witches,” she said to me.
“Witches?” I asked. She nodded. This was not long after we had been to see book 4 of the Harry Potter series, and she was in the middle of reading them with her family.
“We can cast spells, but they are only good spells. We can make you a witch, if you’d like. Do you want to be a witch?”
“More than you know.”
I’m thinking about this because I recently had student tell me that maybe I should be a creative writing and/or digital media instructor instead of a technical and professional writing instructor. I think this is because I emphasize creativity. Don’t give in to the boring, I suggest. Try creating your resume on a website, a video, a wiki, or anything else you can come up with. Correspondence? Oh, yes…what do you have in mind? Using Twitter or IM’ing? Texting, maybe? It doesn’t have to be digital. Use your imagination.
We turn on Van Morrison and The Chieftains. Willow and Justice have spent the night and we’ve just finished breakfast.
“Let’s put on a show!” she exclaims.
I smile. I remember when I did that with my siblings and cousins. The adults would politely sit while we play-acted or did ice skating shows for them.
“What would you like to do?”
“We’re dancing an Irish jig!” she yells. She starts kicking up her heels. Justice joins in. I join in. We’re dancing so hard and fast that we’re all gasping for breath. But we’re smiling the whole time. Perma-smiles that make our cheeks hurt.
We’d collapse in a heap, hear a new song, and jump back up, giggling wildly.
I am 41. They are 4 and 9. But that didn’t matter. We were having the times of our lives.
It’s not that easy, I’ve found. Somewhere in between childhood and college, students lose the belief that their creativity is important. I want them to believe. I want them to know that that side of them is important, too. That creativity will go a long way in a job.
I hope, for their sake, and for ours, that they can see where the faeries play. And to cherish that sight.
the music of our lives
0
I can’t believe I haven’t ever written this post. You know, the post about the music of our lives, those pieces of music that have defined us and led us to the places we are now. Do you have those?
Music has defined my life. I still get excited to get new music, to share it with others, to dance around my living room to the beats and rhythms of music I love.
Memories are like dreams now, hazy and starting to fade. But the connections to music are what keep them alive, keep me grounded in who I am and where I’ve been. I could list at least a hundred songs or groups in a minute to signify different times in my life, but there are certain moments and artists that are especially poignant for me.
When I was in high school in Las Vegas, I was on the speech and debate team. We were a fairly successful team and traveled quite a bit. I remember being at UCLA for a tournament. I had just completed my oratory (but don’t ask me what topic — I have no idea). I was getting ready for my extemporaneous competition. I remember the green grasses, the marble columns on the buildings, and I remember ivy. It was so green. And what music makes me remember? Prefab Sprout. That’s what I was listening to that day on my portable tape player. Prefab Sprout. (Which, as an aside, instigated my purchase of a Prefab Sprout CD in Tempe a few years ago when visiting Zia’s with my brother and his family.)
During my 20s, I was going through a particularly violent part of my life. I started moving around quite a bit, and I ended up in Boulder, Colorado, living in a motorhome behind my workplace (it was my boss’s motorhome — he rented it to me). I would sleep on that hard, thin little mattress, headphones on, listening to Tori Amos sing her songs on Little Earthquakes. I credit her music with getting me through an incredibly difficult time. It helped me want to get out of that period in my life. Funny how I credit music with that, but I listened to it every single night. I would cry myself to sleep listening to it, and dance around listening to it. It had a huge impact on my life.
This all brings me to tonight. I got the new Indigo Girls Poseidon and the Bitter Bug deluxe CD set today. It reminds of their older stuff — more acoustic, more like contemporary folk music. I can already tell (after a full 3 listens of the CDs) that it will be one of my favorites. It’s beautiful. I knew I loved it when I was driving home from getting some groceries and I started crying (sap that I am).
I’ve written this before, but I think it bears mentioning again. If you can get into the deep of it with me, if I’m crying or laughing or, preferably, both, then it’s a winner. I’m yours.
the moments in-between
0
There have been moments in-between. The moments where I feel the most lucid, where my head isn’t filled with theory, or concepts, or longing for family and Arizona and sunshine, or any of the millions of things that fill my head so much that it hurts constantly.
Those moments are precious.
This morning I looked out the big window in my living. I love this window. It’s what keeps me sane sometimes. Right now, it looks over green grass, bird feeders, a line of trees, and, ultimately, a little pond. Today the grass was a beautiful new spring green. The trees are starting to fill with budding leaves. The sky, since the window faces the west, was tinged with pinks and blues from the sunrise, but mostly overcast. It was an odd color that brought out the greens in a really amazing way.
And in those moments, I love Minnesota. I love the way it embraces life after a long cold winter (and truth be told, I LOVED the winter here — loved it).
I was complaining to my brother a few days ago that we seemed to have bypassed spring. We went straight from winter (below 30F) and straight into summer (getting into the 70sF). I wondered where those 40F and 50F days were, the ones that get you excited about the warming weather. He told me that’s what I get for living so far north.
We took a slight turn and came back to those spring days. We are getting the gorgeous spring rain showers and thunderstorms that herald in new life.
Nature, I find, gives me the moments in-between. It reminds me, as it did in Arizona, that everything is cyclical, that it all works out, provides, and replenishes eventually. I’m filled with moments of peace when I watch the large male turkey during the winter, the beautiful robins in the spring, and the way the sun ripples across the water and ice in all seasons.
These moments, these in-between moments, encourage me and give me hope.
aural intimacy
0It began long ago. Isn’t that how this starts? Or, perhaps, not so long ago, but still far enough in the past that it’s becoming hazy and dimmer as the years go by. When you read this, those of you who know my voice, do you hear it? Do you hear the inflection, the pauses, the stutters, the sighs? Do you hear the way my voice rises and falls with thought and inspiration and consideration?
I’m sure many of us hear a “voice” when we read. It’s that voice we apply to a reading to give it character, to make it come alive. Often, for me, it’s not my “inside my head” voice, but the voice of some narrator type mixed in with character voices.
Where does this come from? Is it from the foundational readings we had as children when our parents read to us? In my case, I’m not sure. I don’t remember being read to very much. I remember doing a lot of reading, but not being read to.
What I do remember is that sometime in my mid to late 20s when my youngest brother, Shadow, and I worked together, we traveled throughout Arizona quite a bit. During a few of those times, we read Raymond Carver’s short stories to one another. I loved that. It was fun to listen to the stories while we drove to a town down a long highway.
I don’t remember listening to many books on tape. They just didn’t seem that good to me. There was something that was too distant, too removed to get me interested.
That changed when I joined an audio bookclub at my last job. While I didn’t like most of the books we listened to (that’s bound to happen in a bookclub since everyone has such different tastes), I did enjoy books that others recommended to me. The first book I remember listening to that turned me around was Neil Gaiman‘s American Gods. I already owned a few of his other print publications (the Stardust graphical novel, the Sandman series, etc.), but I was blown away by this audio version. I could not stop listening. This book came alive in the same intimate way that the readings with my brother came alive. It was rich and beautiful and amazing.
I figured I would stick with Gaiman for Neverwhere. This time it was even better. Gaiman read it, and was able to introduce the pauses and changes in speed in just the way it should be read. The underworld of London was right there, in my mind. I pictured the London above that I knew, and then translated it, through his storytelling, into the London below. It was, in a word, magical.
I know, I know: magical and Neil Gaiman. It’s not all that original, is it?
But what these two books did for me is open up an entirely new way of enjoying that aural intimacy of books that I had come to love. I have listened to hundreds of books in this format by now (a few favorites: Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake — Campbell Scott is an amazing narrator, Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto, Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns (I cried through both of them), Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (haunting) and the Hugo Award nominee, multi-authored/multi-narrated METAtropolis).
While I haven’t liked everything I’ve listened to, nor have they all brought me that same intimacy, it is those books that do that allow me to be excited about “reading” again. I will never lose the love I have for holding a book, but I think that there is something to be said for listening, too. It allows you to open your mind to a different way of reading. An aural experience versus an optical experience is different. It is an intimate encounter to have someone reading a book directly to you, as if you were his or her only audience.
what has meaning
32 years ago
This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.
David Foster Wallace — Commencement Speech at Kenyon College
I’ve had a hard time being a fan of David Foster Wallace. I mean, I’m supposed to, right? He’s the intellectual’s intellectual. But I have a hard time with his writing, much in the same way I have trouble with theorists in my field. They go on and on and on, never quite reaching their point. They talk in circles about their ideas, and we are to bow down before the alter of this philosophy. Why? Well, because–these are brilliant philosophers (dead white men, most of them).
I can’t. I keep trying to believe that what I read is important, that maybe if I understood it more it would make more sense. It doesn’t. Not only do I not find so much of the theory incomprehensible, but I also find it steeped in a belief system that I don’t hold, don’t follow, and won’t be converted to.
Perhaps this is the real meaning of my college education. It’s to give me the voice to say I don’t like this person’s theories, or that I don’t believe in what this person has to say, and to stick to my guns.
It’s hard sometimes, especially when it seems that everyone around you worships this philosopher or that, and you haven’t bought in. Or maybe, just maybe, I trust my own instincts more than I do people who write to an audience that didn’t include me in the first place.
a teenager — new and improved!
3
I was reading Wil Wheaton’s post on a problematic issue he has with people associating him with the character he played on television while he was a teenager. One of the things he said was
Imagine having something you’ve worked so hard to create being dismissed out of hand, because of completely unrelated work you did when you were a teenager – work that you had no control over – and you may understand why this is so upsetting to me.
There are people in my life who have only known me as a teenager (isn’t Facebook grand?). And there are people in my life who still talk to me or treat me like a little girl or a teenager. I don’t even remember that time in my life, let alone still act like that person (or look like that person — I looked so young and cute, and my hair was still very red!). Life has ensued. I have changed (for the better, I hope).
I don’t think Wheaton is alone in this desire, although he may have to face it in an ongoing and more public way than most of us do. We reach a point where we want to be known for who we are now, the accomplishments we’ve had over our lifetimes, and the people we’ve grown into.
Which, I suppose, is a nice segue into my next item. I’ve been thinking about how, even as a teenager, I was never interested in the typical guy: the football captain, the all-round jock, or even the student body president. I was interested in those who were a little on the edge like I was — not quite in the center of things, but not quite outside of it all, either. I hung out with the popular kids, but was never quite one of them, and the men I liked were very similar.
I was speaking with someone on Friday about a friend. I said that being single might be a good thing when you’re working on your doctorate — there is so little time for much else. The person I was talking to looked at me and said he thought I should date men who have been working on their own dissertations or projects, locked away in labs and socially inept. I laughed. I’m attracted to geeky men, so it struck me as a funny comment.
But then I started thinking about it (or over-thinking about it, as the case may be). What did he mean by that? Did he mean that only socially-inept men would find me attractive? Did he mean that, like them, I’m socially inept so we’d fit together? Or did he mean that I’d be good for someone socially-inept? I have a feeling he meant the former two, and not necessarily the last. Hrumph.
I’m still attracted to geeky men. They are smart and fun and interesting. Who wouldn’t find that appealing?
never enough
0
Me: I thought I’d use this summer to catch up on some readings, learn more about different theorists, understand more concepts, and delve into more ideas surrounding our discipline.
Professor: You can read the things you think will help with your research. Or you can read the things you think will help with your exams. But if you try to read everything, you’ll never succeed. There is far too much out there. You’ll spend your life in circles chasing after the citations mentioned in each book.
I already do this online. Can I afford to do it in books, too? Or maybe I started in books, and it carried over my online methods as well. I seem to chase after things, in a never-ending quest to reach…what? The end? Is there an end?
This is a problem in how I approach my studies, too. I want my writing to be perfect. But then I read something new and I realize that my research is so far from perfect that I become paralyzed with the fear of turning in a less than stellar work. What happens then is that I end up turning in something even worse because I have to rush through it to get it done after spending so much time agonizing and worrying over the concepts and theories that came before.
It’s a vicious cycle.
inside –> out
02 years ago
“There are trees in our hearts.”
Nalini Nadkarni
On Facebook yesterday, my friend, Betty Schlueter, (who is an amazing photographer), posted a link to the TED video of Nalini Nadkarni, an ecologist who looks at tree canopies, interdisciplinary studies, and urging people of different backgrounds to unite for a common cause.
The first time I watched, I was attracted to the emotional appeal. I’m a tree-hugger. I love trees. I love to touch them, smell them, and talk to them. I’m not ashamed to admit that. I was interested in the idea of creating bonds between people who don’t have that connection to nature to nature itself. But I was also amused by her humor and the way she connected that humor to a very serious issue.
My second time through the video, I began to see the similarities in the way we approach our particular fields of inquiry. She invites artists into the forests to interpret them in a way that connects two seemingly different areas of interest: the sciences and arts. And this is how I approach my studies and teaching practices.
Yes, I’m a writing instructor. But I started off in geology. I like looking down, thinking about how everything is constructed from a foundational support, how it is built, layer upon layer, until it becomes something stronger and more stable.
When I’m in a writing class, I think of writing in different terms. I don’t think about how I interpret it. I’m much more interested in how the students in the class interpret it and how they can find it useful.
We’re working on the final projects of the semester. My classroom is entirely collaborative and students are working as a part of a team to put together the projects. I asked them, “what matters to you?” “What are your interests?” The class isn’t about me. I already know how to do this stuff.
So I ask them to be creative. Not because I expect them to be artists. I don’t. Many of them are pre-professional (med, vet, dentist, etc.), and others are business or agricultural students. While some of them may consider themselves artistic, what I really want to encourage them to do is to look outside of the box to think about what will suit their project the best. Sometimes that’s a wiki, sometimes a webpage, sometimes a video, and sometimes a message in a bottle (yes, I’ve received projects in all of these forms).
It’s about taking what is inside and bringing it out. It’s about going into the forest, looking up, and seeing the possibilities. It’s about looking into their hearts, and seeing the roots that grow there, waiting to connect to something bigger.
It’s about communicating with one another, sharing the excitement, and watching a project come to fruition.
I haven’t been disappointed yet. Each of them is amazing and contributes in ways that I could have never imagined.
nothin’ but blue skies
12 years ago
I was in San Francisco last week for the annual ATTW conference and CCCC convention. I was absolutely thrilled to go west, to see mountains, bluer than blue skies, warm sunshine, and a bit of a city I loved living in.
As we flew over the Rockies and then the Sierras, I felt such joy. I saw mountains. Mountains! Oh, how I have missed real mountains. I never realized how much I would miss them.
San Francisco did not disappoint. We touched down in beautiful sunny 55+ degrees (it was below freezing back home). The saltiness of the air pulled me in, and I breathed deep. I was in heaven.
The week was a rush. I attended sessions (mostly on rhetoric and technology), and even presented on one panel (.pdf of my presentation cccc09 presentation (2Mb)) dealing with mobile technology, twitter, and podcasts in the classroom. I spent time with fellow Minnesota people, having lunch and dinner at various places.
The thing that strikes me the most, though, is the blue skies. Having lived in the western U.S. most of my life, I think I’ve become used to having these amazingly blue skies. They aren’t pale or diffused. They are brilliant blues, so blue it almost hurts to look at them (ok, not really — but it’s good for effect). The blue skies of San Francisco were the same blues I remembered of Southern California, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico. It is the kind of blue that makes a day feel good,.
I came home to Minnesota where the sun was also shining and it warmed up to a lovely 64 degrees today. But the blue skies are not the same. They are not a deep, penetrating blue. Instead, they are a hazy, mystical, daring-you-to-believe spring-is-on-the-way blue. Instead of achingly beautiful, they are hauntingly beautiful. It’s different, but no less beautiful.
let freedom ring
03 years ago
When we think of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a Dream” speech, it is often the words “I have a Dream” or “Free at last” that we remember best. But the reality is that none of those words are the most frequently spoken words in the speech. What is spoken the most is a word that defines a concept that we, as Americans — all of us — consider a right.
What is freedom though? What does it mean to be free and how do we define it? Is it different for each of us? I’m pretty sure that my freedom, the ways I define it, are going to be indicative of my experiences and yours of your own. But I also think of how much the concept of freedom has changed the world. I can still hear Mel Gibson yelling, as William Wallace in Braveheart, “Freedom!” at the end of the movie. He wasn’t free, but he knew that his actions would induce the Scots to fight for their own freedom even more (and beyond the movie, William Wallace was a great warrior of the Scots (as anyone who has visited the battlefield at Stirling can attest), fighting for their freedom from a tyrannical government). How many other times has the bell of freedom been rung? And in how many other places?
Tonight in our Stylistics class, I started thinking about Dr. King’s speech on a more detailed level. I was thinking beyond the metaphors, beyond the parts of speech, trying to understand the way Dr. King meant these words, how he wanted his audience to accept them, and how he wanted the world to hear them.
The words he used the most were “Freedom,” “Let,” and “Negro.” If I’m only thinking of those three words, then some of the power of his speech is lost. Is he asking for Negros to have freedom? Should “the man” LET them have freedom? Should we throw out “let” altogether in this equation and only look at Negro and Freedom? Does that ring more true? Is it more powerful to link only those two words together?
What happens when we start to add in some of the other words he used less: “ring,” “one,” “dream?” Freedom rings. It rings bell towers, it rings in hearts and minds, it rings with rally cries and marches. It rings from coast to coast, border to border. It rings around the world, and beyond (especially if it is true that our radio waves reach into far galaxies).
Dr. King had a dream. That dream’s name was freedom.