On October 11, Dick Gordon recorded his last episode of The Story. He’s moving back to Canada to be closer to family, and so ends the radio show’s 8-year run.
As I’ve written before, I’m a big fan of Gordon’s interviewing and listening skills, and I’ll miss catching his new installments from time to time.
After his last segment, Gordon recorded about 4 minutes on his philosophy of getting people to share their stories. The piece is entitled “Goodbye.” In it he talks about listening with patience:
There is a natural pause after the first part of an answer to a question. I ask you what it was like going for a walk with your grandfather, and you say, “It was nice. Not too cold. We had a good talk.” And if I wait, and if I don’t feel like I have to fill that pause and jump in with something else, that’s when you’re most likely to say, “He told me this story that I’d never heard before.”
“So that’s my conclusion,” he says, “after more than 36 years of talking on the radio, that the best thing I can do is not talk but listen. That’s when you hear the best stories.”
In another short audio post for The Story, this one from December 11 of last year, radio producer Marika Partridge talks about what she learned from a group of Maasai performers. As a child, she had spent a month camping with her family among the Maasai on the plains of Kenya. Years later, she was asked to interrupt her harried routine and host a group of Maasai singers and dancers coming to her home town of Takoma Park, Maryland. She consented and was glad she did. The experience broke through the busyness of her daily life and taught her about “conversation and caring”:
“Our way of life is really very strong on adhering to the word of mouth,” says the leader of the performing group. “When we speak to one another, we say we feed each other. We nourish each other spiritually.”
In “Saying Yes to Visitors,” Partridge shares the new perspective she gained:
Do I connect with the people I meet every day? Most of the time, other people seem like stumbling blocks, preventing me from getting to my next appointment. If I slowed things down and connected in this Maasai way maybe I could rediscover how to experience humanity as more than a series of interruptions.
Goodbye to The Story.
Goodbye Mr. Gordon. Enjoy your long conversations with family and friends—old and new—in Canada.
The Story is dead. Long live the stories.
[photo: “Listen,” by Jay Morrison, used under a Creative Commons license]
Clearing Customs 