Thank you to everyone who came out to the show last Thursday. I look forward to this night every month. No matter what the theme is or what stories are told I’m always grateful to see people willing to be so beautifully honest and vulnerable up there in front of everyone.

David, one of our regulars came up to me after the show and said, “Those newcomers. They were awesome!” And he was right. They were awesome. Two of them were shaking so hard while they told their story I thought I was going to have to go up there and give them a hug so they could get through it. But each of them made it just fine and they have a lot to be proud of. Big thanks to Roger, Lynx, Cindy and Bailey.

One of the most powerful moments in the show came during the second story. It was from one of the first-timers, Bailey. I won’t tell you what the story was about because I feel it was something for just those people who were there in that moment to share. But I will tell you one thing she said that I think we should all hear more often, “Don’t stop fighting for your happiness.” It’s been a long, hard road for her to find happiness and telling her story at our show was one more step on that journey. She said that night was the first time in 25 years she had been in front of a group of people. Thank you for choosing to be with us when you took that step Bailey. Thanks also to everyone in the audience who stayed with her during the long silences in her story where she was pulling herself together so she could say the next word. Don’t ever feel bad about not getting up and telling a story of your own. Being a kind and patience audience member is what makes this all possible.

Thanks to all the storytellers who told that night: Jake, Kris, David, Lynx, Cindy, Barb, Hannah, Gary, Kevin, Bailey, Roger, TC, and Keith.

The only thing I regret during the show is that I forgot to remind everyone that another one of our regulars, Jonathan, is offering a storytelling workshop this Wednesday. It’s $15 for a 3-hour class and that is a very good deal. It basically pays for the room and the materials. I’ve been to lots of storytelling workshops and I have always gotten something important out of them. It’s also a good way to meet other tellers and find cool people to work on stories with after the class ends.

Here’s the link to it:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/storytelling-101-workshop-learn-to-tell-the-personal-story-tickets-19029010282

Next month’s show is Dec 10th. The theme is “The Hardest Thing You’ve Ever Had To Say.” It doesn’t matter if it’s something you had to say to another person or just quietly to yourself. And since I know that maybe the #1 hardest thing you’ve ever said isn’t something you want to say in public we’ll accept the 2nd or 3rd hardest thing you’ve said. Or if you have a really good story about the 15th hardest thing you’ve ever had to say then definitely tell that one 🙂

I gotta say one more thing before I let you go. I’ve met some amazing people at this show and a few of them have gone on to become some of my favorite people. Nathan Vass is one of those people. I don’t get to see him nearly enough so whenever he shows up at Roy Street it’s a special treat for me. Two days ago I learned he was in Paris during the attacks. No one could get ahold of him. We wrote emails, checked his facebook page, called his parents, checked all the news coverage for his name. Nothing. Today was getting kind of scary. I just started getting to know this guy and now I’m regretting all the times I’d been in Seattle and didn’t call him to go get a cup of coffee.

A few minutes ago I got an email saying CNN had found Nathan safe and sound. As happy as I am for him and his family I’m also happy that I’ve been given a second chance to get to know him better.

Here are two links to learn about more about him.

http://www.quirksee.org/2013/09/19/seattle-king-county-metro-bus-driver-nathan-vass-358/

His story from the August FGS:

The recording from last week’s show came out fine so I can give each of the storytellers a copy of their performance if they want it. I only give them to the people who told a story and it’s only the audio of their own story. Most performers don’t want their personal stories online so that’s why I only give copies to the people who told them.

That’s all for now. Thanks again to everyone who came up and supported all the tellers that night. I hope to see you on the 10th!

Paul
freshgroundstories@gmail.com

I was looking through my desk the other day when I came across a little notebook I had almost forgotten about. As soon as I saw it I remembered exactly what was in it. At some point during the fall of 2011 I decided to list all my fears. I don’t know why I wanted to do this. I certainly had no desire to face them. Maybe I was just starting to realize how powerful a role fear played in my life and I wanted to see how deep it went.

So I started writing every night when I got into bed. Just before you fall asleep is not the best time to write down every terrifying thought you’ve ever had. In fact, I would say it’s the worst time to do it. But that’s when I always found the pen and paper in my hand so that’s when I did it.

Every night for months I wrote down every thought that ever terrorized me. Some were easy. Birds-they’ve always seemed murderous to me. Going over that waterfall in South America-the one with the 3,000 foot drop. Fear of losing my job and having to live in my car again.

As the weeks went by, the writing itself began to scare me. I didn’t want to admit all the fear that steered my life. Fear that I won’t have courage when I need it. Fear that someone I didn’t like was right about me. Fear that someone would hear my name and roll their eyes thinking, “Ugh, that guy.”

Two nights ago as I read through the book I saw on page 28, right there between sharks and bad milk, “Fear of being honest.” I closed my eyes and put the book down slowly. I felt like I’d just seen a old friend’s name in the obituary column and couldn’t read any further.

Fear of being honest isn’t in me anymore but I remember what it felt like. For me, at the core of being honest was the fear of being alone. Deep down in my heart, somewhere between the cockles and the ventricles, was the belief that I needed to keep my true feelings secret for anyone to stick around.

The good news is not long after I wrote that my life fell apart completely and I got to spend the next two years learning how to put my little Humpty Dumpty heart back together again. If I hadn’t spent those two years relearning how to see the world and my place in it I wouldn’t have been able to reopen the book a few minutes later and read that line again.

This time I managed to keep it open and think back to the guy who wrote it. You know what I remember? He did the best he could with what he had. He had a really good handle on every terrible thing the world could throw at him but he never stopped looking for the love and kindness he’d heard was out there somewhere.

Part of what running this show has taught me is that speaking your fears will bring the people you need into your life. I don’t know why but that’s what it’s done for me. I went from sitting in the dark filling 44 pages with crippling fears to getting onstage and talking about the scariest moments of my life with a room full of strangers. I can’t tell you I’m completely fearless but I can say that if I wrote that book today it would fit on a postcard.

And that’s the kind of story we’d like you to bring to our next show: Change of Heart – Stories of left turns and change ups.

Tell us about an event or series of events that caused you to change how you looked at things or how you live your life. It doesn’t have to be anything big, just something that shifted you one way or the other.

The rules for stories are below but you know the kind we’re looking for: true stories that happened to you that still mean something to you days, months or years later.

Remember to practice out loud on friends or pets and keep it under 8 minutes.

Rules & Guidelines: https://freshgroundstories.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/storytelling-rules-and-guidelines/

I hope to see you at our next show on Thursday, November 12, 7:00pm at the Roy St Coffee and Tea.

Paul
freshgroundstories@gmail.com

Thanks to everyone who came out to last week’s show. I was worried the Seahawks game would keep people from coming but we had over 100 people in the audience and a lot of beautiful stories on stage 🙂

If you’ve been to one of our shows before you know I always tell people that the most difficult spot in the lineup is the first one. People are still getting their drinks and settling into their chairs. They’re trying to finish up that last email or text and their attention isn’t always completely focused on the first storyteller.

Last Thursday David was the first teller of the evening and it didn’t take more than a few seconds for the entire room to stop what they were doing and listen. David has been a doctor for many years and some of long-time patients are now in their 70s and 80s. When their lives are coming to a close and they don’t have much time left he often goes to their homes and sits with them. He said you can’t take care of someone for 30 years and not be there with them when they’re dying. It was a wonderful story that I wish everyone could have heard live. Luckily, David has given me permission to post it online so look for it on our Facebook page in a few days.

We also had two first-timers, Louisa and Sasha, and both of them just knocked me out. Louisa’s friend put her name in Mr. Coffee and I’m not sure he bothered to tell her or that he had a firm grasp of the rules. I called Louisa’s name just as she was coming out of the bathroom and when she walked onstage she whispered to me, “What am I supposed to do?” I told her that she had to tell a story. She asked if she could read something. I said no way. No notes allowed. So she pulled a couple of pages out of her pocket, threw them into the audience and told a completely different story that she pulled from her memory. Perfect storytelling moment!

Sasha, the other first-timer, told a heartbreaking story of her brother’s descent into mental illness. It was funny and touching and reminded me of how strong a family’s love can be for each other. I know I’m not the only one in that room wondering if we would do for a brother or sister what she did for hers. Thank you Sasha. I hope you and Louisa come back and tell more stories with us.

Thanks to all the people who stepped up to the microphone that night: David, Cathy, Louisa, Chris M, Chris S, Bill, Connie, Sasha, Zoe, Jonathan, and Brian.

Next month’s show is on Thursday, November 12. During November and December we hold the shows on the second Thursdays instead of the fourth Thursdays because of the holidays. The theme for November is “Change of Heart.” I haven’t written the official invite yet but I’ll try to get that out next week.

The recording came out fine so I can give each of the storytellers a copy of their performance if they want it. I only give them to the people who told a story and it’s only the audio of their own story. Most performers don’t want their personal stories online so that’s why I only give copies to the people who told them.

If you can’t wait until the 12th to hear a great story there are two great shows where you can catch some of our regulars.

I’ll be watching Bill Bernat perform his one-man show “Becoming More Less Crazy” on Nov 7 at the Jewelbox in Belltown: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/1984619

Our good friends at A Guide to Visitors are running their annual ghost story show next Friday on Oct 30: http://www.agtv.org
Lots of tellers from FGS end up telling stories at AGTV and it’s always a fun show.

That’s all for now. Thanks again to everyone who came up and supported all the tellers that night. I hope to see you on the 12th!

Paul
freshgroundstories@gmail.com

Thanks to everyone who came out to the show last Thursday. I know it was a rough night with the traffic and news from the Aurora bridge but I’m grateful to everyone who turned up and supported all the storytellers.

We had a lot of heavy stories at this show and I was touched by the kindness and patience that over a hundred audience members gave each of the tellers. Anyone who has been following us for a while knows that my goal with Fresh Ground Stories is not just to give people a night of free entertainment. My goal is to give people a place to share stories they can’t share anywhere else. Sometimes it’s safer to share stories with strangers than it is with our own family. I guess that’s why so many tellers ask me for a recording so they can send it to their parents or siblings.

One of our newest members told a story about her husband dying that took a lot of faith and courage to share. It was amazing to see her coming to terms with her new life as she pushed further and further into the story. Those last two minutes are something I’ll remember for a long time.

One of our regulars, Cavan, told a story that I know he’s been keeping inside for months. I remember earlier this year when he told me how his father died. I knew back then that part of his healing would be to get onstage at Roy Street and talk about it. Thanks for letting him do that.

As always, I gotta give special thanks to our first-timers, Kat, Amy, Amelia and Lynn. You guys did great! Kat and I discovered we read the same book of love letters between Georgia O’Keefe and Alfred Stieglitz. We found out that Amy has a soft spot in her heart for arthritic greyhounds with explosive intestinal issues. Lynn, we now know, is very proud of her arrest record. Amelia has a heart for adventure I can only dream of. And Aimee has an unpronounceable compulsive disorder that makes me feel a lot less alone because I have one kinda like it. Go Team OCD!

I’m going to pull rank for a moment and mention my son Taran who told a sweet story about asking out the girl he was head over heels for in high school. They ended up going to Homecoming together and I remember that night as one of the special moments of his young life. I had never heard the whole story before and I was so happy to see him explain all the fear and uncertainty that led up to asking Katie to the dance.

Here is something my son doesn’t know. I kept one of the flowers Katie gave him that night. It’s been hidden in a little plastic container in the freezer for almost six years. I remember the look on Taran’s face when he told me the girl he was sweet on said she would go to the dance with him. Every time I see that little rose peeking out from behind the frozen blueberries it reminds me of the time a young woman told my son that she liked him and would love to go to the dance with him.

Ok, that’s enough of that. I’ll finish up by apologizing to two tellers I didn’t have time to put up, Deborah and Arden. Every other show it seems like I have to bump one or two people. Last time I had to bump my own kid. I hope you both keep coming out and throwing your name in Mr. Coffee. Sooner or later everyone who wants to tell a story will get up there.

Lastly, I want to remind you that there are still tickets available for the latest Words ‘N’ Music show at the Jewelbox, Oct 14 and 17. Words ‘N’ Music features some of our favorite stories from FGS regulars and live music between each one. It’s a lot of fun and a good way to stay connected. All we want to do is break even on expenses and if we sell about 50 more tickets we can do that and book another show with new stories.

http://www.seattlewordsnmusic.com/

The next Fresh Ground Stories is October 22. The theme is “Anything For Love.” I’ll write up the official invite in a few days so look for that in your inbox.

Last week’s recording came out fine so I can give the storytellers a copy of their performance if they want it. I only give out the audio to the people who told a story and it’s only the audio of their own story. Most performers don’t want their personal stories online so that’s why I only give copies to the people who told them.

See you on the 22nd!

Paul
freshgroundstories@gmail.com

Sometimes people ask me why I quit doing standup. I tell them the truth but they never believe me. I got tired of trying to be something I wasn’t. There were other drawbacks, of course. Performing in bars, driving hundreds of miles between gigs, the loneliness of being on the road. The worst part for me, though, was driving around the country talking about things I didn’t care about.

Most jokes are based on the premise, “Don’t you hate it when this happens.” Then the comic goes on to complain about whatever he’s upset about it. So when I sat down to write material I would hunker down in the corner of a coffee shop and think, “What do I hate today?” My job was to create the opposite of a gratitude list.

This was not a good way for me to start my day. Not only was it depressing but it also made me realize that I didn’t hate nearly enough things to be a great comic. Plus, what I do hate nobody else cares about. I hate it when people say, “I could care less.” No, you couldn’t care less. Or when someone says they’re going to flush out an idea. You don’t flush out an idea you flesh out an idea. Flushing is for toilets. Ok, some ideas need to be flushed out. Bottomless french fries could probably be flushed out to the Sea-of-Things-That-Are-Destroying-The-World and we would all be better off.

But you know what? Most of America loves the idea of an endless river of fries flowing into their mouths. So it’s not ok for me to stand onstage and be upset that the waitress at the Cooter Patch in Kansas City is trying to kill me.

This went on for years. I’d try to think of something to complain about (The buttons on the remote control are too small! Damn you Sony!) and then find out America couldn’t care less (America would say that they could care less but I maintain that they could not care less.) In the end I would end up writing about what I saw other comics writing about. So my act ended up being about the two subjects I could always count on to get laughs: sex and poop.

Trust me. Nothing is funnier than sex and poop. Those are the humor chakras of human existence. At least in the rooms I played.

Every night was emotionally and metaphorically a crap shoot. Some audiences bought it and some didn’t. Comics liked me but they’re generally a pretty sick bunch so you can’t really count them. My last night onstage as a comedian was in 2007. I was booked to do a show in a strip mall casino somewhere in Mountlake Terrace. I knew it was going to be a special night when I got there because the stage was 10 feet from the kitchen and you could hear the cook yelling, “Order up!” over the MC. It was also the night of the Apple Cup where the Huskies were playing the Cougars and there couldn’t have been more than 10 people in the whole place. Everyone was home watching the game.

Halfway through my act where I was pretending to be angry about online dating or my broken down car I caught a flash of something behind me on the other side of the stage. I turned around just as a young man walked up to me and held out his hand for the microphone. He didn’t say a word but I knew that’s what he wanted.

I was speechless. Not because someone ran up onstage. I was shocked because the features of his face were all melted together. He was a burn victim. What made it even stranger was that he was dressed like Mr. Spock. He had on the yellow shirt with the Star Trek patch, the black capri pants with the leather boots. He even had a skinny belt with a phaser on one side and a communicator on the other.

I don’t believe in Vulcan mind melds but in that one moment we stared at each other on stage we both knew that it was time for him to take over. And that is what he did. I gave him the mic, sat down in the audience, and watched him do 15 minutes of Cougar jokes.

“How do you get a one-armed Cougar fan out of a tree? You wave at him!” Boom! Huge laughs.

“Did you hear about the Cougar fan who locked his keys in the car? He had to use a coat hanger to get his family out.” Boom! Even bigger laughs. I thought the walls were going to cave in. Mr. Spock was killing. Each joke was worse than the one before but the crowd was going nuts.

Fifteen minutes later he finally runs out of Cougar jokes and hands the mic back to the MC. The headliner goes up and I leave the building. You’d think this would make me rethink my comedy mission. Not in terms of material but in terms of honesty. The audience wasn’t laughing at Mr. Spock’s dumb-blonde-turned-Cougar jokes. They were laughing because there was a man onstage who was completely comfortable with who he was and his only goal was to tell some silly jokes and make people smile. He was fearless and grounded and 100% himself up there He was everything I wasn’t. The audience knew it and they loved him for it.

Is that what I thought about on the way home that night? Of course not. I was completely incapable of seeing how that guy’s honesty and vulnerability was what the crowd was reacting to.

Two days later I had another show at the Tacoma Underground. I hadn’t spent two seconds thinking about the true meaning of what I saw in that casino. All I knew was that something crazy had happened and that I now had a story no one else had. I spent 48 hours writing dozens of jokes about the show, Mr. Spock, his outfit, all the Cougar stuff. I couldn’t wait to tell the next audience about the one man Star Trek convention in Mountlake Terrace.

Ten minutes into my act in the Tacoma club I launch into the story about how I was attacked onstage by a crazy guy with a phaser. Before I can get two words out, a hole in the ceiling opens up and gallons of brown water of unknown origin rains down in the space between me and the first row. The universe did to me what I was about to do to that audience. The show as over and so was my career as a comic.

It’s strange that trying to be someone I wasn’t was actually my comfort zone. For most of my life I believed that no one would want to love or even be friends with the person I was when I walked into my bedroom and turned off the light. If I had possessed even the tiniest bit of courage I would have written about the things I cared about and in the end found people who wanted to listen.

Luckily, in 2010 I discovered storytelling. I decided that I was going to do something that scared the hell out of me. I was going to write about my life as honestly as I could and to do it in a way where I wasn’t pointing the finger at anyone but myself. And that’s what I’ve been doing for the past five years. I’ve been telling stories about all the things that make me feel awkward and scared. In fact, you could say that my new comfort zone is wherever I feel most uncomfortable.

And that is what I’m asking you guys to do at the next Fresh Ground Stories. Tell us about a time where you did something that made you uncomfortable. Was it good? Did you learn something from it? Why’d you do it in the first place?

The rules for stories are below but you know the kind we’re looking for: true stories that happened to you that still mean something to you days, months or years later.

Remember to practice out loud on friends or pets and keep it under 8 minutes.

Rules & Guidelines: https://freshgroundstories.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/storytelling-rules-and-guidelines/

I hope to see you at our next show Thursday, September 24 at 7pm at Roy Street Coffee and Tea.

Paul
freshgroundstories@gmail.com