Episode 2: The Power of Narrative
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Transcript:
We're at the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in Monterey, Mexico. It's September and it's pretty hot outside. Our hotel in Monterey is right in the middle of the city. We're not really in the best of neighborhoods, but there are a few decent restaurants nearby, not far away. There's a wide promenade full of local shops selling everything from handmade leather shoes and some bros to Chinese tchotchkes.
The hotel lobby, that's the shining star. They are gorgeous lobby, massive atrium, wood slat handling a lot of woodwork everywhere. Very cool colonial style architecture. Oh, amazing. Uh, stained glass ceiling. Wow, that's incredible. It's the first day of the conference and we're gathering in the lobby. There must be, I dunno, 50 or so people in there.
Including about 30 students and faculty from Quinnipiac, along with students from other universities too. Sean Duffy, who runs the Albert Schweitzer Institute. He's responsible for the Quinnipiac group. He arranged the whole thing. He's the reason I'm there. You're recording. Recording Mike in the face.
Don't worry. Half the stuff. I'm not gonna do this. I figured. Sean's tall, soft spoken with rosy cheeks and an ever present smile. He's fielding all sorts of questions from students and others while also counting heads and keeping an eye on the time. I don't wanna bug him in the middle of that. So I'm looking around for people to interview.
One person catches my attention, so I grab my giant fuzzy microphone and head over toward him.
Anita Revilla: And I think people right now aren't thinking about peace at all. Um, in many parts of the world, they're thinking about the destruction of war and the destruction of politics.
David DesRoches: Dr. Anita Revia is among other things.
A professor at Cal State LA and chair of its Department of Chicana and Latina studies. As soon as I see Anita, I want to talk to her, and she's tatted up. She's got this bright, beautiful, engaging smile, and she's got this magnetic energy. This is how she describes herself in a lecture to UNLV students back in 2017.
Anita Revilla: So Im a Chicana Latina Tejana from the south side of San Antonio, Texas. I grew up in extreme poverty. I was raised by a single mother who did not have access to higher education, and my father died when I was eight years old. I am like many of you, a first generation college student and also a first generation academic, which makes me very different than many of my colleagues.
I also identify as queer, bisexual, and fluid. I don't fit or desire to fit into a heteronormative paradigm. I am a, what some people call a woman of size. It means I don't match the Euro patriarchal image of beauty, and I work actively to reject it. I'm also committed to social justice. I'm a feminist and I'm an activist scholar, but my business card just says that I'm the chair of the Department of Interdisciplinary Gender and Ethnic Studies.
Obviously, I'm much more than my business card.
David DesRoches: Anita's wearing a sleeveless shirt, and her tattoos are decorating her arm like a human gallery. Frida kalo lives on her shoulder along with something Mayan or maybe Aztec and some butterflies, but before I could ask her about her ink, people start trickling outta the hotel for the convention center.
So I'm obliged to join.
We're meandering like mice through the city of Monterey. Following Sean, the Pied Piper, the city's bustling horn honking sirens blaring and trucks belching black smoke revving loudly as pedestrians, jostled. Weaving around each other in various street obstacles. The smells of diesel fumes and hot rubber linger in humid air accompanied by an occasional whiff of something spicy.
The city of Monterey actually has some pretty incredible history. It's the second largest metro area in Mexico, and it's considered a major business and industrial hub in North America. And it's also home to Mexico's National Baseball Hall of Fame before the Spanish settled here in the late 15 hundreds, at least four different nomadic ethnic groups called this area home for about 12,000 years.
Colonialism sadly has wiped out a lot of that history.
Surrounding us are massive buildings, sculptures, street art, and monument. It's this massive sphere atop this building here. Yeah, it's pretty, pretty wild looking. Geometrical shapes, triangles, all put together to make a massive sphere. And in the background there's a, there's the hills with the little colorful houses dotting the hills, and there's a statue of Benito Juarez and almost fell down.
I tried to narrate. Uh, it is a, it is a, a bust, I guess, or a head of man Juarez and then a bridge. Sorry, sorry, I'm running into people. I'm falling down. I can't do anything. Uh, big Corona extra sign in the shape of a massive bottle cap. It's kind of fun looking. Did we, okay. Oh, I see Sean. I think we're going the right direction.
I don't think it matters too, too much. Right. I think the, the general vibe so far is everybody just kind of figure it out. Yeah. As I almost fell down again. Alright. I need to start walking, lifting my feet. That's, that's lemme learn Walking. Eventually I catch up with Renee Scott. She's a student at Quinnipiac getting her master's in social work.
We're talking about how incredible it's to meet people in other countries who've done amazing work, especially when they come from countries that don't have a lot of wealth or freedom. Places where. Saying the wrong thing could actually literally get you killed.
Renee Scott: I think there's this mindset we have in America, like, oh, it's easy.
It's so on and so forth. But to get the perspective of someone who lives in another country and who made such a powerful impact and don't even have the same resources or access that I have. Necessarily. It's absolutely amazing.
David DesRoches: Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent agree. So I, I come from a journalism background and, and they're, you know, there's a journalist here who won Peace Prize for her work in Yemen.
And you know, the work that she was doing, she was literally facing, you know, it was a death. Death. Right.
Renee Scott: Exactly.
David DesRoches: You know, and so, right. It's hard to complain from my perspective, when people doing the same kind of work in its very extreme circumstances, but they literally, their life is at risk. So, so
Renee Scott: it's like, so my mindset is like, okay, well.
If she could do that in Yemen. Right, right. What can I do? Right. You know, so, right. Yeah.
David DesRoches: Yeah. Seeing people experience adversity and overcome it in all kinds of fields, whether it's journalism, social work.
Renee Scott: Correct. In another context, you're trying it too, you know what I mean? Journalism, I mean, you are telling the truth and putting it on paper and telling people, look at this, you know, and that's not an easy thing to do because I found that in my own life, people don't like.
They don't like the truth. Truth telling. Yes. It makes people very uncomfortable. Yeah. Yeah. They don't want you in the room, you know? That's so true.
David DesRoches: Yeah. Especially if the, if the truth, you know, challenges their values, challeng their personal identities, values. Yep.
Renee Scott: Systems and all of that. Everything, yes.
100%.
David DesRoches: Oh, that's a nice breeze.
Renee Scott: It it is. Woo. Did we just walk from over here?
David DesRoches: We just do a big circle. We did. I think we did. Yeah. I think we saw the Liverpool side, didn't we?
Renee Scott: They're going to. They
David DesRoches: look like they might be. As we're wandering in circles looking for the entrance, the towering Sierra Madres in the distance, the loud relentlessness of urban life just hammering away.
Yeah, we're trusting Sean to lead the way to the event, even though he doesn't know exactly where it is. I mean, not really, anyway. I mean, he kind of knows, but he's never been there. None of us have, I mean, we aren't lost per se, but we are walking aimlessly. At least it feels that way. And sometimes that's, that's how we are, right?
As a species, just kind of aimlessly wandering, not, not really quite lost, but. Not really on track either.
And I feel like this is how we are. This is how humanity is today. In this moment in history. We know where we need to be, but we're kind of stuck. We're wandering in circles. Our destination's right there in front of us, but we're too caught up in, uh, whatever ourselves, our ideologies, our smartphones.
We're just too caught up in other stuff to even see where we need to go. Even though it's right there, it's right at the tip of our fingertips. It's so close. We can smell it. We can almost touch it. We can even, we can even taste it if we focus just a teeny little bit. I, I don't know, maybe I'm just speaking for myself, but I feel like no matter what I do, no matter how hard I fight for what I think is right, I inevitably feel like I'm spinning wheels in the mud.
I'm literally and figuratively stuck and the only people listening to me are the people who already agree with me.
After wandering the streets of Monterey for like 20 minutes, someone finally figures out that the way into the event is up a massive switchback ramp that snakes its way up a few floors before leveling off in front of huge glass doors on the ramp. I see Anita up ahead, so I catch up with her. Again, it's pretty warm and humid out and both of us are struggling a little bit to talk.
But for some reason I keep talking and recording. Apparently I can't take a hint. Go figure. You experience all, so tell me about your tattoos. I'm looking these some pretty cool tattoos you got there. I
Anita Revilla: love that all of them have stories. Yeah, I'm sure.
David DesRoches: Is this like a alligator at the top or is that,
Anita Revilla: that's Kedo.
Who is the, that's a. S right? Yeah. No, it's Aztec. Oh, okay. It's a ser serpent God. Okay. Um, it's on the cover of my favorite book. I'm outta breath. I know, me too. I'm like, maybe we need to pause this. Yeah, let's wait, let's wait, let's wait.
David DesRoches: We'll keep this up again. Thank you. Yeah. We're going up this incredibly
Anita Revilla: incredible state long ramp of not ramp stuff.
David DesRoches: The serpent God. How apropos given we're snaking our way up the ramp toward the venue. We walked up the ramp, we finally make it to the top, and my back is drenched. I am not a pretty perspire. Is that a thing? Anyway, uh, we're entering the event center, which is this gigantic mall with walled windows and a massive atrium on the main floor.
Oh, I love air conditioning. Oh, wow. It's a very large open atrium. I guess you, we would call it metal. Very
Anita Revilla: postmodern with very some purse. Lot of curves, some modern, some,
David DesRoches: some, uh, some, who
Anita Revilla: knows what's going on.
David DesRoches: Some, some of that.
Anita Revilla: The sphere inside of the postmodern.
David DesRoches: Yeah, a little bit of brutalism, maybe Uhhuh and mirrors on the ceiling.
Anita Revilla: So the quato is on the cover of a book called Borderlands. It's, uh, borderlands la Frontera, uh, ti and the author. Is named Gloria Alua. She's a Chicana feminist who is considered one of like the foremothers of women of color feminism. She also co-edited a book called This Bridge, called My Back and as a southern Texas Chicana queer woman, when I read her book in undergrad over 30 years ago.
She was the first, first book that I read that I saw myself in. Wow. And I still assign this book in class, so I decided to get the, and underneath it says Anta, which is basically like her theories and way of thinking. Okay. Or a guide for me. Oh, that's so beautiful. Yeah. I love that. The others are just fun tattoos that I got with friends.
David DesRoches: The book that inspired Anita's Tattoo of the Feathered Serpent to Borderlands la Frontera. It is semi autobiographical and it combines prose and poetry in Spanish and in English. This mixing of styles and languages actually represents the book's theme. Borderlands are physical places where two cultures and identities can merge and sometimes clash.
Gloria, the author, she grew up in Texas near the Mexico border, so it was personal for her. The book subtitle is The New Mestiza. Traditionally, a mestiza is a person, uh, with both European and indigenous heritage. But the new Mestiza that Gloria posits in her book is an identity that embraces all races, genders, and sexual preferences.
It sounds pretty good to me, and I imagine that probably sounds good to people of faith, right? Isn't universal love the most important aspect about most religions? I mean, and, and didn't, didn't Jesus say in, in the Book of Luke that quote. When you give a feast invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.
And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you. I mean, despite the Bible and uh, LA Frontera talking about the same things, LA Frontera has actually been targeted by book banning lawmakers.
Cecilia Rodriguez Milanes: Hello, I'm Cecilia Rodriguez Milness from the University of Central Florida, and I'm happy to contribute to the Miami-Dade College Readathon in order to celebrate and publicize some of the band books from Tucson, Arizona.
So, um, my contribution will be, uh, from Gloria Aldo's very important book, borderlands Frontera. This is chapter five, how to Tame a Wild Tongue. I've never seen anything as strong or as stubborn, he says, and I think, how do you tame a wild tongue? Train it to be quiet. How do you bridle and saddle it? How do you make it lie down?
David DesRoches: I can't help but think about how important this idea is, especially considering how disconnected we are from each other, how ungodly so many religious people have become. The anger at immigrants, at the GBT plus community, the fear mongering about China and Russia, or any foreigner for that matter. It's all about othering.
The other about scapegoating, finding someone else to blame,
in fact, not doing that or, or doing the opposite of that. It's what we should be focusing on as a
Sean Duffy: species, according to Sean Duffy beings, the, the ability to recognize in one another that very same self. Um. Where that very same life force, that very same, um, striving to be, and that, and some of the same, um, sort of values of living beings, um, means that you can't really other, the other, right?
Mm-hmm. You can't really, um, because
David DesRoches: you're othering yourself at that point.
And, and not to get all religious and biblical on you guys, but, but according to the book of John, Jesus said, quote, if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need yet. Closes his heart against him. How does God's love abide in him? And according to the book of Matthew, Jesus said, quote, truly, I say to you as you did it to one of the least of these brothers, you did it to me.
I mean, hell, even the worst book in the Bible, Leviticus, the one that all those people cite to justify their hate. Even Leviticus says, quote, when a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native born. Love them as yourself.
And besides, aren't we all actually one human family? So how can a book that promotes that message I'm talking about La Frontera, how can that book be banned? And secondly, aren't borders, social constructs? That never existed until one day someone decided that this flag planted here, made it theirs,
Eddie Izzard: and we built up empires.
We stole countries. That's what you, that's how you build an empath. We stole countries with a cunning use of flags. Yeah. You just sailed around the world and stick a flag in. I claim India for Britain, and they go, you can't claim us. We live here. 500 million of us. Do you have a flag?
David DesRoches: Oh, the great idiot is hard. That show dressed to Kill was like 25 years ago and it still hits, but that is the point, right? Even where the Peace Summit took place, European immigrants have only been there for about 500 years. Before that the Chichi meccas were there for at least 12,000 years. They lived in what's now northern Mexico for 120 centuries before the Spanish came, and there was a peace conference being held on land that was, for all intents and purposes, stolen just five centuries ago.
Of course, borders aren't going anywhere, and that system is here to stay, but as a concept, as a framework for how we think about quote unquote the other. Borders, arguably do more harm than good. You are supposed to be over there because you are different. I am here. You are there.
And that focus on difference leads to competing narratives. Each side has a story, some going back thousands of years. And, and if those stories clash, well that's how you get war. Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, Sudan, Iran. And the Bible is a story. It's a narrative that over a billion people use to justify their actions, whether they're noble actions like helping the poor or cruel actions like imprisoning, immigrants, all societies, cultures, people, individuals.
We all have stories, and those stories almost literally define who we are.
Let's get back to the summit. There's a panel discussion that's touching on this idea. One of the panelists is this pretty renowned bioethicist from Emory University, Paul Wpe. For 17 years, Paul was the senior bioethicist for nasa. He's now establishing a center at Emory for Peace Building and Conflict Transformation.
He spent some time traveling the world, meeting with various peace organizations and learning about their different approaches. And one that stuck out to him was a division of Swiss piece called Dealing With the Past.
Paul Wolpe: And what that division does is it looks at the narratives that groups have and it tries to say, how do we bring these competing narratives together?
How do we get two groups that are fighting to change their way of talking about each other? And a very quick example. I spent a week in Belfast for 30 years. Belfast was one of the worst places in the world in terms of violence. I was 30 years of bombing. Over 3,500 people killed over 40,000 injured. And then the Good Friday Accords were written.
And for the last 25 years, there has not been a single political killing in Northern Ireland. However, the Good Friday Accords also said that they should take down the fences, that they should take down the gates between the Catholic and the Protestant communities, and that they should create integrated schools.
25 years later, 7% of the schools are integrated. 93% of the students still either go to Catholic school. Or they go to Protestant school. If they go to Catholic school, they get indoctrinated into the Catholic narrative of what has happened. If they go to Protestant school, they get indoctrinated into the Protestant narrative.
So the question I have is, how do we change the narrative? If we teach children the same old stories, they're gonna grow up with the same old beliefs. We have to find a way to change the way people think and talk about things. We have to change people's. A rigid view of history. We all tell a story about history and that story gets ossified, it gets hardened.
Um, and that becomes the truth. And if you look at Palestine and Israel, if you look at Russia and Ukraine, they, each ha side has a story that they're absolutely convinced as the real story. And, and they're incompatible stories. So I think a real key to trying to bring peace anywhere is how do we change the narrative?
How do we change the stories? How do we bring sides together and create a new blended narrative that allows both sides their dignity, but also allows history to change?
David DesRoches: I spoke with Paul just before his panel, which was about how to integrate peace into educational curricula and this, this, for me was among my most important takeaways from the entire conference. If we want to build a peaceful tomorrow, we have to teach children early on how to talk to people they disagree with.
Paul Wolpe: Oh, I think the point is we need to start with the precursors of peace education, even in kindergarten, which is how do we talk to people? How do we communicate across ideological boundaries, which our students, and I'm a professor at a university, our students have a really hard time doing that, whether in the United States particularly, it's about.
Race, or it's about politics, or it's about religion, or it's about, you know, Israel, Palestine or Russia, Ukraine, whatever it's about. When our students are on different sides of that issue, they don't know how to approach each other and have meaningful, productive conversations rather than conversations which deteriorate into accusations.
Yeah,
David DesRoches: and it seems like our inability to do that has pushed us further and further to hang around people who are exactly like us, which makes us even more. Isolated and, and in, and living in within an echo chamber. So what is the solution? Like? What do you, uh, I mean, it's kind of an intractable problem, but sure there are solutions, right?
Paul Wolpe: There are many solutions. The one we are dealing with today is how do we give people the skills to bridge that polarization, to bridge that divide? Um, when you are just reinforcing over and over again the same belief systems you give people, neither the incentive nor the skills to try to bridge them.
And so that's
David DesRoches: why, and this is something I talked about with Janet, but she's a political science major at Quinnipiac. We chatted in Mexico and we also sat down in the university's podcast studio when we got back home, and she was selected along with dozens of other students from around the globe to write a youth declaration.
Part of what she learned writing the declaration was this idea about narratives and which stories get passed down, and which ones become our history, and which ones are completely overwritten, lost, or even stamped out.
Janat Butt: It was definitely interesting to also hear about the indigenous communities and like how they're incorporated, um, into achieving all these different goals.
Right? Because I also learned through the process of writing the declaration that everything is. Um, intersectional and crosses paths. Right. Um, and specifically, ooh. Specifically in terms of like indigeneity, right? Like they're marginalized community and they're honestly not talked about enough. Like, for example, if you wanna bring it back here, right?
Quinnipiac is on, you know, it's named after. Right. The tribe that was once here. Um, and you know, I don't know, I don't even know if students know that. Right. And so, um, yeah, just to be able to like reaffirm those values but also like learn more about Quinnipiac here and like being able to apply like indigenous rights and, um, you know, what we can do, um, what more we can do to help communities like them.
Um. And other ones as well,
David DesRoches: so, Hmm mm You know, that that was one thing that kind of surprised me about the summit was I didn't hear, I mean, it's the same situation there, like, you know, that was a European colony, you know, from the Portuguese and the Spanish colonized that part of the world where mm-hmm.
The chichi meccas were there for 12,000 years in that part of the world. And I, you know, for me, I, that's why when we, we did a panel, I did a land declaration saying, you know, recognizing that, mm. Um. Because how can you build a peaceful tomorrow without recognizing the problems of the past?
Janat Butt: Right.
David DesRoches: And I think a lot of people want to forget the past or move past or move beyond it, but I think you can only do that once you recognize it happened.
Right. Absolutely. Yes. Be some honesty and some, some reconciliation and some some repairing.
music: Mm-hmm.
David DesRoches: I think a great example of repairing is, is kind, is what the Nobel Lawyers did after that horrendous incident with the Israeli flag. That story about the Israeli flag. That's in our next episode. As a journalist and as someone who teaches journalism to college students, the power of narrative is never lost on me.
It's, it's a double-edged sword, right? And because we are storytellers, that's just our natural human tendency.
Nana Ya Yaboa: There is no human society that doesn't have stories. Naya
David DesRoches: Boah is a podcaster focusing on empowering future leaders,
Nana Ya Yaboa: whether verbal, which is the oral storytelling or the written. We write, we tell, even in our architecture is the story of who we are when we also do our artwork, however, that it may be our painting, it also tells a story of us at a specific period of time or over a time period, and our stories are ongoing.
David DesRoches: That's a really important thing, right? Stories don't really end. They're ongoing, but we don't usually think about stories like that, do we? We like stories that have a beginning, middle, and an end. It wraps it up in a neat little package that we can always reference, and that's exactly how journalists present facts and information that craft stories that are structured, that have an end.
That's how we connect to audiences. There has to be a story, there has to be a person, there has to be conflict and an effort to solve it in some sort of resolution or cliffhanger. If journalists just provided facts without stories, not many people would care. Um, at that point, reading a news story would be the same as reading an academic paper.
And if stories didn't have an end or have a resolution, well, we'd probably feel let down or confused or even angry. But this connection to story, to narrative, it also sets us up to be manipulated. Let's say I want you to believe something you don't believe. All I need to do is come up with a better story, with a better hero, a better villain, and when I say better, what I mean is it's more aligned with your values and voila.
Now my story is the truth because my story aligns with your values better than this other story.
This other story might actually be true, but I don't care, do I? Not really? Not if that truth means that my values and your values are threatened, or my identity is at stake. No, for almost all of us. The truth only matters if it fits in with what we already believe.
Former Oxford Philosophy Professor Johnny Thompson, puts it like this. Few people
Johnny Thomson: actually care about the truth. Few people care about facts instead. Most people are concerned with looking good and feeling good. Most people care only about comfort, security, and power. From this observation, the philosopher Joseph Sheba coined the expression, the Nietzsche thesis, where he argued The goal of most conversations is not about seeking the truth, but about self preservation.
In other words, most people will accept or reject a fact based upon calculation rather than any concern for the truth. As Nietzsche put it, we would accept and look for truth only when it has pleasant life preserving consequences. Conversely, we are resistant to potentially harmful or destructive truths.
We do not have any meaningful concern for the truth, but only our wellbeing.
David DesRoches: Basically, if I hear a story that challenges my beliefs, well, it's a lie. Plain and simple. I actually get into this a lot in my other podcast, baffled with David DeRoche. Check it out if you get a chance, but I really struggle with this.
I, I know we as journalists need to use stories so people will pay attention and care because we are narrative creatures. But I also know that stories simply increase our reliance on narratives and not facts as our main source of truth. Add to that, the Hollywood Ation or Netflix ification of everything were, we're all crime solvers and researchers and investigators doing our quote unquote own research and getting to the bottom of all the mysteries and putting together narratives that we like and ignoring all the rest,
I don't have the answer. I can't tell my students to not tell a story. That would be ridiculous, but maybe there's something to that blended narrative that Paul Wpe was talking about. Or maybe stories shouldn't have clear winners and losers. Or maybe there should be at least three sides to a story and not two, which is how most news stories are structured.
Or maybe every story should clearly state that there is more to the story that we don't know, and more truth could emerge someday. That may change the story entirely.
Isn't that how the world really is ever changing and evolving? What's true today may be moot tomorrow. The truth is fluid. It's complex, it's messy, and two or more conflicting truths can coexist at the same time. Like that candy is good and bad. It tastes good, but it's bad for the body. You get the picture.
So if we're talking about global peace building, the power of narratives. Cannot be overstated. Put it all
Bob Schleuber: on the table. Let's be honest. Let's say all the things that we think and then let's start there. And let's start from a human story. And so they both
David DesRoches: do. Bob Slay Huber runs an organization called Peace Building Connections, and he also works with a hip hop duo called re, which means straight talk in Arabic.
What makes this duo unique is that one of them is Palestinian and the other is Israeli. This is how Bob explains that story.
Bob Schleuber: And so they both do do dual narrative storytelling where they say, Hey, this is. I'm Sama. I grew up in a village. My grandfather was a communist, uh, Palestinian leader who tried to keep people in the area.
I'm uria. My grandfather was the general in 1967 that put the Israeli flag on the, uh, walls, the old city. What do we do with that? We're both humans. We both have stories. We both have narratives. It's not about the Sol a quote unquote solution. It's about humanizing, uh, the conflict and then working together to, to go from there.
I think too often people intellectualize the conflict and they don't necessarily look at it through the lens of, I'm a human. You're a human. What do we do with this wild, crazy world that we're here for such a short period of time with? And then they weave music throughout the performance to again engage people.
And deep in the conversation with folks,
David DesRoches: we're gonna hear more from Bob and Dre in the next episode. But as a musician, learning about this group, it really got me going. I immediately remembered being in college just before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. And how engaged in the peace movement I was. My friends and I started a band called Well Stone's Revenge.
We were named after the late Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone, who was vocally against the Iraq War, but died in a mysterious plane crash shortly before election day. So in the evening of the 2003 State of the Union, we did a concert on top of our favorite bar, which is being turned into a Quiznos, and we called it the People State of the Union.
Music also played a huge role during the Peace Summit. In between the panels, there were performances on stage with dancers and traditional press. Coordinated moves with traditional music.
And the styles were mostly Meso American or Mexican naturally, but they also had some Asian performances.
So it's the end of the first day. All the student attendees are gathering in the main hall for what the organizers are calling a piece creative lab. The hall is massive, at least a football field wide, and almost as deep. A giant stage sits in the center, flanked by an army of speakers and digital screens, and all kinds of equipment and wires.
Right now there are two people on stage. One is a bearded man dressed in all black, including a black cowboy hat. The other is a curly haired woman wearing a sequin white dress with white boots, energetic electronic music, soon bumping in the background.
The two MCs. Ask everyone to remove their shoes. Most people, b oblige. Then they ask us to start walking in the circle. The people in stage are directing, move your body like this, do this with your neighbor. Smile, move your hips, lay down. The music shifts between atonal, atmospheric sounds to happy folk, music to simple beats.
I gotta be honest, it seems a bit hokey and I thought they might pull out a crystal ball and start reading our collective future,
but then I remembered how we started the day walking in circles, searching for the place we needed to be. There's no searching here. No. No real sense of being lost. At least not in the physical sense. I mean, there might have been some lost souls in there, of course, but it, it had me thinking, these are, these are COVID kids.
Most of them were in high school when the pandemic hit, and here they are students from 60 some countries literally bumping into each other in this massive group dance. And I can see the anxiety on some of their faces. Hell, it makes me feel a little uneasy, but this is the narrative that I'm putting together as I watch.
Other people might have completely different stories going on in their heads as they watch. So who's right? Are we all right? Are all of our stories correct? Even if they might contradict each other,
I'm watching the young people move around, bumping into each other. Some of them are clearly uncomfortable, and others like Jillian, a political science major at Quinnipiac are a little confused.
Student: Yeah, that was interesting. They told us to take off our shoes and they dancing and I didn't know what I was getting into,
David DesRoches: but other students are really into it jumping and moving and chatting with their whole bodies, and then others are just going through the motions.
It, it seems like I'm witnessing the entire spectrum of experiences in each of them. In the process is creating a broad spectrum of narratives, stories. They'll later tell their family and friends
caught up with the MCs afterward to talk about their event. Their English isn't that great. My Spanish is worse than their English, so the interview doesn't last that long. But from what I can gather, they, they simply wanted these students to connect with their senses, to feel the feeling of being alive, to be a little silly and have some fun.
And maybe that's the key, being silly and having fun. You know, I sometimes wonder if we took world leaders and forced them to do something really ridiculous or silly with each other. I wonder if that would connect them on this childlike level and prime them to be fairer as negotiators. You know, being childlike rather than childish, you know, and writing your own story while at the same time being able to merge your story with other people's stories and allow for new collective narratives to emerge.
Or at the very least, recognize that someone else's story is also true, even if it contradicts your own. So I guess you could say that's our story and I'm sticking to it, at least for now.
Thanks for listening to Dismantling the Divide, which is reported, produced, edited, and hosted by me, David DesRoches. The podcast is a production of the Quinnipiac University podcast studio in partnership with the Albert Schweitzer Institute. To learn more about this podcast, you can go to quinnipiac podcasts.com/dismantling the divide.
To learn more about the podcast studio at Quinnipiac, go to q u.edu/podcast. You can also find us on social media at QU podcasts. Up next, the power of art and music,
Dead Poet's Society: words and language, no matter what anybody tells you. Words and ideas can change the world,
Art speaker: and maybe you is that Art has saved my life on a regular basis. Yes.
TedTalker: Art has the power to inspire you. When art focuses on love, it connects people on deeper level and allows us to see humanity in. Regardless of their social
Dance speaker: background, Anne was already really interested in ideas about peace and using dance as a way to bridge different cultures together,
Ian McKellan: practice any art.
Music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpture, poetry, fiction, ss, reportage, no matter how well or badly not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming.
David DesRoches: This was the power of narrative. Stay with us.