STORY story

Barry Marcus William Cleveland

STORY

story

Text by William Cleveland Artwork by Barry Marcus

Story Story by William Cleveland and Barry Marcus Copyright Š 2020 by William Cleveland. and Barry MarcusAll rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying without written permission of the publisher or author. The exception would be in the case of brief quotations embodied in the critical articles or reviews and pages where permission is specifically granted by the publisher or author.

Although every precaution has been taken to verify the accuracy of the information contained herein, the author and publisher assume no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for damages that may result from the use of information contained within.

Books may be purchased by contacting the author at: CSAC@ArtandCommunity.com Cover Design: William Cleveland and Barry Marcus.

Interior Design: William Cleveland and Barry Marcus Photos/Artwork: Barry Marcus Publisher: Center for the Study of Art & Community Editor: William Cleveland Library of Congress Catalog Number: ISBN: First Edition Printed in USA

FORWARD H. Steven Moffic, M.D. Shakespeare would probably love this story. I mean STORY story. It may have even reminded him of a story he wrote called The Tempest. Written centuries ago, the Tempest was set on an island that perhaps looked similar to Bainbridge Island. The place where William (Bill) Cleveland and Barry Marcus had the reunion that led to this book. Both the Tempest and STORY story are concerned in part with some bad characters, characters that try to change or eliminate the good stories we have.

Just as Prospero worked his magic to restore goodness in The Tempest, Barry and Bill use their own kind of magic for good.

I’m a psychiatrist. All my patients had an important story to tell, often of conflict or trauma. I guess these could be called PsychStories. Some of their stories, the traumatic ones, broke the heart of the patient so badly that they had to be buried, only to be unearthed very slowly, carefully, and therapeutically. They could also break my heart. We call that secondary trauma from hearing about incest victims, young Black male prisoners, Viet Nam vets, and the like. And, as Bill wrote in the Introduction, if you change the story, you change the world, at least in my patients’ case, their world, which could then ripple out to change the world of others. At best, you hope for increased resilience and post-traumatic growth.

Probably, the stories I heard were the adult versions of the children Barry helped with his Creative Culture at FamiliesFirst. That is where he met Bill, who provided invaluable consultation, just like he probably did in his unique work for so many others as described in his book, Art In Other Places: Artists at work in America’s Community and Social Institutions. Given the importance of the arts to society, he’s a national treasure if you ask me.

Certainly, Bill’s words in the story could stand on their own. Are they poetry or prose? Who knows!

All I know is that they move me, immediately, and again and again. Barry’s images could also live on their own individually or as a collection. Even though Barry illustrated my edited psychiatry books on Islamophobia, Anti-Semitism, and Christianity, I still don’t know how he does what he does. It is like magic. He just may have found another route to what Freud called “the royal road to the unconscious.” Just like I go deeper and deeper into a patient’s mind, you can go deeper and deeper into these haunted and haunting words and images. Can you find their portraits(s)? Read it again and again.

With a generic title like STORY story, you may already be wondering, what kind of story is it? It’s a prototypical STORY, and it’s also a typical story. It’s a big STORY, and it’s a little story. It’s an old STORY, and it’s a new story. It’s a “white” older male story, and it’s a STORY for all.

If you want an expanded edition of this STORY story, there is one, a short film on YouTube that Bill mentions in the Introduction. It adds a soundscape as the story comes alive in a different way.

Not all stories are good ones, whether in style or content. Indeed, some stories are almost unimagalive. STORY story is a good story in all the meanings of good.

inably harmful, like that of Hitler’s autobiography, Mein Kamph. To counter that is one reason why we are racing to get as many stories of the lives of Holocaust survivors taped while they are still Of course, there can also be different versions of the same story. For example, which version of the coronavirus story do you believe is true? And true in what sense? Your health and life, as well as that of others, may depend on your answers.

What I have written here is called a Forward. What a fitting word. Go forward to read their words and see their images. Let them enter your mind and your heart, and you will be enriched, not once upon a time, but for all time.

INTRODUCTION

BILL: Once upon a time, in the early spring of 2005, my wife Carla and I found ourselves unpacking in a small, well-appointed room in a 15th-century Italian palazzo named Villa Serbelloni overlooking the blue expanses of Lake Como. We had traveled to northern Italy at the Rockefeller Foundation’s invitation to spend a month as residents of the Bellagio Retreat and Conference Center. I had come to write, and Carla, to paint. My book project, called Art and Upheaval, would tell the stories of artists working on what I was characterizing as the world’s frontlines, which translates literally as eleven communities across the globe facing extreme conflict and disruption. Carla was working on a suite of paintings in a studio called “Polenta.” This name was a reference to the gruel dispensed there to villagers during the great famine of 1591.

Which, of course, is another story for another day.

During our time there, we shared meals and good cheer with the dozen or so artists and scholars who were our fellow residents. Many mornings Carla and I started our day across the breakfast table from a poet from Maine named Wesley McNair and his wife, Diane. Wesley’s poems, which I came to admire a great deal, were powerful, intense, and often very personal.

One morning, he shared a work in progress describing an abusive encounter between a New York couple and a clerk in a roadside store near Wesley’s home in rural Maine. Like most of his work, it was short and unsparing. By the time he looked up from the page, there was no mistaking the deep sense of violation he felt when fair weather and fancy cars heralded the annual migration of a particular species of callous interloper to his beloved rural refuge.

Over the next day or so, I pondered the story — particularly the blithely self-absorbed couple whose fast-accelerating BMW concluded the poem. No doubt, the clerk had been mistreated, and by extension, the community sullied. But I also felt an intense curiosity about what those two were talking about as they continued up the coast. Did they have any idea what they had left in their wake? Were they oblivious, or sorry? Did they argue? I guess you could say I was interested in the “other story” revealed in that disturbing scene in the store. Who were these people, and why did they act that way?

These questions led me to reflect on my work at the Villa. I was spending my days exploring the lives of artists working to heal and provoke change amid appalling conflict and trauma in places like Northern Ireland, Watts, California, Milosevic-ruled Serbia, and post Keymer Rouge Cambodia. My efforts to animate these harrowing and inspiring stories respectfully and compassionately had been humbling. In the process, I found myself caught up in, no, actually overwhelmed by the infinitely faceted, interconnected nature of these human narratives.

I had convinced myself that my job was to make sense and meaning of all these threads. But the weave of people, places, and history I was trying to represent, the layer on layer, shifting, bubbling, boiling nature of the lives and events I was encountering; was seriously fogging my lenses. I pressed on, but in the spaces between my book and time with Bellagio colleagues, a side-saga appeared.

What emerged was my first attempt to acknowledge and understand the nature and power

of human story-making. Indeed, the landscape I was exploring was immense -- the ubiquitous, indelible presence of stories; the fragility and mutable nature of stories; the powerful connections between the story and the imagination, story and belief, story and history, story and learning, story and the human struggle with power and difference – and on and on. Was I tilting at windmills? Likely so, but I had a head of steam, so I spent a day writing whatever came to mind and filed it --- working title: Story, Story. Maybe it was a safety valve because the foggy skies over Art and Upheaval soon cleared.

There are hundreds of dead-end writing threads scattered across my hard drive that will never see the light of day. For some reason, though, I found myself being drawn back to Story Story to poke and prod. At some point, I started including excerpts into talks I was giving to artists and organizers working for social change. I did this because I had come to believe that the care and feeding of stories are central to all change work. If you challenge and change the dominant narrative of a place, for good or ill, you will have taken a potent step towards community change.

The shorthand version is --- Change the Story, Change the World.

BARRY: My Story Story began in the Fall of 2017, the second time around. My wife Deborah and I had moved to Bainbridge Island, just a 35-minute ferry ride from Seattle across the Puget Sound. We didn’t know a soul, but, given our gregarious nature and the Island’s reputation as an “artsy” community, we knew we would have little trouble making new friends.

At the local independent bookstore, I stumbled on a copy of Bill’s book, Art and Upheaval. It provided me with an opportunity to look in on an old friend. I was grateful to read about Bill’s global adventures in the pursuit of artists working in communities facing conflict and trauma. This book was an unexpected prize. But it also got me wondering where Bill might have settled given all the exciting places he had been since I last saw him.

So, I called Marty, our mutual friend in California. When I told him about finding Bill’s book in such an unlikely place, he laughed. “Bill and his wife Carla have been living on Bainbridge Island for years. Here’s his number. Call him.”, I did!

I met Bill in 1995 when I was a director at FamiliesFirst, a private non-profit residential treatment facility for children suffering deep trauma as a result of abuse and neglect. These children had been sent to FamiliesFirst by social workers as a last resort, one step removed from state hospitalization. Most had long histories of extreme acting out, self-abuse, and dooming diagnosis. Given this, their previous treatment was informed by an unspoken culture of negativity. Our vision at FamiliesFirst was different, emphasizing each child’s strengths, interests, and imagination as a healing balance with their troubled limitations. The challenge was to create a culture of hopefulness and opportunity: A Creative Culture.

We brought in artists from all disciplines who, in harmony with the treatment staff, inspired the children to express themselves directly and tell their story through the art process. Bill was a prominent member of our artist group. Given his extensive knowledge and experience in the field of art and community, I valued his counsel. The children recognized his loving ways, and the program staff welcomed his feedback. I was grateful to have gained a good friend and colleague X

in the process. As the years passed, though, Bill and I moved on and lost track. That is, until our Island reunion.

BILL:When Marty informed me that Barry Marcus was living on Bainbridge, I was floored. Not just because he was a blast from the distant past, but because he is one of those characters from the that other world that I truly missed. I can’t describe why, other than to say his meandering, curious, creative soul left a mark. Not unlike his program, Creative Culture, which personified all those wonderful qualities and quirks. Like much of his life’s work, it was an audacious enterprise. But Barry’s background as a writer, composer, and therapist provided him with a perfect platform for really making a difference with those struggling kids. And he did.

Our work together on that project allowed us to form the kind of connection that I think we both felt would transcend time and space. When we reunited on Bainbridge, those bonds proved strong and true. We picked up where we left off with a few significant changes wrought by the passage of our own continuing stories. I was doing my thing at the Center for the Study of Art & Community, and Barry was no longer counseling. He had also replaced his guitar with a camera, establishing a reputation for bold and provocative multilayered digital collages that I’ll leave it to him to describe.

BARRY: For the previous five years or so, I had been exploring the territory of photography and digital editing. Everywhere I went, I took pictures of people and objects with a particular focus on the surprising juxtapositions showing up in window reflections. I was not seeking to force my will upon the image or depict a literal representation. Instead, I sought to deconstruct the obvious to reveal what lies beneath the raw, mysterious, and energetic forces, the language of spirit and emotion. I often found myself in the territory of dreams and unconscious. I loved playing with color, texture, line, and perspective, --more like a painter than a photographer. Each work was the product of a single shot altered only through digital editing, with no overlays or double exposures, and no collaborators.

I mention this because, for most of my life, I have worked with in partnership with others. So, when offered the chance to work with a young painter, I welcomed the opportunity. We created digital collages incorporating photographs of her paintings with my images. This work allowed me to explore overlays with varying opacities to add greater depth and dimension. Over time, I also found new possibilities for collaboration, illustrating three books on various themes in psychiatry. In the process, I learned about the give-and-take needed to for the successful marriage of image and narrative.

Back on Bainbridge, Bill and I continued where we left off. We met in coffee shops, restaurants, and in one another’s homes, anywhere where we could brainstorm out loud. There were times when it seemed as if we were the sole occupants of our little island, free to explore the creative shores and waters around us. But then near the end of 2018, Bill announced that he was leaving our Island to be near his kids. Now there was a unique situation to explore and a looming question to consider: How could we keep the momentum of our deep friendship and joyful collaboration afloat?

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We both agreed that before Bill left, we would need to commit to a tangible creative project. Bill showed me a draft of Story Story, and, since we were both storytellers, we felt it was a perfect place to start. I would create images to reflect and interpret Bill’s work in progress, and then he would respond to my visuals in the narrative. When Bill came to me with Story Story, I was all in. But, I had never taken on a project of this size and scope.

Nevertheless, we persevered. Through starts and stops, frustration, and doubt, I worked for over a year to create the nearly 30 images that make up this book. You will find that most of these images are collaged. There are, however, several that are single shots that may deceptively appear to be layered.

BILL: When Barry was closing in on his final images, I joined a workshop at The Story Center, one of the Bay Area’s most influential creative wellsprings. The Center is devoted to giving people around the world access to new, accessible technologies to explore and share their often-hidden stories. My time there turned me into a born-again filmmaker, and the juxtaposition of our Story Story images and text provided the impetus for the next phase of our collaboration.

Shortly after that, on a bench by a walking path near my new home in Alameda, California, I had the good fortune of meeting an extraordinary composer named Judy Munsen. As a songwriter myself, I am always happy to compare notes with kindred spirits, but I think the art gods had something else in mind. I soon learned that Judy had spent a lifetime creating music and soundscapes for film and television. When I told her about the Story Story project, she signed up on the spot. Like Barry, Judy’s enthusiasm was off the charts. In short order, she created a soundscape to go to the words and images that comprised our evolving project. If you are curious, the product of our collaboration is living at CSA&C’s YouTube channel.

Story Story had started as words on a page, then digital collages, and now we had an odd little film. But we were not finished. I felt strongly that Barry’s work deserved more than the 13-minute fire-hose-big-gulp produced by the movie. We both agreed that the best option was an old-school book with an actual cover and pages-- words on one side and images on the other. So that is what we have here. No doubt, the experience of the book and the movie are very different.

We are proud of both and invite you to linger, reflect, and even make your contributions to the continuing story.

BARRY: Although Story Story is complete, as it says in its final pages, “stories never die.” So, this story will continue through our future collaborations and, of course, every time viewers like you meld your memories, beliefs, and imagination with the story contained in these pages. Thank you for helping keep Story Story unbound and open to transformation, once upon a time, twice upon a time, time after time.

For Henry, Willa, Carter, Andre, and Sofia who have brought our own stories full circle

In the beginning there was a Word

The Word, a word, I don’t know…,

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But that word, doing its best to stay afloat at the confluence of time and space spinning at the hot center of the minds-eye vortex had no choice but to go forth and multiply and…beget a story.

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In no time at all that story was whispered, and sung, and gestured, and proclaimed until it gave birth to another story, and another, and another, that, given the fruitful nature of humans and stories, grew to become a family, a village, a whole land of stories all alive in time to the pulsing rhythm of all the story hearts and story souls beating then, and now. and forever. in the always emerging meta-story of the world.

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If you, my friend here and now can feel that rhythm If you can move your feet and sing and lay yourself down in the groove of that tall tale dust and music.

If you can swim in the roiling roux of all that telling, and listening, and telling you are tapped into in the crucible of the signifying, sanctifying, transmogrifying power of stories.

Yea, if you are feeling that, you are are holding a beaded parasol in the second line of all those story births and deaths.

And, if you are tapped into that well, it may just be that you are on your way to taking your place as a link in the chain of makers and tellers.

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If all that’s true, then you better listen up Where do I start?

Well, I’ll begin with a warning We all know about stories, right?

Stories are fun, stories frolic,

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but stories are also nimble, tricky, malevolent, and, and … well, you fill in the blank.

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Some say if you own “the story” then you’ve got the power --- the juice, but others say, stories are free --can’t be owned!

Then there’s those who say that creating that story is literally creating the future, and that stifling the story is killing the future and the past.

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What we do know is that every person, every family, every community is formed and shaped by their stories.

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And, If we don’t know our stories.

If we can’t shout the story of who we are, where we come from, where we are going, we lose our dignity, our humanity, our souls, as in East Germany, as in Chile, as in Cambodia, as in Sharpeville, Tulsa, and Wounded Knee, as in Attica, Solovetsky, Parchman, and Soledad, as in Toul Seng and Dachau.

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These particular stories teach us that tyranny is story subjugation driven by fear.

Here’s how it works: One: Keep them from telling the story Two: Ignore the story Three: Control the story by altering or editing it Four: Romanticize the story Five: Simplify the storyes i’ll send Six: Trivialize the story Seven: Twist the story with a lie Eight: Buy, then lose the story Nine: Steal, then lose the story Ten: Yea! If all else fails, just kill the sucker!

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But, you know, stories do not die.

After the smoke settles those fugitive seeds, Jara, Neruda, Malcolm, Hani, murdered, buried, forgotten... forgotten until they wake!

Yea, the rain and the sun beating down tug on memory’s twitchy trigger and they rouse…

Yea, those seeds remember once again to sprout and flower, until the inevitable flood, and they remember to flower, growing with a vengeance that will not abate,

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just like the kudzu and blackberry canes that crowd our lanes and clog our fences.

And of course, you all know the story about neighbors and fences “Good fences --make good neighbors” and…well, I don’t know, is that true?

Actually, Mr. Frost didn’t seem to think so.

Neither did Mr. Aesop.

But, both knew that a good story could set powerful, unpredictable things in motion, like an altered chromosome, or the floating spill of a new idea caught in the hot updraft of a Santa Anna wind.

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And, as those incipient stories swoop and swirl, some fall, some collide, and a few, just a few, join together at the hip, at the shoulder, at the third eye intersection of self-interest and common ground, and those tall tale partners become democracy zygotes.

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Democracy?

Yes, its true democracy is the art of collective story making.

Democracy says: “Here is the story to this point— let’s decide what’s next.”

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Now, this making thing that it appears we have always done that we now call “art.”

These are the tools we use to nudge our stories out into the world But, it’s important to remember

the artists hand that made

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the bison, that became the words,

that begat the first story,

the first joke, the first rumor,

the first vexing, no easy answer, question.

Oh, and hey, if you’ve got a mystery vexing you you’ve got to get that hand to help you stitch it fast to the rest of your world window.

Do it quick, cause, you know, unanswered questions don’t sit well with us humans.

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I know, I know, you’re thinking, that sounds kind of melodramatic.

But, you can’t ignore the tricksters spin, cause, disrespected stories ARE nascent shadows.

You can’t close your eyes to them because the shadow grows with neglect.

Out of sight and out of mind they just bubble, and ferment, and, mark my word, those untold stories, those unpeeled stories, those stifled stories, left to fester--are very, very dangerous.

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Bottom line… if you hold your ears, if you only pay attention to your own stories, its hard to listen, its hard to hear the rest of the stories hovering all around, and, we need that…

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This is because everything in the world is translated for us, to us, by us, through story

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For good and for ill everything we see, hear, taste, feel is just pregnant with story ready to give birth to another, and another, helping us make sense and meaning in this confounding jumble of a world

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Sense and meaning?

Well, that’s just story breath and story fire feeding the future in the minds eye furnace of imagining... what’s next?

And you know, that imagination thing.

Its just a muscle up in there working overtime generating more power than it consumes as it chugs along raising the temperature in the hot house of stories.

Talk about power, man!

Change the story, change the world.

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But you know, your push is just my pull in another direction, like that privilege thing.

You know, privilege is imagining your story is...

THE STORY. And then, if you are rich, you can buy all the stories you think you need, regardless of where they came from.

Not only is that corrupt Its undignified. Â

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Dignity?

Dignity is no small thing.

Dignity is the unfettered imagination, the untethered voice, the unleashed story.

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And wealth be damned, if that story holds great meaning you can touch a million hearts, or just a precious one.

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Empathy happens when I tell you my story

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and you tell my story back to me, and I nod my head.

And the art?

Well art contains the story, but, only just--for a little while.

The artist says, “This is how the story goes at this time and this place.”

Sometimes the story sticks around, sometimes it mutates or migrates, sometimes it escapes.

What we call improvisation is fishing for those fugitive stories.

New stories get born when improvisation and imagination converge. bending time and space wide enough for story sperms and story eggs to find each other and join.

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But of course, there are no new stories and, all stories are new.

Some people say, “Have a seat while I tell my story.”

Some folks say, “Have a seat while I tell someone else’s story.”

Some say, “Have a seat while I tell your story.”

Then there are those who say, “Stand up we have a story to tell”

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I say, “once upon a time”

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So it goes.

Kurt Vonnegut