Imaginary Sounds and Storytelling
by Odds Bodkin
Think of your favorite piece of music. Anything you've heard recently will do, or an old favorite. Now, can you play it in your head?
Sit back and try a second.
Hear anything?
I do this exercise with kids in workshops often; nearly all of them raise their hands. They sit back and smile, each listening to a music memory unspooling in their neural fields somewhere.
If music isn't your thing, try evoking the sound of a traffic jam in a major city. When I do it I hear honking horns echoing off buildings. An army of wingtips walking the sidewalks. The occasional screech of tires.
Thousands of auditory images like these lie dormant in our memories--church bells, claps of thunder, sizzling bacon, balloons popping unexpectedly. For most people, evoking them is as easy as thinking about them.
I call these mind sounds "Auditory Images" because memories like them are protean; you can transform them into imagination just by giving them a new context. They are yet another gateway into the creative mind.
For instance, if I imagine a mile-wide meteor landing with the sound of a baby's burp, it's kind of funny. Or if I imagine the sound of moaning wind, my visual imagination will start wondering where it's coming from and will offer up an image. The one I just got was the weathered corner of a cabin somewhere. Something's going on inside the cabin. I'm listening again. What is it? It's a creaking rocking chair. Someone's in there. Who is it? A story begins to appear.
If I want to make my story creepy in order to thrill a child who loves to be a little scared, I'll drop a skeleton into the rocker and try to figure out how it got there.
If I want to tell a softer tale, I'll fill the creaking rocker with a Mother Chipmunk in her bonnet, worried about her son Livingston Capricorn Chipmunk or somebody like that, who is, of course, out on adventures only chipmunks can have.
Or I can alter the sound inside the cabin to, let's say, a Chicago Bulls game on TV. The skeleton and rocker disappear. In their place sit three guys with Doritos and a half-empty case of Samuel Adams.
Very different story.
The point is, when dreaming up stories for your child, learning to listen to the story is a powerful way of creating it, and of learning to trust your muse. Interesting word, muse. It's the root word for music, amusement, and musings. The ancient Greeks believed that nine demigoddesses--The Muses--came to the assistance of mortals during artistic creation.
Invoke your muse. Trust your muse. If you do, you might actually meet her, seated comfortably next to your auditory imagination, thumbing through a few visual images, waiting to guide you into a great story for your kid.
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