Jonesborough Storytelling Festival (Page 1 of 1)

Up close, when I went to shake Tim Tingle’s hand a second time after watching his second performance, I noticed his chipped front tooth: just a little corner missing, nicked off, like the crumbled edge of a back-of-the-church Cades Cove tombstone.  Under his fedora brim, beneath his big brown eyes, behind his smile, that knocked-off tooth-corner put me at ease for some reason.

I guess I was searching a bit: This man, after all, had just made me cry — twice.

The first time was inside the Storytelling Festival’s Creekside Tent. I found him by pure luck — the performance I’d been planning to attend was packed, no seats, standing-in-the-sun room only. His tent was the closest, and I liked the title listed in the festival brochure: “Rolling away the Rock.” So I strolled into a half-full tent and plopped down, arms out like wings on the chairs beside me, legs stretched and relaxed.

It didn’t take Mr. Tingle long to mesmerize me, though, to pull me from my slouch and onto the edge of my seat, elbows knee-propped, eyes wide. It began with the low-throat rhythm of his Choctaw voice: Mr. Tingle could turn a phonebook reading into a coffee house poetry slam with the music of his enunciation, with his peculiar up-swinging accent, his perfectly placed pauses. His is the harmony of archetypal importance, the sound of whitewater flipping over rocks, of the thunder-pushed wind through the dark-night woods.

And then there was the narrative itself: “The story of Clarence Carnes, ‘Indian Joe,’ who went from Choctaw boarding school to Alcatraz. Based on interviews with inmates and relatives, Carnes was the youngest inmate in the history of Alcatraz.”

Tingle turned Carnes’ story into a dramatic epic, metaphorically biblical, universally substantial. Abused by sadistic teachers who locked him inside dark closets, Carnes learned to take what he wanted by pointing a pistol. Eventually, he encountered an old store clerk who tried to stand up to him, and Carnes pulled the trigger.

Once inside Alcatraz, he made an escape pact with fellow inmates on the break: To prove their loyalty, each promised to kill a guard on his way out. 

Carnes, however, listened to his heart — with a fistful of hair he yanked back his guard’s head, exposing his tight throat skin, only to look into the eyes of the man he was about to execute. “Mr.,” said the guard. “I have a wife and two girls. If you kill me, you kill them… I’m speaking to the goodness in your heart.”

Carnes redeemed himself in this moment; yet sadly, years later, he was faced with an outside existence that he couldn’t handle, and Tingle brought the story to a crashing conclusion caveat: “The next time you’re in the Wal-Mart and you look out over the can’t-talk-right people and the can’t-walk-right people, remember, there’s goodness in their hearts …”

When he finished, the crowd sprung to a standing ovation and a sliver-haired lady beside me, a perfect stranger, in the middle of an October blue-sky day, tears rolling like crystal beads from her red eyes, turned and opened her arms and sobbed on my shoulder.

As the tent began its crowd deflation, I made my way to the front against the stream and shook Tingle’s hand and then flipped through my events program to see when he was performing again. I would have followed him all day long, from tent to tent, skipping happily every other performer and gnawing my fingernails to the quick.

I saw with a little disappointment that he only had one other timeslot, and he was sharing it with another artist.

My disappointment, however, would soon wash away. When he and Elizabeth Ellis started their jointly written story, “Cutshin Mountain,” echoing each other in song and dialogue, the musical resonance alone was beautiful. Ellis’ buttermilk accent is the kind of voice that makes you want to couch-stretch on Thanksgiving day — eyes closed, a stomach full of turkey and pecan pie — and listen to the women talk in the kitchen while you safely doze through the football game. It’s the voice of family and trust, of front porch lemonade and three-to-a-swing; it’s the voice of the steep-sided hollers and ridge-top vantage points. And in combination with Tingle’s, the sound alone, even without a powerful narrative arch, was worth the $100 admission.

But their story was epic, and I’d sooner believe they dug it from the Appalachian
clay — stuffed in a jar and nailed shut in a casket — than tag-team wrote it over e-mail and late-night cell phone calls. It was the complete life story of Daniel Bishop, stitched with 20th century American history headlines and held together with sorrow and tragedy.  At an hour and 40 minutes long, it was only when a breeze blew down off the hill and cooled the tears on my cheeks that I even realized myself: Until then I was gone, outside my own consciousness; there was only story and dust and trampled grass and grave dirt. I’d forgotten myself. And when the wind fell through and chilled my tears I felt my hand covering my unhinged mouth; I felt my eyes propped open by awe.

When Tingle and Ellis finished (I couldn’t begin to do justice with my word-count restriction to the narrative curve of Daniel’s story), the crowd poured from the tent with fisted tissues and red noses, sniffling and wet cheeked. A few people stayed in their seats to finish crying.

And once again I made my way to the front to shake Tim Tingle’s hand.  That’s when I noticed his chipped tooth, and it must have been the humanizing effect of it that comforted me: Like the legendary Choctaw medicine man, believed to have power over nature and with the ability to give warriors strength of heart and body, Tingle had just cast me under a spell with his storytelling skill.

Check out the artists: www.elizabethellis.com and www.choctawstoryteller.com