The Moth - 25 Years of Stories: All The Way Back

Episode Date: December 16, 2022

On this episode, we take a look back at the beginning of The Moth, and hear a story from our founder - George Dawes Green. This episode is hosted by Melvin Estrella and Pegi Vail. Storyteller George Dawes Green describes his encounters with the many characters of Surrency, Georgia while working on a crisis hotline. If you’d like to listen to the stories Pegi and Melvin mentioned, here are links: Reflections From Space by Frederick Hauck Merci by Candido Tirado and Carmen Rivera

Attention Houston! You have listened to our podcast and our radio hour, but did you know the Moth has live storytelling events at Wearhouse Live? The Moth has opened Mike's storytelling competitions called Story Slams that are open to anyone with a five-minute story to share on the night's theme. Upcoming themes include love hurts, stakes, clean, and pride. GoodLamoth.org forward slash Houston to experience a live show near you. That's theMoth.org forward slash Houston. Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Peggy Vail and anthropologist at NYU, a filmmaker and one of the founding board members of the Moth. And I'm Melvin Estrella, a filmmaker and just like Peggy, one of the Moths founding board

members. Throughout 2022, we've been commemorating our 25th anniversary by taking a look at our history, counting down year by year. In this episode, we finally arrived at the very beginning of the Moth, 1997. That's when this whole thing started. With our very first show in our founder George Dawes Green's living room. He is a short clip of that.

And the woman kept saying, all I need is a doctor and my mom wanted his father kept saying, I know who you are. You can't fool me and the little girls were transfixed by this story. We've grown a lot since that first show. We put out four books, won a Peabody Award, and told over 50,000 stories on six continents. In fact, there was even a Moth tribute show done in a bar in Antarctica. And I wish I had been there, I missed that one. You must have been so different from my first show.

We were setting up chairs in the middle of Georgia's living room, an area for water and wine. That evening, the atmosphere was perfect for storytelling. But it was the worst show ever. The stories were good, but they were 25 minutes long. The wine right now, halfway. Yeah, I definitely remember we realized I think we're going to have to set a time limit for these stories. But nevertheless, I still still felt like and I know everybody else did that something special had happened. We got a bunch of New Yorkers in a room to just stop and listen to stories. That's right the core of the month has always

been the stories. So here's George Dawes Green, 25 years from that first month show telling a story at the Seattle Main Stage in 2022. The theme of that night was lost and found. And have funny little coincidence, the theme of the first Moth show was finding a place. He is George, live at the Moth. There's a town called Cerancy in the backwards of Georgia about an hour inland from Ronswick where I grew up. And Cerancy is just a Baptist church and a holiness church and a gas station.

But it was kind of famous in South Georgia because Cerancy had two flashing lights, about two blocks apart. So if you were driving at night on Route 341, about 10 miles out of Cerency, you'd start to see this blinking, blink, blink, blink, and you don't know it's two lights because from here it looks like one light, but you go a mile And it starts going bubbling, bubbling, bubbling. And you just don't know what the hell you're looking at.

Is that aliens? Is that an alien spacecraft? Am I about to get probed here? am I about to get probed here? And after about seven or eight miles of this, you begin to get completely hypnotized. And if you don't snap out of it, you'll drive off the road into a pine tree. And you'll be just another victim of the famous serency lights. When I was 19 I got summoned to serency. I had dropped out of high school and gone hitchhiking around the country for some years. But now I was back in Brunswick and I found a job at the local crisis hotline.

Now, those were all the rage back in the early 70s because there was a nationwide war on drugs. Our crisis hotline was in this big Victorian house with live oak trees and Spanish moss, and I trained there for a few weeks so that I could man the telephones, and if anybody was having a bad trip on LSD, I could be their friend. And my bosses were Don and Calvin, and they were lovely guys, very mild, but they warned me that I might get some prank calls, but I should never hang up, because sometimes a call will start as a prank. But if you wait, then the caller will start to trust you, and might open up about some real problems. So I had this old-fashioned black telephone

with a long cord that I could take out onto the veranda and wait for crises. But crises didn't come and I just waited. I read novels. I read Robert Penwarren and Flannery O'Connor. I wanted to be a writer, but I've held no inspiration. These were books about fascinating, tormented southerners, and all of the people

that I knew were mild, like Don and Calvin. So I just waited and then finally the phone rang and it was a teenage girl and she said, I'm having a bad trip and I was trained to reflect. So I said, you're having a bad trip. And she said, oh, because there's elves in here, and I could hear people in the background going, and I said, there's elves and she said yeah and they're laughing at my shoes and I said they're laughing at your shoes and she said uh-huh because I got them at Jay-Z pennies in the mall and then ugly and she hung up But about three nights later, she called again. I'll call her Tara. Tara was 17, and she was a high school dropout like I was.

And she lived with her grandmother, and she called night after night, no crisis. She just said, hello, my thou pissed, mocking the whole therapy thing. And then she talked. She complained about boredom. She complained about her grandmother. She complained about my accent. She said, well, how come you don't sound like you're

from around here? And I said, well, I hadn't moved to Brunswick till I was 12. She said, are you really going to be a therapist? I said, I hope not. I said, I wanted to be a writer. She said, she never read books herself, but she loved stories. And so I told her the story of this Walker

Percy novel that I was reading, the movie goer, and she seemed to like that. She even came by the big Victorian house one night. The doorbell rang and I opened, and there she was, these long red ringlets and kind of an angular face. And she said, hello, Mathapist. And I had to tell her that we weren't allowed to have in-person visits. And she sniffed and floated away. And I told my boss is Don and Calvin that Tara made me uncomfortable

because it didn't feel like therapy, but they said I should hang in there because maybe she was hiding some real pain and she'd open up. So I hung in there because I really wanted to do well at this job. And then real people started to call with real problems. There was a woman in her 50s named Betty,

and she'd just call on the weep for hours. But once I asked her what she loved and I can't do her voice, but I will try because this beautiful smoky voice she'd say, well, I love my valium and I love my valium. And I love my Librium. And I love my little dog, Willie, because he fights for me. And Willie was her incontinent old poodle. And I said, how does he fight for you? And she said, well, today, at the rectory, he came in and made a do-do, all-in-at-tailers purse. And that dog just brightens my day.

And there was a guy named Albert in his 60s, very lonesome. He had this high country voice, and he'd say, George, my wife almost never speaks to me. Albert was always full of surprises. Like often he and his bodies would go quail hunting. But Albert confessed to me once that he was a terrible shot. He said, but you know when you're on a quail hunt, everybody shoots at once. So nobody ever knows who hits the quail. It says, my friends, they all say, Albert,

you shot that bird. You're a good shot. But I think I have never shot a quail. One time Albert told me that as a young man, he had had some intimate moments with his best friend. And even now, he'd sometimes he put on a jacket and a tie and drive to Savannah and go cruising, looking for some connection. But he said, I never do know then, I just drive.

But then one night Albert called and he seemed particularly sad and I happened to ask the question, was it hard to be a gay man in rural Georgia and he bristled and he said, I never said I was gay, I'm married, I'm a Christian, and I felt devastated to have used that word so casually. And after about an hour, after we hung up, he called back and he said, George, could you come out here? I just feel like I need to talk to somebody face to face. Well, he said he lived way out past serency. And I was terrified to go, but I called my boss Don,

and he said, I should. So I drove out there, I made it past the serenity lights, and I came to this Cinderblock house, Albert's world, and I could see through the window there was this old woman watching TV, Albert's silent wife, and I knocked. And you know, for all these hours of talking to Albert, I had created some picture of him in my mind. But the door opened, and instead was a girl in long red ringlets. And she saw the look of astonishment on my face.

And she said, hello, my therapist. She said, hello my therapist. She said, I thought you knew. You didn't know? I said, you were an Albert. And she said, oh, yeah. George, I hunt quill every day, but I've never hit one. She said, you really didn't know, and she turned

and called her grandmother and said, Grandma, my therapist, and I are gonna go sit out on the porch. And so we did. We sat in these wicker chairs and this old dog came up and she said, That's Willie, don't let him jump up. He'll make a do-do. So Tara was also Betty.

She was Betty and Albert. And I said, Tara, why did you invent these people? And she said, I don't know. I'm bored. I live in Cerncy. She said, you want a jack-and-coke? And I was humiliated partly, but I was also partly dazzled, but I didn't stay for a drink.

I went home, and the next morning I told Don and Calvin, and they were over the moon. They said, this is clearly a case of multiple personality, which was the holy grail for psychologists This is clearly a case of multiple personality, which was the holy grail for psychologists in those days, and they couldn't wait for Tara to call back, but she didn't. I waited on the veranda, but Tara never called. Nobody ever called, and the nights grew very long, and I quit. I got an equivalency

and equivalency diploma and went to the University of Georgia, which meant I often drove through serency on my way back home to Brunswick. And I'd always slow down when I was in front of Tara's house. But I never saw her. But once years later, I was approaching the Cerncy lights. And there was this weird glow on the right side of the road. And somebody had had an accident and driven off the road into a pine tree. And there were other cars pulled over.

And the police were on their way. But as I drove past, I could glimpse the driver. And he had a jacket and a tie and he was a small elderly man. And I had a flash of his Albert. But of course it wasn't Albert. Albert was Tara's creation. She was such a powerful storyteller. And even now, when I write, I hear your voices, your character, something you did that freed me to create. And I hope that you got out of certainty,

and I hope you're not bored anymore, and I hope you don't hate me for calling you Tara. I know you'd have come up with something much better. You'd have found something perfect. That was George Dawes Green. George is our friend and the founder of the Moth and a New York Times best selling author. His first novel, The Caveman's Valentine, won the Edgar Award and became a motion picture starring Samuel L. Jackson. The Kingdoms of Savannah, George's latest novel, was published this July to widespread

acclaim. The New York Times says that it's layered, like a parfait, goes down sweet, chilled, and easy. Green shows how you can love a place's stink, find it splendid even as you despise its sediment. Green grew up in Georgia and now lives in Brooklyn, New York. We wanted to hear what George thought about, how the moth has grown and changed over the years, ever since the first show in his living room. Here's the moth's Jennifer Hickson, who directed his story,

talking with George. Well, George, we just listened to your beautiful story from Seattle. You told it just a few months ago. You had an unconventional ending to this story, and you're the founder of the Moths, so you get to do that. You reached out to Tara directly in it. You had a message for her. Yes, I mean, her real name isn't Tara, but and I haven't seen that girl for 50 years, but I always hope that all run into her.

And so I think, well, this is now going on podcast. Somebody will know Tara or she'll be listening to this. And if you're out there, Tara, again, I'm sorry, I call you Tara, but you know who you are, and I would love to see you again. And Tara's especially important because in your book, The Kingdoms of Savannah, she's fictionalized part of her. I kept imagining over the years what what would Tara have become. And so a few years ago, it came to me that Tara might well have gone to Savannah and she could do any accent in the world so she

could easily persuade Sivanians that she was an eighth generation Sivanian. And in my book she becomes the doi-en of Sivania society. Her name is Morgana Musgrove and she has a detective agency and she invagals all of her dysfunctional family, her adult children to come in and help her with the detective agency. And it's a thriller. It's a contemporary thriller, but it's about stories and savanna stories and how the stories of savanna and Georgia really shape that area of the world. Tara, look what you inspired. I really hope you'll reach out to us.

And Tara also, to be honest, those stories in some way inspired the founding of the Moth because I remember the night that it was revealed to me that Tara had made up all of those characters. And I can just remember that sense of the power of these Savannah stories. There was something about Georgia, I guess, because there was nothing to do. So I guess that's why we were able to gather on porches and just listen to full stories. But it absolutely, there's that, and there are other elements to living in the South. There's that sort of Southern Gothic strain which comes into the most casual personal stories. And so I do think that the stories of Savannah were so vivid that years later, I was living in New York and missing those slow-drawed stories and going to cocktail parties. parties and you know there's always these vultures who will interrupt every conversation after

10 seconds and not because they are particularly rude or interruptive it's just the way of life in New York. And so I think one of the keys to the math was my thought that we needed to just shut everybody up and let people tell full, you know, 10, 12-minute stories. And here we are 25 years later. So zooming way forward to today, George, what do you find most gratifying knowing that this organization you started is still turning along? It's still full of surprises. We just went to the Moth Member Show in New York and it was one great story after another and particularly there were a couple of stories.

There were stories I think that you directed, actually, Chad. Oh, thank you. That was magical. There were several magical stories. And just that sense that you're with the community, the one thing that gratifies me the most about the Moth is when we set it up, because we knew this was a tremendous amount of sacrifice for all of us. We're pouring just, first of all, incredible amounts of money and hours and hours for years. Sweetless nights. Yeah, and real. And you know, it's not, you know, sometimes it seems sort of easy.

I mean, it was a big success from the very beginning, so you'd think, oh, well, this will be easy. But no, it involves constant negotiations and different creative minds and balancing the wishes of one group versus another and one approach versus another. But what I always found was the sense of deep community and the sense that we were all in a community. And it's great to me that so many members of that original Moth community are still working on stories and creating stories and working with the Moth.

And that, I think, that sense of bonding, kind of lifelong bonding is what, to me, the Moth is all about. And the art is so important to me, the art of the rack contour, but almost equally important, is the sense of a community of people who like this,

that is to say there are so many people now who just wanna spend their time on the internet or they wanna go, you know, to these movies, these big Hollywood movies or Marvel movies or whatever. And then there are lots of people all over the world who would rather go into a room and listen to stories. And that every time I go to a new mall somewhere in the middle of nowhere, it just moves me so much. Man, 25 years of the moth. Since we're revisiting some of the early moth days, I remember actually all of our early venues, places like the Lansky Lounge, which gave that feeling, I think that George

had always wanted, which was an atmosphere of community where people were just listening to each other's stories and having drinks and food and the lounge. It was really great atmosphere. But as we grew, we of course were making more cultural institutional connections. So we partnered with the Museum of Natural History and we partnered with the Margaret Meade Film Festival of documentary film festival that was in the museum.

Had a night actually that we did with documentary storytellers on stories that got away that they never actually filmed. But we also did another night at the Museum of Natural History, which was at the Planetarium. And there were about 400 people. I felt very fortunate to tell the story of that night, but I was the most excited to hear the astronaut. He was Captain Frederick Hauke. He was the first pilot astronaut into space after the Challenger crash in 1986. So the story he

painted though first was what's it like to feel and look at look at the earth from this unbelievable vantage point of space. And everybody was in on it. Everybody felt everything that he was saying. The 16 sun rises and sunsets every day. The blues and the oceans, the tans of the deserts and the greens of the forest, it was feeling very palpable and I felt like we were experiencing with him and I felt everybody else around the room had the same feeling. One of my favorite stories happened early on. The theme that night was travel stories, uh, you curated that piggy. And it was the first most story to be picked up by NPR. Playwrights Candido Tirado and Carmen Rivera told the stories of traveling to Italy to be at a friend's wedding, which sounds amazing because you imagine,

in Tuscany, you imagine all these fascinating locations, but it wasn't. It was very, a very remote place that he says, look like Kansas. And Carmen Candido were having problems with the bride and the groom, It was very, a very remote place that he says, look like Kansas. And Carmen Condito were having problems with the bride and the groom. And Carmen and Condito were having problems of their own, in their own marriage, which made it for a very interesting wedding, something out of Dolcebita or something like that where this craziness going on. But what got my attention the most is that Candidon Carmen end up repairing their marriage and feeling so good about the experience.

We'd like to end with a thank you to everyone who was a part of the Moths 25 year journey. Whether you told a story, donated to help keep the Moth going, or just listen to a podcast, we truly appreciate it. Years to 25 more years of the Moth. We mentioned a lot of stories this episode. If you'd like to listen to any of them for yourself, check out the Moth.org-extras, or take a look at this podcast's show notes. Peggy Veil was a founding board member and curator for the Moth. She's an anthropologist and filmmaker at NYU Center for Media, Culture and History,

teaches documentary production in the Culture and Media program, and collaborates with arts and cultural institutions on public programs in New York City and internationally. Melvin Estrea was also a founding board member for the Moth. He has worked within the independent film arena, as well as on commercial, television, and non-profit media production. And is currently writing his first young adult novel, Earthquake Alley. He serves on the board of Prospect Street Riders House. As documentary filmmakers,

Peggy and Melvin produce the award-winning film Gringo Trails about the effects of global tourism, and are currently in production on two films, Shadows of Nanook, directed by Jim Compton and Peter King, and they measured our heads, following a precedent-setting case to repatriate human remains stolen by British anthropologist Alfred Court Haddon in the 19th century from Wales ancestral island Inishbafin, Ireland. This episode of the Moth podcast was produced by Sarah Austin-Geness, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Salinger. The rest of the Moths leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Kathleen Burns, Jennifer Hickson,

Meg Bulls, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Klucce, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Leanne Gully, Ingeglialski, and Aldi Kaza. All Maus stories are true as remembered by the storytellers. For more about our podcast information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, TheMouth.org. The Mouth podcast is presented by Pierre-Ex, the public radio exchange, helping make public radio more public at perex.org. The Mouth Podcast is presented by PIRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at pirex.org.