My story has changed considerably over the four weeks I have been developing it. My initial title, The Burnished Letter, first gave way to Intergenerational Trauma, and then I settled on the current title Surfaces and Soundings. I've done quite a bit of re-writing and re-recording of my narrative, and I've also shifted image and sound media quite a bit. Even though my image and sound themes have stayed pretty much the same for the most part, I have added items and elements to my palettes. For example I added a sonar pinging sound to convey the 'soundings' theme.
The changes in title were the result of honing in on the specifics of my dad's life-story, rather than telling a general sort of context-rich story involving the circumstances of his life. In recording the first draft of my narrative, I found that I had way too much text, and way too much of what I had was contextual in nature rather than personal to my dad's life story.
The first hint that I would need to make changes was when I noticed on my storyboard that there was just a tiny piece of text about my dad's life in it -- and in turn I noticed how this sort of 'submerging' of his personal story into the context of the times he lived in was part and parcel of what I thought needed to be changed about how we told the story of his life.
It seemed to me it was time to bring some meaningful focus to the wartime trauma he experienced rather than just mentioning this in the context of telling other stories -- stories about the 1950's, about postwar diasporas, etc. I wanted my story to make a break with the kind of narratives we've typically told ourselves about my dad's life. I basically wanted to change the narrative. And this is why I chose to tell this particular story, among 'contenders' that included the story of a postwar family diaspora, a baseball story, a birth story, and the story of an important letter I recently gained access to (hence the initial title "The Burnished Letter").
I'm pleased with the way the media elements of the story provide standalone and non-redundant content. As it turned out, a sort of interruptive media-montage of war imagery and sounds was the best way to convey the way trauma overwhelms a person's senses and thoughts. My strategy of using water imagery in a thematic way also ended up working quite well. It enabled me to convey the sense of things shifting on the 'surface' but staying still in 'sounding' the depths.
I also ended up focusing on just one image of my dad, letting this be another way to keep the story on track with his personal life rather than introducing extraneous visuals. And again since this was a story about his personal experience with wartime trauma, the war montage kept it focused as well and I was glad to have been able to find specific footage and images from the actual context he fought in during WW2, Okinawa.
In my case, thinking about how I would include narrative inquiry opened up the process in crucial ways. It was this impulse that caused me to research PTSD among WW2 veterans, which in turn helped me bring the focus of my story into the personal realm of my dad's experience. I learned quite a bit about trauma and PTSD, including this article about WW2 veterans and PTSD (published in the Washington Post) and this online presentation about how trauma lodges itself in the body (published on the On Being podcast).
I'd be remiss if I didn't also say that I learned a great deal from storyboarding. I was surprised how helpful it was to me to have a kind of 'cognitive collage' to work with in a flexible and nonlinear way. It really helped me to keep the media feeds and narrative feed coordinated yet non-redundant. My view of the technical aspects of the overall process -- starting with a project-blog, building narrative content, building imagery and sound content, storyboarding, producing, and revisiting the blog site -- may provide some folks with a content genre that they may be able to use in other courses, partiularly in the DLA but perhaps in arts areas as well.
I also feel I learned a lot about myself through engaging in this process. As noted above, I learned that I had been complicit in telling and reinforcing particular kinds of contextual narratives about my dad that actually drew attention away from his life story. So this was a moment of insight for me.
And, as noted above, I also learned quite a bit about the battle of Okinawa and about trauma and PTSD among WW2 veterans. I also learned that this type of storytelling can be emotionally difficult to engage in, as it reawakens memories and feelings. But these kinds of difficulties pale in relation to the benefits I have felt. I have a very strong and nice feeling that I have added something meaningful to the narrative of my dad's life.
The changes in title were the result of honing in on the specifics of my dad's life-story, rather than telling a general sort of context-rich story involving the circumstances of his life. In recording the first draft of my narrative, I found that I had way too much text, and way too much of what I had was contextual in nature rather than personal to my dad's life story.
The first hint that I would need to make changes was when I noticed on my storyboard that there was just a tiny piece of text about my dad's life in it -- and in turn I noticed how this sort of 'submerging' of his personal story into the context of the times he lived in was part and parcel of what I thought needed to be changed about how we told the story of his life.It seemed to me it was time to bring some meaningful focus to the wartime trauma he experienced rather than just mentioning this in the context of telling other stories -- stories about the 1950's, about postwar diasporas, etc. I wanted my story to make a break with the kind of narratives we've typically told ourselves about my dad's life. I basically wanted to change the narrative. And this is why I chose to tell this particular story, among 'contenders' that included the story of a postwar family diaspora, a baseball story, a birth story, and the story of an important letter I recently gained access to (hence the initial title "The Burnished Letter").
I'm pleased with the way the media elements of the story provide standalone and non-redundant content. As it turned out, a sort of interruptive media-montage of war imagery and sounds was the best way to convey the way trauma overwhelms a person's senses and thoughts. My strategy of using water imagery in a thematic way also ended up working quite well. It enabled me to convey the sense of things shifting on the 'surface' but staying still in 'sounding' the depths.
I also ended up focusing on just one image of my dad, letting this be another way to keep the story on track with his personal life rather than introducing extraneous visuals. And again since this was a story about his personal experience with wartime trauma, the war montage kept it focused as well and I was glad to have been able to find specific footage and images from the actual context he fought in during WW2, Okinawa.
In my case, thinking about how I would include narrative inquiry opened up the process in crucial ways. It was this impulse that caused me to research PTSD among WW2 veterans, which in turn helped me bring the focus of my story into the personal realm of my dad's experience. I learned quite a bit about trauma and PTSD, including this article about WW2 veterans and PTSD (published in the Washington Post) and this online presentation about how trauma lodges itself in the body (published on the On Being podcast).
I'd be remiss if I didn't also say that I learned a great deal from storyboarding. I was surprised how helpful it was to me to have a kind of 'cognitive collage' to work with in a flexible and nonlinear way. It really helped me to keep the media feeds and narrative feed coordinated yet non-redundant. My view of the technical aspects of the overall process -- starting with a project-blog, building narrative content, building imagery and sound content, storyboarding, producing, and revisiting the blog site -- may provide some folks with a content genre that they may be able to use in other courses, partiularly in the DLA but perhaps in arts areas as well.
I also feel I learned a lot about myself through engaging in this process. As noted above, I learned that I had been complicit in telling and reinforcing particular kinds of contextual narratives about my dad that actually drew attention away from his life story. So this was a moment of insight for me.
And, as noted above, I also learned quite a bit about the battle of Okinawa and about trauma and PTSD among WW2 veterans. I also learned that this type of storytelling can be emotionally difficult to engage in, as it reawakens memories and feelings. But these kinds of difficulties pale in relation to the benefits I have felt. I have a very strong and nice feeling that I have added something meaningful to the narrative of my dad's life.
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