The Wall:

Behind the Story

Not too long ago my good friends Amy and Jody asked if I would read one or more of my short stories to a small group of friends and family gathered around their Solo campfire stove on a Thursday evening—they would provide the main course for dinner if others pitched in to bring appetizers and dessert.  With a great deal of hesitation (even as a teacher and wannabe musician, this was out of my comfort zone) and encouragement from Susan, I agreed.  I picked out 2 stories and wrote a short poem.

Before dinner, I read “The Wall” to a crowd of nine.  And it felt good.  Really good.  As it was happening, it felt like a buzz of electricity surrounded our little group sitting under the covered porch beside their outdoor kitchen.  I had worried that it wasn’t a real story, but the conversation afterwards made me think that it didn’t really matter; what was important was their reaction.  And that’s why I am giving you a story that’s not a story this month.

The idea for this story came to me driving home from work one day; I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of talents: who gets assigned which talent, jealousy over talents, and what if people somehow were assigned the wrong talent?  Or a talent impossible to capitalize on?  I wanted to come up with a novel take on Aladin’s magic lantern and eventually remembered that my friend Betsy had a “Buddha Board,” complete with sumi-e paintbrush that allowed her to temporarily “paint” with water.  Imagine that done really large and you get my wall.

For the setting of “The Wall” I tried to recreate a particular space that Chloe took me and Susan to visit, the Glenstone Museum.  More specifically, there was an outdoor installation that absolutely fascinated me, as they used speakers in the woods surrounding us to create a unique auditory experience that moved around you.  The experience was created in 2012 by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller and titled “FOREST (for a thousand years…)”.  It was very cool; I give it five stars and highly recommend.

I have buried a couple of references within “The Wall” that I’d like to call to your attention.  The first is to one of my favorite poems, penned by Wallace Stevens, “The Snowman.”  The second is to a sequence in the 2005 movie Serenity, which features a gut-wrenching scene as Wash (played by Alan Tudyk) flies the title ship one last time.

I was encouraged by my small audience to post a recorded narration of this piece.  My wife (who had not initially loved “The Wall”) felt that the experience that evening was completely different from reading it on paper.  So I have recorded myself reading a version of the “The Wall” and have included a link to it here (with a small intro bit of original acoustic guitar work).  If it doesn’t completely capture the moment I had on that Thursday evening, with the frisson of electricity, perhaps that just serves as a reminder of how live audiences, and the bond they share with the performer, can be truly magical.

Finally, here is an additional link the Glenstone installment referenced above:  https://www.glenstone.org/glenstone-museum-acquires-outdoor-sound-installation-forest-for-a-thousand-years-by-artists-janet-cardiff-and-george-bures-miller/

Thanks for reading!

—phillip