Story Telling

“The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down, of the big lake they call Gitchi Gummi.”

–     Opening line from the lyric to Gordon Lightfoots’s “Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald”

It means “Big Water.”  Gitchi Gummi is a native American expression meaning “big water.”  I didn’t learn that in school, I learned it because of the telling of the story.  A disc jockey on KRNA in Iowa City told me that.  Once.  In 1976.  The telling of the story made me want to know.

29 men died on the Edmund Fitzgerald in a November storm on Lake Superior.  I learned that because of the telling of the story.  The event itself, while legendary here in the Great Lakes Region, was inconsequential on the Iowa farm which was my original home.  Yet I know the story.

Because of the telling.

If you have kids, watch the difference in their engagement level when you use different voices for each character when reading a bedtime story to them.  If you have friends, watch the difference in their engagement level when you use different inflection to tell them a story about an experience or an event.

If you have customers, watch their engagement level to know whether your telling honors your story.

Yes, the story matters.  But everyone has a story.  That’s why the telling matters even more.  That’s why the telling makes a difference.

PS  In 2010, based on findings of an investigation, the cause of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald prompted Lightfoot to change one line in the lyric.  I didn’t know that, until I researched this post.  It might be part of the story, but it doesn’t lend itself well to the telling.  There’s probably a lesson in there somewhere, too…