StoryHelix
StoryHelix
Intro Episode!
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Welcome to StoryHelix! Intertwining stories past, present, and not yet imagined, told by folks in Lane County, Oregon.
Wordcrafters in Eugene began this project with the idea of making our area a braver, safer, more beautiful, and more equitable place to live. We believe, as Chinua Achebe put it, that stories create people, create stories. Meaning, the stories we tell ourselves and other people make us who we are. Because of this, we also believe that if we are to move into a better imagined future, a reckoning with our past and current stories is needed. As Alice Walker said, “Healing begins where the wound was made.”
The StoryHelix project invites us to trace our "EUGeneology" and examine what stories we have inherited, and what stories we will pass down.
StoryHelix is organized in mixtapes, and for our first release, we present, the Belonging Mixtape!
All of stories shared this season have something to do with the theme of belonging. We’re super excited that of these stories, five have been paired with community artists and featured on the Eugene Public Library windows downtown, as part of a relationship we have been building with the Lane Arts Council. So keep an eye out for those in summer 2022!
You can read more about the project, about Wordcrafters in Eugene, about our sponsors and community partners, and send in your own Lane County, Oregon stories at StoryHelix.Wordcrafters.Org.
Thanks for listening!
You're listening to Story Helix, intertwining stories past, present and not yet imagined in Lane County, Oregon. What's up, earthlings? I'm Leah Velez and I'll be your host. Welcome to our Intro Episode. So Wordcrafters. Began this project with the idea of making our area a braver, safer, and more beautiful and equitable place to live. I'm going to get a little nerdy and drop a couple writer quotes. We believe that, as Chinua Achebe put it, "stories create people create stories." So the stories that we tell ourselves and the stories we tell other people make us who we are, and then we end up passing that stuff down. We've lost so many stories the past couple of years to state sanctioned violence, to the pandemic. We've also lost so many stories to gatekeeping, from people who decided whose stories were going to be passed on and whose were not. We've lost stories to exclusion. We've lost stories to genocide. We've lost stories to the kind of silence that builds inside when you repress your culture, your desires and your selfhood to fit in, to scape by, to survive. So here's quote number two, by Alice Walker. "Healing begins where the wound was made." This is The Belonging Mixtape. All of these first stories have to do with the theme of belonging in Lane County, Oregon. The stories that follow our raw footage. There's going to be ambient sounds, people walking by, cars, unrelated laughter. Sometimes there are trains, there's a notification chime, sometimes there's a falling plate. This is all part of the story-scape. Some of the stories you'll hear are long, some are short. Some are interviews that are done with loved ones or friends. Some are interviews done with strangers. Some of them are even folks talking to themselves. Some are funny and lighthearted, other ones get sad or angry. Some of them are childhood memories. Some are things that happened just a short time ago. All of these stories belong. A little bit about the process. I've done some editing to enhance sound quality. I've removed a couple of noises that were possible to remove without impacting the speaker's voice quality. A couple early edits I tried to do ended up having people sound like they were in outer space, so we ended up leaving most of the background noise. I took out also some of the UMs and UHs that we tend to do when we speak that are a little less fun to listen to. And in the cases where I took out an interviewer's voice to allow a person's story to shine on its own, I may have moved a couple of things around to make those transitions less jarring. And when those transitions couldn't be blended because the topics maybe we're totally different, those interviews were then split into separate episodes. You can read more about this project, about Wordcrafters in Eugene, about our sponsors and community partners, and you can send in your own stories at StoryHelix.Wordcrafters.org. We want to hear from you. The StoryHelix project invites us to examine what stories we've inherited and what stories we really want to pass down. Join me as we listen to these stories unfold.
