Experience

♪ STACEY BADER CURRY: They had everything I wanted in life.

They were BMX kids and I was just the weird, skinny kid with the big hair.

JOAN ANDERMAN: My big fantasy was that Donald Fagen from Steely Dan would discover me.

Even though I didn't actually play music, he would somehow sense how musical I was.

(laughter) MATTHEW SANDEL: Our only perk was one ice cream item per shift-- but no hot fudge.

(laughter) WES HAZARD: Tonight's theme is "Experience."

ANNOUNCER: This program is made possible in part by contributions from viewers like you-- thank you.

Literally every single thing that we see and hear and feel and do is an experience unto itself.

But upon further reflection, I find that it's actually the essential talent of a storyteller to isolate those specific moments which are laden with meaning and purpose, and to be able to share them with you.

And I think that tonight, you are going to be absolutely amazed by how these tellers are able to exercise that skill and bring you an amazing evening of storytelling on a variety of experiences.

CURRY: My name is Stacey Bader Curry.

I live in New York, New York.

I've lived there for 25 years.

I have four children.

I work as a real estate broker, and I tell stories on stage every chance I get.

Has it always been easy for you to get up on stage and be in front of people and perform in that way?

No, it hasn't been easy at all.

The first time I did it, I was terrified.

I had never spoken on a stage with a microphone.

But the thing about people that come to hear other people's stories are... it's a very warm room.

The storytelling community generally has been very supportive?

I feel like it's incredibly supportive.

It's incredibly diverse, and everybody is coming from a different place.

But we all have broken hearts.

We all have jobs that have gone terribly wrong.

We all have issues that we've had with our parents.

So it's amazing how universal our stories can be.

So, I understand that your father is going to be in the audience tonight to hear this story.

How do you feel about that?

I feel really good about it.

I didn't grow up living with my father, so I didn't have a typical childhood where I would see my dad and he would tuck me in every night.

And so we talk a lot about just what's going on in the day-to-day, and we don't really, you know, dig down deep.

And so I'm just really excited to share something with him on a more emotional level tonight.

The summer before I turned ten, there was only one thing I wanted-- a cherry-red Mongoose Freestyle BMX bike with red-and-black knobby tires.

And this was the most crucial part-- it needed to have a black-and-white checkerboard padded cover for the handlebars.

I spent that summer like I spent every summer, attending my town's free summer rec program.

Which meant I played a lot of knock hockey and made a lot of lanyards.

And that summer, it seemed every kid was rolling up on a BMX bike.

And I would just watch them.

They'd be in the infield building ramps and practicing pop-a-wheelies.

and it seemed, by the virtue of just having this bike, they had everything I wanted in life.

They had fun, they had community, and they had an identity.

They were BMX kids, and I was just the weird, skinny kid with the big hair.

I didn't think I was going to get this bike.

My parents were divorced, and this was a typical divorce kids dilemma.

Do I ask my mom for it, do I ask my dad?

It was easier just to not ask.

But then one night, my dad came to take my little sister and I out to dinner, as he did every Wednesday.

And as he dropped us off, he said, "Oh, Stacey, I'm bringing you a bike next week."

And my heart leapt with joy.

But then he said, "I'm getting it from work."

And my heart sank, because my dad worked in a shoe store.

And it was a very nice shoe store, but it was the kind of place where, like, ladies would come buy black alligator pumps that match their handbags.

And I had never seen anything resembling a BMX bike in this store.

So I nervously awaited my dad's visit the next Wednesday.

And he pulls up, and he opens the trunk, and he takes out this bicycle.

And it is purple, this delicate shade of lilac.

And the tires are white.

They are gleaming white.

But that isn't what concerned me about the tires.

The front tire was really big.

It was, like, the size of me.

But then the back tire was, like, the size of a personal pan pizza.

I would later learn that this old-timey style of bicycle is called a penny farthing, which I think is just a fancy term that means "Not a BMX bike."

(laughter) And then the icing on the cake was, you know, I really wanted a Mongoose bike.

That was a brand that brought a kid a lot of cred in 1980s suburban New Jersey.

But this bike said, in, like, jaunty yellow script, "Ferragamo," which was the name of the Italian shoe company that had designed the bike to be used as a prop in the windows of my dad's store.

Just... yeah, I know.

Just picture it with, like, crocodile loafers hanging off of it.

So my dad was really excited, and he was like, "Come on, get on!"

And so I got on, and he put one hand on my back, and one hand on the bike, and he started running, and I started pedaling, and I was terrified.

Not that he would let go or that I would fall, but that one of the BMX kids would come by and see me.

And so I said, "Dad, I have to go to the bathroom."

And we went, and I put the bike in my mom's garage, in a corner, behind the piece of plywood, and we went to dinner.

And the next week he came for dinner and he said, "Do you want to try the bike?"

And I said, "I'm really hungry, Dad, can we just go for dinner?"

And so on and so on.

And eventually, my dad got remarried, and he had two more daughters, and he moved away.

And we both forgot that bike.

Flash forward ten years-- I'm in college and I have a new bike.

It's a shiny blue road bike that I've bought myself, and I finally have everything I thought a bike would bring me.

I'm having fun, I'm having community, and I have an identity.

Because with 12 friends, we are riding our bicycles from Seattle back to New Jersey.

And one night, we're around the campfire in Wyoming, and the subject of our first bikes come up, and everyone's talking about their Huffys and their Big Wheels.

And I just blurt out, "My first bike was a purple penny farthing."

(laughter) And, there's crickets, like, literally.

And then somebody says, "That's so cool!"

And everyone's like, "Yeah, I want to see that bike."

So when we get back home, I go to my mom's house, and sure enough, behind the plywood, there is my purple penny farthing.

So I bring it down to campus, and I rode it to my classes the next day.

And everywhere I go, people are like, "Oh my God, that bike is so cool!"

And I'm just like, "I know!"

(laughter) And the thing is, it really was.

Like, those Italians, even the Italian shoe makers, they make fantastic bicycles.

And it was smooth, and I just...

I loved seeing the expression on people's face when they saw that little back wheel.

And that night, I had trouble sleeping.

It occurred to me-- I never thanked my dad for that bike.

You know, he didn't give me what I wanted, but he gave me what I needed.

He gave me something that nobody else in the world had, and the magnitude of that gift made me feel loved.

The next morning, I couldn't wait to ride my bike.

And I lived in this off-campus house, this big Victorian house with, like, 85 roommates.

And I go down to the porch, and it's not there-- both the bicycle and the porch.

The bike thieves had sawed off the railing to take it.

And it just... it never occurred to me that something I had been so reluctant to accept, that somebody else would want it so badly.

And I never saw that bike again.

I had one day riding that bicycle.

And so that bike represents something from my childhood that was taken from me.

And on my death bed, I will probably whisper "Ferragamo," because... (laughter) I just...

I wish I could have it back.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) and how much I miss it.

He never knew that it was stolen.

He just... he really... he forgot about that bike.

So I don't think he understood what an important part of my life this bike was.

And I don't think he understood how freaked out I was by this bike when he first gave it to me.

ANDERMAN: My name is Joan Anderman.

I used to be on staff at the Boston Globe.

I've worked for many years as a music critic.

I really wrote about everything.

I wrote about popular music.

I could count on half a hand how many classical music concerts I've covered.

A little bit of jazz, but mostly pop and rock.

You're a professional writer, so I'm just curious.

What do you find most challenging about preparing a story like this, where it's not going to be shared on the page, but rather on the stage?

The first draft I wrote was... it was like a written piece.

It was... it was basically like a memoir.

There wasn't... there wasn't a lot of action and scene and dialogue in it.

You know, it was a challenge for me, and I hope I rose to it, to, you know, create a story that I could tell, that had movement and shape and scene and dynamic, and wasn't just, you know, "And then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened."

So it's been a real lesson in verbal storytelling rather than storytelling on the page.

Two completely different crafts.

It's a warm summer night in 2009, and I'm ending it the same way I've ended countless-- and I mean countless-- summer nights: hunched over a folding table in a trailer parked in the bowels of an amphitheater outside of Boston, tapping on my laptop and nervously eyeing the clock.

There's a closed circuit TV on in the corner, and the sound of steel drums is pouring out of it-- the opening bars of "Margaritaville."

I'm searching my online thesaurus for synonyms for breezy.

Sunny, laid-back, feel-good, lighthearted.

I am, of course, writing a review of a Jimmy Buffett concert.

It's his 50th at this venue.

I can't remember how many of them I've covered.

Four, five, six.

It feels like I've been to all 50, though.

Coincidentally, I am about to turn 50.

A numerologist would say that this was no coincidence, that 50 represents change and growth and personal freedom.

And that all of these 50s were a harbinger of the sea change that was about to upend my life.

All I know is something is shifting inside of me.

I've loved being a rock critic for a long time.

It's an incredible job with ridiculous perks.

I've meditated with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and I've eaten tacos with Lucinda Williams, and I've curled up on a sofa with Madonna.

But this night my eye keeps landing on the antonyms for breezy-- anxious, troubled, vexed.

There's something wrong.

Something is changing, and I don't know what it is.

All I know is something is missing.

Not long after the Buffet concert, I'm on the phone with my daughter Hannah, who's a student at Barnard College in New York.

And she's telling me that she's thinking about taking some time away from school.

She's burnt out, and she needs a change.

And during one of our conversations, under the auspices of brainstorming, her year off becomes our year off.

We are so totally pumped about this idea, and we start making a list.

We can start a small arts festival.

We can become cheesemakers.

We can build a cabin.

We can write songs and make a record.

Hannah ultimately decides to stay in school, but that last idea, write songs and make a record, I can't get it out of my head.

When I was young, I dreamed about becoming a musician.

I grew up in L.A. in the 1970s, and I went to an artsy high school.

I loved to sing.

I was crazy about pop music.

My big fantasy was that Donald Fagen from Steely Dan would discover me, even though I didn't actually play music.

He would somehow sense how musical I was.

(laughter) And he would offer to produce my debut record.

Then Steely Dan would take me on the road, and you know the story-- I become a star.

That didn't happen.

But I did land an internship at the Seattle Weekly after college, and they gave me a shot writing about music.

I've never looked back.

I'm certainly not filled with regret over my choices.

I am, however, growing older.

And as I do, certain things were becoming clearer to me.

For instance, the fact that I'm going to die.

I don't just know this, I feel it.

I feel my mortality.

I felt it that night in the suburban amphitheater searching for new language.

And the feeling was even stronger a few months later when I was talking with my daughter about a mother-daughter music project.

So when my 50th birthday rolls around, I'm still doing my job.

I'm going to shows, I'm filing my stories.

But I no longer feel like the luckiest writer in the world.

I feel like a kid with her nose pressed up against the glass, frustrated and full of desire.

I suppose I could have signed up for guitar lessons, but instead, I walk into my editor's office one morning and I quit my job to become a songwriter.

Okay, it wasn't quite that impetuous.

I agonized for months.

I was...

I was worried about losing the steady paycheck.

I was worried about losing my identity.

Who would I be if I wasn't Joan Anderman from the Boston Globe?

And what would people think about a middle-aged woman chasing a rock and roll dream?

But I was done.

I was done being on the outside looking in.

For my going away present, the newspaper gave me a microphone.

And I packed it in a box with a mountain of reporter's notebooks, and I went home.

I spend the next two years hiding in my attic with a borrowed guitar and an amplifier that one of my kids friends left at the house, trying to play barre chords and hoping against hope that all the listening and thinking and writing that I've done about music counts towards my 10,000 hours.

(laughing) I start posting pictures on Facebook of my fingers in various shapes on the guitar neck, waiting for my friends to weigh in and tell me what I'm playing.

Radical transparency felt like the only way I could deal with the self doubt and the self consciousness.

So I start a blog, as one does, and I start posting audio clips of my cringeworthy baby steps.

I'm not being self deprecating.

I am a trained professional.

This was really... you know, it was bad stuff.

But I... (laughter) But I kept going, and I kept digging, and I kept working very hard to silence the critic inside of me, because I knew that that was the only way I could find the songwriter inside of me.

One of my faithful readers-- his name is Dan, he was a former colleague of mine from the Boston Globe-- he starts leaving really encouraging comments on my blog.

And he sends me some of his own songs, too, and I love them.

Dan invites me to get together with him to play music, and I graciously declined.

I had no intention of leaving that attic for a long, long time.

It was too loaded.

It was too scary.

I wasn't at all ready.

But Dan was tenacious and I was getting very sick of myself.

(exhales) I know better than anyone that...

I know as well as anyone, not better than anyone, but as well as anyone, that songs don't exist in a vacuum.

Songs belong in the world.

So Dan was tenacious, and I finally came out of my attic, and we got together.

And we started playing our songs.

And the next thing you know, we formed a band.

And we are on a tiny stage playing our first show in a dark rock club.

Everybody I know is there, and as predicted, it's very loaded and it's very scary.

And it's also the most thrilling and joyful thing I've ever done in my life.

So maybe middle age seems like a strange time to kick off a music career.

But, in my experience, it's actually the perfect time.

I don't have stars in my eyes.

I'm not trying to make it, not in any conventional sense.

Although I will say that reading a review in the Boston Globe of my band Field Day was fabulously surreal.

(laughter) The best part of this whole endeavor, really, the mission critical part of it, is that at my age, I'm far less concerned with what the world expects of me then what I plan to do-- in the words of the poet Mary Oliver-- with my one wild and precious life.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) there's no expiration date on a sense of adventure and a sense that you can chase a dream and do whatever you want to do in your life.

♪ SANDEL: My name is Matthew Sandel.

I'm a writer and editor and storyteller.

I grew up in Los Angeles.

I went to school out there, and then after college, I moved here to Boston, where I've been for quite a long time.

What was the origin of your love for storytelling?

Where'd that come from?

SANDEL: It really came from my mother.

She could see the humor in something annoying as it was happening, so that it helped... it helped me to... still helps me to not get too freaked out if there's a problem or something.

Because I don't think, "In a month this will be funny," but in the moment I can see this is ridiculous.

Or this is crazy.

Is humor important to you when you tell stories?

Oh, very much so.

Humor is my... just my natural inclination.

I think everything needs a little bit of leavening most of the time.

I think a poignant story needs a little humor.

I think a funny story needs a little poignancy, sort of like a little sugar and salt.

I remember feeling nervous and unprepared as I faced my very first shift at my very first job.

I was 16.

Katie, a few days before-- she was a burned-out assistant manager-- and she had trained me just for a few hours, half-heartedly.

The place was called Clancy Muldoon's Old Fashioned Ice Cream Parlor, but the only thing old-fashioned about it was the hygiene.

(laughter) So, my first day there, and I was teamed with two girls-- Shanice, who was excitable and chubby, and Laurelle, who was slim and had a slight air of leadership about her.

So I was really glad to be working with her, because I had no idea how to serve ice cream.

Or to do anything else, for that matter.

It was a very quiet day.

And one of my first customers was this surfer dude in his mid-20s with curly blond hair and mirrored sunglasses.

He came in and he asked for something that Katie hadn't prepared me for-- all the money in the cash register.

(laughter) So I just stood there.

I...

I was in total disbelief.

I couldn't believe it.

I mean, he was so mellow.

I thought... (laughter) I thought he was joking.

I mean, who even robs an ice cream parlor?

I mean, it's not a Brinks armored car.

Or even a liquor store.

In fact, it wasn't much of an ice cream parlor.

So, at that point, he takes out a gun from his backpack and says, "Hey, man, hurry up.

I don't want to use this."

At that point, it seems like less of a joke.

And I realize...

I realize, "This guy's holding me up!

He's got a gun!"

And I really realized it when Shanice said, "Come on, he's serious."

(laughter) So, I opened the drawer.

I gave him all the cash, which he stuffed, leisurely, in his backpack.

And then, as he sauntered out of the store, he said, "Have a nice day."

(laughter) I mean, are you kidding me?

You kind of just ruined it.

(laughter) (sighs) So Shanice said, "Oh my God, oh my God, what should we do?"

And so Laurelle said, "I don't know, let's call Clancy."

And Shanice said, "No, we have to call the police first."

So Shanice sighed, and she muttered softly to me, "I knew I should have taken that job at Kmart."

(laughter) And then she said, "We have to call Clancy.

"He is going to be pissed off if we don't call him first, "and then he's going to be all over me because I'm the shift leader."

So, being a good guy, like an idiot, I volunteered to make the phone call.

"How much did we lose?"

he said.

He barked over the phone.

Well, I tried to soft pedal it.

"Um, maybe $50, $60."

"Just what I needed!"

he said.

"All right, I'm going to call the cops.

"And, look, don't worry about it.

"Molly's been through 16 holdups, and she hasn't had a bullet in her yet."

(laughter) Then he hung up.

(laughter) Molly was Clancy's long-suffering wife, who did most of the work for the business anyway.

And his confidence in her indestructibility did little to reassure me.

(laughter) So a few minutes later, Molly appears.

And she looks mad.

And she says, "Why did you close up?

You could have been making back the money we lost."

Then the police came, and she insisted that I give them the report while I was waiting on customers!

(laughter) I couldn't believe it.

Neither could the police.

(laughter) (sighs) After that first day, I was so scared.

I never wanted to go back.

But I did, and I finished working there for the rest of the summer.

Our only perk-- our only perk-- was one ice cream item per shift, but no hot fudge!

(laughter) And one quart of take-home ice cream per week.

But it wasn't nearly enough to make up for what I had been through.

Clancy may have lost $60, but I had lost my sense of safety and security.

Even so, I survived, and I carried on with determination, perseverance, and a quart of mint chip ice cream.

(laughter) Thank you.

(applause) ANNOUNCER: This program is made possible in part by contributions from viewers like you-- thank you.

♪