Catharthis

This was written on September 23, 2011, when it really hit home that Alan Campbell was not going to rally through his fight with cancer.  He is still acutely missed.

I have always found writing cathartic, a way to let pent up angst or elation vent through a well turned phrase.  I work in written pictures, mental snapshots, Polaroid lines.  And yet, for as much as I love writing, I don’t consider myself much of a storyteller in the written or oral tradition.  I have always been in awe of those people who can place you in a scene and carry you through an event in its entirety, whether it’s something that spanned minutes or years, and leave you with an indelible impression or emotional imprint.  

Using that most human of talents, the power of speech, the Storyteller can set a scene: a courtroom with disgruntled judge and cast of thousands, the backwoods of Vermont during black fly season, a concert from long ago resplendent with long-haired hippies, or one more recent with the same hippies (only older), the hallways of Old Profile with kids (and some teachers) who ran amok. Then they establish the mood: you’re bereft at the squalor of a shack with no running water and a filthy mattress over the bathroom door; enraged at the social injustice of a failed political or economic system;  giddy at the impending foibles of a Bad News Bears group of young ne’er do-wells working a trail.  Then they swing you through the tale, over stunned deer (thought dead) smashing the interior of a brand new car to bits, around the mountain highways of music-filled roadtrips, up a side road to the generations-long history of some infamous cohort, then back around to the room you’re sitting in right now.  The best at the craft make you feel as if it’s the first time this story has ever been told, and you are the luckiest person alive to hear it: they hunker in and lean back, drawing you in, gesticulating grandly, their intonation ringing through your laughter.  The consummate Storyteller then ties it all together, lifting you out your reverie to remember that you needed to learn something from that story, and because of that, you are now part of it.

Alan Campbell is my Mark Twain and Howard Frank Mosher packaged somewhat messily into one ornery but big hearted ponytailed Scotsman.  With wit and compassion, his stories have told me why I am at Profile, and have helped make it why I love it here.  He is the living history of this place, and with every story, he shares a piece of it with us.  Just as a good Storyteller should.