indefatigablog

I just found this footage in an old backup of a particularly beautiful afternoon this past summer when Fonz had his mojo workin’ on this little tune he sang for me:

Thanks for the music, guey.

: )

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Some cultures rely heavily on their oral traditions.

Native Alaskan cultures, for example, rely solely on the spoken word to pass stories and lessons down through the generations. They do this because they had no alphabets or formal methods to write them down until the immigration of white culture into Alaska.

There are certainly pros and cons to this. The cons are obvious : when someone dies, their stories die with them. The pros, however, are rich and are what gives our country today its many flavors, such as in this article about the diversity of modern-day Anchorage by Father Michael Oleksa.

Thinking about it, some of the greatest thinkers in history never wrote anything down. For example, Socrates and Jesus, among others. So I have to wonder : why wouldn’t they?

Because when you write something down it WILL be misinterpreted and possibly manipulated into something it wasn’t intended to be.

That’s what so cool about StoryCorps - regular people like you and me recording our conversations and stories for future generations to hear. Way less room for misinterpretation there.

What a great gift for a family member or good friend.

I love listening to people’s stories - they are some of the most authentic forms of entertainment on the globe at present. Perhaps the reason they’re so enjoyable is because it’s already familiar to us, embedded in some kind of collective memory - to listen just like back in the days of sitting by the fires that were built to keep predators at bay and then on to books that were read by fireside or bedside before children went to sleep and next the age of radio when people could still use imaginations to meet the storytellers halfway, filling in the images with their own minds as the tales unfolded.

Comparatively, television, the web and film don’t leave us much room to exercise what is arguably the most important muscle of them all : our imagination.

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Taken from wikipedia’s definition of the game:

The rules of tag are very flexible. Rules such as the following can be either decided upon before the game, or added as the game progresses to make play more fair.

At the beginning of the game, one player is designated “it”. After “it” is chosen, the other players scatter. “It” must chase them down and tag them, usually by tapping them somewhere on the body. A tagged player becomes “it”, and the former “it” joins the others in trying to avoid being tagged. This process repeats until the game ends.

In a typical game of tag, no score is kept, nor is a winner selected. Those who can avoid being tagged or who can stay “it” for the least amount of time are generally regarded as the best players. There is usually no time limit; the end of the game is chosen arbitrarily, perhaps when the players tire of the game, when recess ends, or when players get called home for dinner.

An anomalous property of tag is that although being “it” gives a player the most influence upon the game and thus could be considered the best role to play, the position is stigmatized and avoided. While most agree that the temporary stigma associated with being “it” is harmless, some have criticized tag because, they allege, a player who is often pursued to be made “it” or who is physically slow can be singled out and embarrassed. Because of this, tag has been banned in some US schools. In some variations, if the number of people exceeds five, then you may not quit until you are tagged first.

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During this process of shooting a documentary on the game of Tag, one idea has emerged again and again from both experts [such as anthropologists] and laymen alike. This is the idea of how we have a tendency to internalize experiences. This means that we tend to think about these experiences mostly in terms that they are only affecting us or are only influenced by us, ourselves. Generally speaking, we have very little self-awareness about how our actions, and not just in games, affect others.

Truth is, the kinds of experiences that involve physical touch cannot be experienced by us alone. The act of physical touch bonds us and makes us both the subject and object of the experience.

This is a complicated way of saying we need contact with others in the physical sense in order to develop and grow properly. It is the very essence of what makes us who we are, how we learn, create and navigate within and without this world as its rules continue to change and evolve.

Heavy? Sure. But it’s just these kinds of obvious thoughts we overlook day-to-day that led me to become so fascinated by such a seemingly simple childhood game.

More soon - believe me, i’m full of this kinda stuff, thanks to the kind folks who’ve humored me on this adventure of Tag.

; )

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