The Rhythm of the Story

A few days ago I had the honor of sitting on a panel with fiction writers Darnell Arnoult and Robert Hicks and Martha Stamps, owner of Martha's at the Plantation restaurant, eatured at the Downtown Nashville Library. The subject was southern literature in all it's glory. Our wonderful moderator, Jeff Jacobs of the Borders Bookstores fame corralled us nicely and made us sound smart and thoughtful. (Okay, Robert and Darnell are smart and thoughtful anyway.) so we did a fine job of sharing stories not hogging the floor as ALL SOUTHERN STORYTELLERS, that being every man, woman, and half-pint child I know born and bred in the South is capable of doing. Shoving an entire crowd of people converging on a plate of fried chicken out of the way so they will hush up and let him tell his story! In the vein of NOT being a floor hog myself on this particular day I let one of the questions put to us go unanswered. Meaning I most likely looking liked an extra bump on a log for no good reason but I swear I was trying to mind my manners (so unlike me) - And so it goes.

Here's the question: "So, why is it with other writers from various points up north and beyond that when their novels or stories begin, they actually BEGIN, where as Southern writers seem to meander a bit and their stories start so SLOW?" (MY PARAPHRASE - FORGIVE ME JEFF)

Robert Hicks responded by telling a great story (as he is apt to do) saying that his stories start slow because he is slow himself (Which is soooo not true. The man's brain is lightning quick!) Darnell Arnoult answered the question with grace and intelligence and foresight. I kept my mouth shut sitting there thinking that was a really funny story and that was a really intelligent answer so what more is there to say?

But being that a few days have gone by and I still have this on my mind, this would have been my answer.

It's the earth. And that lazy old sun that got nothing to do but roll around heaven all day. That rhythm of the planets that sets the seasons in motion is something that Southerners and Southern writers are instinctively keen to. Just as you don't suddenly wake up one winter morning and open your window to discover - Why, it's SPRING! Because that's not the way that the earth rolls out from under us. But little by little, inch by inch, we feel it coming on. We smell the change long before it arrives. We have an awareness, this DNA in our bones, boiling in our blood, bless our hearts awareness of the seasons coming on and changing. Of babies being born and old folks dying. Of our dreams rising like smoke from the ashes. We know that life, and all the glory of it is transitory and bittersweet and breathtaking. We know it so much our hearts could break with the fullness and the loss of it.

So, it's not that our friends up North like New York and other wild exotic places are any less of the writers than we are. They are not. They are just different. We can color most of our 'Yankee' writer friends as down right brilliant in their execution of the written word on page. And yes, Robert Hicks, maybe we are a little special in that our brains just might work a little slower. I know when I read books like The Corrections I think - man, these folks are just so smart. And like I often say, when I read a writer from way up North I can hear their brains ticking. But when I read a Southern writer I can feel their heart beating. Slow, steady pulses that lead me into a deeper shade of life. At a pace that allows me to leave one world and enter into a place word by word, that will hypnotically reveal the glories waiting for me on the next page. Words that will seduce me so softly, or grab me so passionately, that time stops and I'm in the middle of the life my brother or sister has given birth to.

Why is Southern fiction slower, Jeff? Because this dance we call life is something so precious to us that we know the moments must not be rushed but savored. That the glow of a Grandmothers old wedding ring against her coffee cup at sunrise, throwing gold shadows against her well worn face, is worth slowing down to breathe in and take notice. And we help our readers step into a place where they can slow down and take notice, too.

So, we old Southern storytellers are always inviting readers to dance with us but just a little bit slower. Slow enough to hear the music, to feel the air move across their skin as they twirl one time through this earth - and to remember.


River Jordan is a storyteller of the southern variety and has been cast most frequently in the company of Flannery O’Connor and Harper Lee. Jordan’s writing career began as a playwright where she spent over ten years with the Loblolly Theatre group and received productions of her original works for the stage including Mama Jewels: Tales from Mullet Creek; Soul, Rhythm and Blues; and Virga.

Jordan’s novel The Messenger of Magnolia Street, (Harper Collins, Harper One) was published in January 2006. Kirkus Reviews describes the novel as “a beautifully written atmospheric tale.” The Messenger of Magnolia Street was applauded as “a tale of wonder” by Southern Living Magazine who chose The Messenger of Magnolia Street as their Selects feature for March 2006 and by other reviewers as “a riveting, magical mystery” and “a remarkable book.” Her first novel, The Gin Girl, (Livingston Press, 2003) has garnered such high praise as these words from Florida Today, "The Gin Girl is like crossing that deep, languid stream into the land of milk and honey. This author writes with a hard bitten confidence comparable to Ernest Hemingway. And yet, in the Southern tradition of William Faulkner, she can knit together sentences that can take your breath."
Ms. Jordan teaches and speaks on ‘The Power of Story,’ around the country and produces and hosts the radio program, Backstory with River Jordan, on WRFN, 98.9 FM, Nashville every Saturday at 4:00 CST, www.backstoryontheradio.com .

She has just completed a new work of fiction and lives with her husband in Nashville, TN. You may visit the author at www.riverjordan.us

SOUTHERN RULES OF STRANGER SPEAK

In spite of the fact that I'm a Southern girl (capitol 's' for all it's worth!) I've lived in some pretty exotic locations. Okay - not Egypt or India yet but Like Ft. Lauderdale which is a blend of everything and Kansas City which is just like the South except totally different and Taos, New Mexico which really is the land of Enchantment. And these and other experiences like them have rounded out my life, made it about more than only looking out my familiar backdoor. When I was out west, I gloried in red chilies and Chamisa on the mesa. In the fact that the very light is a tangible thing that you can reach out and touch, that artists walked around 24/7 in pants with smears of color trailing through their fingertips. I loved the postman Carl with his long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and knowing that when he went home to the Reservation, that he shedded those clothes, and even the name Carl, like a snake sheds his skin. He stepped into his true identity and was comfortable on and off the reservation and I want to be like him. Balanced, trusting of myself, certain of my identity. And every place that I have put down temporal roots and called home have offered that kind of education, and integration into another society or microcosm of the world. But here's the thing. My microcosm lies down in the Southern netherlands. And never has that been more transparent than the day that I had arrived in Pensacola working my way home to Panama City after years out west. My Daddy had taken ill, his health not a good prognosis, and so I was headed east and home and my sister, a little north and away, was headed south and home. We were converging on homeland which caught me standing out on the porch of a little country style restaurant that used to be in Pensacola called Mama's. The sun was out and I remember I was just standing there like someone crossing over into a new world, my skin drinking in the humidity like a frazzled lizard. Ahhh, wet water in the air, a stomach full of comfort food, fried chicken and cornbread and dumplings, and pie. And standing there next to me is a round little women. She could have been the mascot for all that was Southern and good. White hair in a bun. Flat old, sensible shoes. Those special stockings all pulled up earlier but now rolling down around the tops so that they peek out from under that cotton dress. Not a Sunday dress, but a good go to town dress. Good enough for Mama's on a Saturday. She was carrying a pocketbook, not a purse. The pocketbook had a small handle and her arm was shoved through the handle, so that it pulled it up to the crook in her arm where it hung there obediently. Then she turned to me: "Sure is a pretty day." Only the pretty is more like purty and I'm drinking it in, that purse, those shoes, that hair, that voice. And I realized how empty that place had been. That part of my soul that was hungry for a little something more than wet air and fried food. I was hungry for a strangers voice. For conversation that passed as comfortably as if you had been born and raised as brethern. If you are from the South you know about this kinship of strangers who will strike up words as easy as match stuck across the red line. "Oh yes mamn," I tell her, "It is some kind of day." I pause a minute. Out west we don't talk so quickly to strangers. Not in grocery store lines, passing in hallways, standing on porches. But I'm not out west. "I just came home - or I'm almost home.' "Is that right?" "Oh, yes mamn. Been out west for awhile." "Well, that's something." She looks out past the trees lining the street, "I never been that far out west. Never been past the Mississippi." "Well, it's nice but it's different. You have to be ready for the different." "What's brought you back home?" "Daddy took sick." "Oh," she shuffles the pocket book, moves it down to both hands where she holds the straps and lets it hang in front of her, "Good thing you come then." "Yes mamn." "Chances are, you only get one Daddy." "Yes, mamn." "Gotta make it all count, don't you know? Every bit of it." And then she is walking down the steps, her ride pulled around and up to get her. She turns back and waves, "Nice talkin' to you, honey. You take care of your Daddy now." And I wave and think, Home. That was the day I realized that talking to strangers means a whole lot to me. It puts me squarely where I need to be. If talking in the post office line, grocery story line, bank line is off limits, then I'm outta position. After all, I'm living for the story and the story is this continuing on going everyday bubble around me. The story is the people walking in and out of my life. Even if its only for a moment. Tonight its raining in Nashville. This after a Sunday that ripped off the curtain of Winter and dared to shine in all it's glory. 60 something. Birds. Bees. Trees. Picnics. People walking, running, biking, blanketing. The whole city was alive and giddy. Today - rain. More rain. A never ending downpour accompanied by bouts of thunder, streaks of lighting. I step outside a restaurant as we are leaving, standing on the sidewalk, waiting for Mr. Wonderful to pull that truck around. A woman looks up at a flash as thunder rolls and claps above our heads. She turns to me and says, "Now, that was something!" And I look at her and smile. There's a story there between those crashes and flashes. She takes another drag on that cigarette, hides her nerves over the storm with a laugh. "Nothing but an early Summer Storm," I tell her. "It'll pass." And she believes me, smiles a little easier, and steps off the curb as I call,”You take care, honey," as she dodges raindrops and dives into a waiting car. Fifteen more minutes and I'd have known it all. All. The marriage that didn't work out and the one she was hoping was right around the corner that would. That finally this year, this leap year, would be her year and things would take a turn. That her daddy and momma had lived to be almost old and then died within a year of one another and ain't that just the blasted shame? Yes, Fifteen minutes would be all it takes. Because we are a strange people down this way. We'll tell a stranger the truth in nothing flat. About anything, anywhere, anytime. Now, granted there is the genteel south, the ladies and gentlemen with more good sense and proper manners. And even then, even them, the right clap of thunder, the right streak of lightning, and they're out in the open with it. Because we love to tell a story and we love to hear one in the making. I once had a card my good friend Virginia had given me that said "American by Birth, Southerner by the Grace of God." The writer in me nods and figures that about sums it up. Because the South is where good folks will peel the covers clean back off their hearts and tell their story full of aches and breaks in no time flat, and then they'll turn right around and listen to me run on and on as if they love me deeply and that the ending of their story is completely waiting to be determined by the ending of mine. Like we are all sacred and connected for all time and eternally and into the sweet by and by. And so we are. Even if we did just meet in the checkout line.

RIVER JORDAN is a southerner with a global perspective. Primarily, she’s a storyteller of the southern variety and has been cast most frequently in the company of Flannery O’Connor and Harper Lee. Jordan’s writing career began as a playwright with the Loblolly Theatre group where she received productions of her original works for the stage including Mama Jewels: Tales from Mullet Creek; Soul, Rhythm and Blues; and Virga. Jordan’s novel 2nd novel, The Messenger of Magnolia Street, (HarperSanFrancisco) was published in January 2006. Kirkus Reviews describes the novel as “a beautifully written atmospheric tale.” The Messenger of Magnolia Street was applauded as “a tale of wonder” by Southern Living Magazine, who chose The Messenger of Magnolia Street as their Selects feature for March 2006, and by other reviewers as “a riveting, magical mystery” and “a remarkable book.” Ms. Jordan teaches and speaks on ‘The Power of Story’, and produces and hosts the radio program BACKSTORY, on WRFN, 98.9 FM, Nashville Saturday’s 4:00-6:00 CST. She has just completed a new work of fiction. Jordan and her husband live in Nashville, TN. You may visit the author at www.riverjordan.us