LifestoryDVD

Shakespeare's Birthday Party at the Folger/A Lifestory Worth Celebrating

2008-06-07T12:08:00.000-07:00

LifestoryDVD recorded the following scenes from perhaps one of the greatest lives memorialized in Washington DC
at the Folger Library.

Here are some scenes from the Bard's birthday event, recorded on April 28th at the Folger Library in Washington DC.

Highlights include a parade with Elizabeth 1st and Lord Burghley as well as Sir Derek Jacobi reading from The Tempest and an impromptu reading from Macbeth.

We lose the ability to retrieve memory

2008-03-18T12:28:00.000-07:00

Start writing your lifestory now is the lesson you can take from recent articles about memory loss among the babyboomer generation. In the following article for the Hartford Courant, No Need To Panic Over Naturally Occurring Memory Loss

"According to Dr. Yaakov Stern, head researcher on memory and aging at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City, whom Lear quotes, "It may not be the ability to store memories but the ability to retrieve them that is affected with aging."

In other words, our mental search functions become sluggish. Which may explain the syndrome Lear refers to "say hello to whatshisname." (When she asked what people most typically forget, the No. 1 answer was "names.")"

So we need to practice the art of retrieval of memory--the memories are there in tact it would seem but our brain needs to find ways to access them more efficiently.

International Telling Our Life Story Day

2008-02-06T16:16:00.000-08:00

May 16th 2008 is dedicated to "Listen! – International Day for Sharing Life Stories", an international celebration of life stories to take place on May 16th 2008

LifestoryDVD is preparing to partner with a number of groups--The Museum of the Person International Network (Brazil, Portugal, USA and Canada) and the Center for Digital Storytelling (USA)

The group is launching the project website, www.ausculti.org*, to assist with information sharing and coordination of the campaign. The goal of the campaign is to gain broad recognition of May 16 as an annual day for sharing, listening to, and gathering the stories of people’s lives.

Why May 16th? What better reason than it is the birthday of Studs Terkel born May 16 1912--he will be 96!A great listner he writes in his recent memoir Touch and Go--he writes about how he got interested in interviewing people about their lives--and why they opened up to him--his lack of artifice--his raw desire for honesty and authenticity.The preeminent oral historian--had no training and basically learned on the job-an example we can all follow.

If you are interested in helping us to think through the kinds of activities we might host that day at venues such as Senior Citizen Centers,Community Centers, After School Centers and Schools, please email me at lifestorydvd@gmail.com.

Some thoughts I had include:

i) Intergenerational activities whereby students interview senior citizens
ii) Documentaries of life stories
iii) Celebration of gifted storytellers
iv) Workshops on memoir writing/ethical wills

Please add some of your own ideas--they are all welcome--If you are interested in attending a planning meeting--you can also contact me.

2008-01-25T14:15:00.000-08:00

Why LifestoryDVD? My Journey

2007-10-24T20:15:00.000-07:00

Here, There and Everywhere --More Beatles Nostalgia--of a Classy Sort

2007-08-03T20:06:00.000-07:00

I got really back into the mood of the late 1960s and early 70s when I read Geoff Emerick's memoir

Here There and Everywhere

(just out in paper in the US). He took me back to a time when they defined not just pop music but music and all its possibilities to enchant, excite and take you to new levels.

Reading the memoir reminds you that it was the freshness of the Beatles sound--that got you in to the songs--got you to listen --to pay attention--
the sound kind of came with the territory or seemed to --whether it was the odd use of classical instruments--the clarity of a guitar riff or a harmony--it was inextricable part of the package--the Beatles listening experience.

But the Beatles listening experience it is necessary to remember was manufactured in a studio
a sound that became more and more distinctive as the Beatles left their touring career and
focused on mastering a new audio universe. The gatekeepers and wizards to that new world were two people--George Martin who Emerick persuades us may have taken a bit too much of the credit and of course the author--who when he meets the Beatles and begins engineering their sound (of course supervised by George Martin the producer)--is a fairly green working class London lad in his first job having recently graduated from Crouch End Secondary Modern school. He is a lower echelon technician in an uptight upper class EMI --an organization that seemed to be inhabited by post war colonel blimps full of their sense of class privilege. A tiered society that insisted that technicians wear white and custodians brown coats. The Beatles with their working class origins clearly did not fit the image that the EMI execs had polished for the elite Abbey Road studios but since they were recording on the comedy themed Parlophone label--with a producer who had made his name producing the Goon show they were tolerated. But increasingly the fab four grew to resent the restrictions that the Abbey Road studios presented--unable to move out of their surroundings during the height of their fame even to the cafeteria they had to be content to order in tea, sandwiches and take out food in the studio and virtually camp out for months at a time between while occasionally smoking substances behind makeshift screens and burning incense to cover the smells. Emerick details the numerous conflicts that emerged with some painstaking detail-- between the schoolboys and the schoolteacherly George Martin, the stingy EMI hierarchy that refused to allow him overtime for some of the Beatles late night sessions, the other technicians that viewed with alarm the unusual use of mics, sound effects, dubbing and other creative engineering feats that Emerick and his team were up to and of course between the fab four themselves as they began defining in much more detail than ever before who they were musically as individuals not just as members of the Beatles. The Abbey Road studios were quite primitive by today's standards--two track recorders but Emerick relishes the challenge of making the most of his equipment and makes you believe you too could be an improvisational recording engineer genius as you mic Ringo's drums and those classical violins in Eleanor Rigby. After reading about how the mono version of Sgt Pepper was done you too will want to dust off those Vinyl LPs and listen to them on your old granny --not the stereo version --the group made it for mono listening. You may never return to CDs after reading what Emerick has to say about digital recording.

There are plenty of other reasons to keep compulsively turning the pages. The book provides a first hand account of why the Beatles contrary to their sunny PR image were often miserable and become in the process of Emerick's retelling normal human beings rather than the fun loving geniuses of popular legend. They often felt trapped and pressured to perform. George Harrison would constantly flub his parts, Lennon would not remember lyrics and could summon incredible venom for the most trivial reason and inflict it on anyone --low or high in the EMI hierarchy.

Emerick is as good a witness to the highs and lows as anyone who has turned to writing a Beatles memoir --because of two reasons the first he keeps his ego in check--he is not so much after the famous fifth Beatle status that Martin has enjoyed--as helping to explain a highly complex collaboration --the essence of which was to try to capture what was going on inside the heads of John and Paul (mostly) and translate it into commercially viable vinyl. A trick much harder to bring off than would first appear. Second because he grows aware and helps you become aware of the amazing changes in temperament and confidence that begin to evolve as the group finds its new musical voices and how that sound kept changing. We get some terrific up close scenes of the larger than life John in his glory--his musical genius and his cruel mouth--his druggy haze, his poor memory for lyrics, weak eyesight and hatred of his own singing voice and boredom mixed with sudden passionate wild awakenings. Believing that Revolution 9 represented the future of the group and the direction they should take, hating Paul's "obla di and obli da" (what he referred to as Paul's Granny music) until he is prepared to strangle him or go out of his mind. On the other hand we get to see Pauls needling of John --sometimes through endless retakes that driove not just John to distraction but everyone else in the group.

Geoff Emerick in his unpretentious way creates Abbey Road as a theatre --a play in five main acts--Revolver--Sgt Pepper, Let it Be (Post India and off stage) and Abbey Road. Emerick is able to capture well how at each stage the demenour and musical development of each member (with the possible exception of Ringo who stays pretty constant throughout). In the early albums they were all entering stage left --in the beat up touring van driven by trusty bouncer Mal Evans, in later albums they arrive on stage separately foregoing their morning visit around Paul's Abbey Road mews house to practice their songs before arriving at the studio. Then the dramatic appearance of Yoko arriving in as crazy a way as any Hollywood producer could imagine--after a crew from Harrods department store sets up a bed in the studio and she is enthroned there after suffering with John a car accident in Scotland. You feel you are in the audience watching these exceptional musicians figure it out--as they try very hard to put the music above feuding. In the first few Acts it is clear that the dedication is to the individual song that typically one of them brings to the group and they magically perfect relying on the technical crew to translate their vision--Paul more coherently than John stating how he wants the instruments to sound--John vaguely asking the engineers things like making his voice sound as if he is on the moon. Then more frequently in subsequent acts the late night jamming and the search for a song in the chaos.

By the end of the book you are glad that the Beatles existed, found their ideal partners and also glad they found their freedom--and surprisingly you don't hate anyone --not even Yoko sitting in her bed and never daring after her first effort which the entire group treats a a major code violiation to make a comment on their performance.

2007-07-20T10:53:00.001-07:00

What We Have Been Working On

2007-07-13T08:34:00.001-07:00

We have just completed an hour long documentary on the life of a leading Nobel Prize winning physician who battled anti-semitism to become dean of a major medical school. The stories he told us of life in the early to middle part of the 20th century of institutionalized anti-semitism made for some compelling viewing. Although finishing first in his class he was rejected for medical school multiple times and told to his face things like "Jews were too pushy" and made the other students look bad. He struggled against rejection after rejection to achieve his dream. Even his wife faced prejudice and was told if she celebrated the Jewish high holy days she need not return to work. Realizing the limitations of conventional American academic medicine he pushed to gain recognition for family and community medicine and bring needed psychiatric and rehabilitation services as well as housing to assist patient health and recovery.

We learned so much about the struggles in the US to open up medicine to minorities following World War Two. Particularly revealing was to have a detailed recounting of how sterotyping operated during this period and the damage it inflicted on individuals. I kept thinking about how much richer it would be to show to students the Gregory Peck film Gentleman's Agreement that helped expose that periods' anti-semitism and then show this video. The specificty of the way anti-semitism operated in the academic field complements the broader picture painted in the movie and illustrates the specific harm it inflicted on individuals. The physician's stories of how he overcame the barriers to achieving his goals provide a two fold reminder to grandchildren --first how tough and determined you need to be successful and second the importance in all the struggles of retaining your identity and integrity.