Here's The Story

Thanks to an open mic series recently inaugurated in the heart of my little town, I crossed another item off my bucket list last month: performing spoken word. I've wanted to do standup for a long time, but didn't have the nerve. Though I do love a microphone and God knows I can't get enough of an audience. But in this year of waiting for my next book to come out (Where There's Smoke There's Dinner, November 2025) and starting a new creative cycle, I became fascinated in how we tell our stories. And how they become art--books, pictures, songs, poems, standup--and how differently we tell our stories in each form.

I was lucky enough to catch a stage performance of The Moth (link to their site), a wonderful storytelling show that started on the radio and is now a podcast and stage performance traveling to different towns. Five people stepped up to the mike and told their amazing stories, with very little embellishment, to a rapt audience that included me. As I walked back to my car (parked really far away, my signature move) through the darkness, I felt so calm and clear. I didn't feel worn out the way I often do after watching TV or movies or dance or music performances. Because I'd been entertained in the most basic way. The first way. Around the fire in the caves, I'm guessing everybody loved a story. Tell us a story. Tell us your story, stranger. However you tell it. Whatever it means. Let's reflect for a moment on being alive...

Suddenly I knew it was time for me to try to tell a story out loud, without my comics appearing behind me for support. When I heard about my town's small local open mic, I gave myself the task of taking a story I probably won't turn into a comic and molding it into a five-minute tale, written down so that I can speak it (because memorizing it really seems like a stretch--which means I guess that this still doesn't qualify as standup, but it's a start) in front of a live audience.

The words I put down on the page were non-literary, ephemeral. They were meant like music to go out into the audience, wash over them, and then vanish into the ether. They relied on my gestures and tone of voice instead of drawings to express what the words could not. It was so freeing, but also a real workout! I'm IN AWE of my favorite comedians, who can do this for a solid hour with no notes and in full control of how their voices and bodies are helping to express the story.

So my folder of stories is growing... And since they're not being filmed (ephemeral, remember?), here's one, which I video'd privately in my studio just for you.

And then there's telling a story in a single image--the mythical world of the gag cartoonist. Edward Steed is one of the best right now, and I will have the incredible honor next week of interviewing him about his work. (And I've always wanted to be a moderator! Another item off the bucket list...)

Thanks to the hospitality of the outstanding Frenchtown Bookshop in Frenchtown, N.J., I'll be talking to New Yorker cartoonist Edward Steed about his new collection of side-splitting cartoons called Forces of Nature on Thursday, January 23, from 6:30 - 7:30 p.m., after which he'll sign your copy of his book and you will be laughing for a VERY long time.

This cartoon graced my refrigerator, thanks to my daughter, long before I knew of Ed Steed's work. I cannot wait to hold his book in my hands.

So stay warm, tell your stories to each other, and throw another log on the fire. That's what winter's for.