A Journey Across Time—From the Comfort of Your Home: A Sound & Stories Sneak Preview

by Charlotte Gutzmer

Stories and music have been with us throughout all of time; from oral folktales and traditional flute music to modern recreations of poetic forms and ambient synth music, art has evolved alongside us, always surprising us and delighting us with new experiences. On Thursday, May 6th, from 6:30-7:30pm, join the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild for a new Sound & Stories event, “Something Old, Something New.”

Writers and musicians from across western Wisconsin are coming together for the next installment of  the CVWG’s Sound & Stories. The virtual event will be available for free to stream at 6:30pm.

Click here to register for your free ticket today!

Hosted by B.J. Hollars and produced by Jonathan Rylander, settle in for a Pablo Streams event featuring stories from Andy Patrie, Selika Lawton, Mike Paulus, and Angela Hugunin, all accompanied and with original music from Peter Phippen and The Nunnery. And introducing musical guest Simone Patrie! With additional music support from James Igancio and Victoria Shoemaker. And visuals from Erik Elstran!

I had the pleasure of chatting with many of the artists and hearing about their inspiration and their relationships with and through time. They were also kind enough to share a few sneak preview lines from their stories, excerpted in italics below.  Read on to learn more about this exciting event, as well as the writers and musicians working together to bring the magic to you.

Andrew Patrie

“A compelling line from the piece I will be reading, one that proves some things do not change with time, comes from my daughter, who is transgender, following an incident on a school bus. After I share a story that happened to me on the school bus (always a bus!), she asks, ‘Why are people so obsessed with body parts?’ She waits a moment before adding, ‘Why are people so mean?’”

Andrew Patrie, a writer and a teacher, is the author of the collection of poems Half-Life and the book Nights, Grace. He’s also a prolific writer for Volume One, where he features articles on everything from dad jokes to introspective articles on music. The piece he’s reading for the event “is excerpted from a book length memoir I am in the process of revising, a writing project which has placed me squarely in the past for the last couple years I've been working on it in earnest.” His writing strikes a phenomenal balance between what we see as lament and what we celebrate; after all, Andrew reminds us, we “can’t get to these milestones without time, either.”  While his writing looks back towards the past, he “wouldn't say it's necessarily done through a lens of nostalgia. The past is often difficult to look at, but it can allow us to make some sense of the present... I get nostalgic like anybody else (my friends and family might say that's an understatement), but if time was a VCR, I've learned that, for as much as I'd like to press the pause button, it's healthier for the tape to let it play out.”

Angela Hugunin

“So it was that Grandpa, months after losing his beloved wife of sixty-six and a half years, bought a Slingshot.”

Angela Hugunin is a senior at UW-Eau Claire majoring in Creative Writing and French. Angela is “drawn to connections: connections between people, between people and places, and between themes that may look at first glance like they’re unrelated... I’m curious about what’s going on under the surface and about what meaning can be found if we examine our experiences closely. Even the most seemingly mundane moments can hold immense meaning!” Some of Angela’s publications include her poem “Heal” in the Spring 2018 edition of NOTA, her essay “Here, We Do Dignity” in the November 2020 edition of Barstow & Grand, and even a variety of French poetry published in the French magazine D’ailleurs. For her, “writing is a wonderful vessel for exploring time. Playing with time—or at least, sifting through it—in writing allows me to process things, to look for commonalities and differences between experiences or themes, and to give the creative work more depth. In my piece for Sound and Stories, time is a prominent force. Moving through it gives me space to reflect on my current relationship with my grandfather, but in looking backward, I also find powerful truths about who he is and who I am. I get to look at who we’re becoming, too. I find that moving through time in my writing can allow powerful truths to emerge. Time can be a challenging force to pin down, but I’m learning that I don’t necessarily need to wrestle it to the ground or try to figure it out; instead, I can observe it and learn from it.”

Dr. Selika Lawton

“Everyone thinks that where they live, is the best place, the coolest place. When I came to Wisconsin. My students in Eau Claire were eager to tell me that Eau Claire was the New Orleans of the North. I did not exactly believe them…”

Dr. Selika Ducksworth Lawton is currently a Professor of history at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Dr. Ducksworth-Lawton is a specialist in Twentieth-Century African American Military, National Security, and Civil Rights History. She works in the intersection of race, national security, civil rights, and protest. Her book, Honorable Men: Armed Self Defense and the Deacons for Defense and Justice, is under contract with University Press of Mississippi and expected in press early next year. Honorable Men describes how African Americans veterans in the Deacons for Defense and Justice combined their military service knowledge with an African American vision of republicanism and citizenship to create a militia in Louisiana that successfully fought the Klan in the 1965-8 activists and protects white and African American Congress of Racial Equality activists. Dr. Ducksworth Lawton is the co-author of Minority and Gender Differences in Officer Career Progression. She is working on a new book on the impact of culture and geography on the activists’ choices between non-violence and armed self-defense in several states in 1964-1967. She earned her PhD in 1994 from Ohio State University in 20th Century military and African American History.

Mike Paulus

The heat lightning was sorcery to us. Some kind of rare devilry quietly bursting across the midnight horizon, raving over the dark, distant pine trees…

Mike Paulus is the Digital Services & Marketing Specialist for the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library here in Eau Claire. He’s worked in local publishing for over two decades, including 14 years as an editor with Volume One, where his “Rear End” column has appeared since 2004. He’s the co-creator and former host of Volume One’s “Let’s Be Honest” grownup storytelling night, and co-produced Volume One’s 2018 stage show True North. He’s a past contributor to Wisconsin Public Radio’s Wisconsin Life program, and he’s hosted multiple cat shows.

Peter Phippen

Peter Phippen is a Grammy Award Nominee, International Acoustic Music Awards Nominee, One World Music Awards Nominee, multiple Native American Music Awards Nominee and a 2021 Native American Style Flute Awards Lifetime Achievement Awards Winner. Phippen is a performing and recording artist specializing in traditional flutes from around the world. Over the past three decades Phippen has researched the history and performance technique of flutes both ancient and modern. In his approach to world flute performance, he is an experiential, natural folk musician with a penchant for creative and artistic musical improvisation. Phippen offers a captivating collage of sound images, covering the folklore and history of flutes from around the world and throughout time. Phippen performs an enchanting mix of the very old and very new in music. He has shared the stage with R. Carlos Nakai, Coyote Oldman, Xavier Quijas Yxayotl, and many more. As a recording artist, Phippen has recorded for Curb Records, Canyon Records, and Promotion Music Records. Phippen's flute playing has also appeared on Lifescapes, Sounds True, and Heart Dance Records.  For more visit: https://www.peterphippen.com/

The Nunnery

The Nunnery is a solo act featuring Sarah Elstran, a Minneapolis-based musician who uses the art of the loop pedal to explore a world of peaceful and ambient sound. By layering voices and instrumentals upon themselves, Elstran creates a lush atmosphere inspired by the spaces and stories around her. Listening to The Nunnery is an experience that inspires healing, emotional understanding, and meditative contemplation. Elstran’s new single “Whirlpool Ride” is available to stream on Spotify, Youtube, iTunes, and Bandcamp.

So dig out those sepia-toned photos and prepare to view them in Technicolor! Dust off the heirloom and discover the story within! Tilt an ear toward the past, fix your eyes on the future—let’s see what magic awaits in the in-between!

"Nobody Cares What You Think": A Q&A with this Month's Craft Talk Presenter, Mike Paulus

On January 17 at 7:00PM at the Pablo Center at the Confluence, Mike Paulus—writer, editor, and True North co-producer—will present the much anticipated craft talk “Nobody Cares What You Think (And Other Lessons Learned From Over a Decade of Column Writing.”  Snag your FREE ticket here.  (Note: To keep our costs low, please only snag a ticket if you intend to come!).

Mike began his column writing career in July of 2004 when he agreed to fill the back page of every issue of Volume One. (Two years later, he would accept an editorial position at the Eau Claire-based magazine.) Over the years he’s crafted over 350 columns for the publication, clocking in a quarter million words worth of columns (give or take 30,000 words).  His work has also been featured on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Wisconsin Life and Central Time. During his craft talk, he’ll chat about how his style, skills, and attitude have evolved over the years, as well as offer practical tips for the most important writerly lesson of all: how to start with a blank page and deliver something week after week.  We recently chatted with Mike, who provided insight on a range of issues—everything from how to keep the writing fresh to the column he’s most proud of!

 Read on!  And see you on January 17!

 BJ Hollars: How do you keep a column fresh?  At some point, does it become difficult to crank out an original column every two weeks?

Mike Paulus: Yeah, over the years, looking back, I can see long dry spells where it was really hard to come up with ideas I was excited about. But I think that has everything to do with where your head's at and how you're doing emotionally. There are always ideas to be found, mostly by digging into the small parts of your life, the parts you don't analyze very often. But at the end of the day, I don't have a choice – I have to produce something, whether it's "fresh" or not. And I think that's where the best writing lessons have come from. I don't have a choice not to learn about writing. I have to write. And when you write you learn. 

I've never thought to myself, "how can I keep this thing new and exciting." Maybe I should. But for me it's always come down to each idea, one at a time. And I always remind myself that a dumb idea can be a good column if you write about it well enough. At that point, you're just putting writing skills to the test.

BH: Without giving too much away, do columns follow a general format?

MP: Yes, a lot of my columns have a basic formula, or basic formulas. There's an order to things that fits my voice. If everything goes well – you find an idea you're excited about, your head's in the right place, etc. – you can go from zero to a finished column in a few hours or less. And part of that speed is having these basic structures to fall back on. They develop over years. Don't get me wrong, my columns are ALWAYS better when written over the course of a few days, multiple drafts, all that. But in reality, I don't always have time for that any more. 

BH: Has your column voice changed over the years?  If so, how?

MP: Oh, yeah. That'll be a big part of my upcoming Craft Talk. I developed a certain writing voice years and years ago writing these reminder emails for the poetry slam I ran with my wife. We had an email list and a Hotmail account and a few times a month I'd try to be funny with this little audience, through these emails. I tried to be funny and entertaining when I hosted the poetry slams, live on stage, but these emails let us say things that don't work when spoken out loud. I guess that's where my writing voice started. Then I started the column, and for a bunch of years I kept developing that voice. Eventually I got pretty bored with the whole thing and my columns became a real chore. And that was all about the voice, not the topics I was writing about. So I shifted things. And I'll be talking about that shift at the Craft Talk. 

 BH: Has your column changed in subject matter as your own interests have evolved?

MP: Oh, big time. I used to work in a lot of commentary on specific local happenings. Cultural stuff. City stuff. But that was never my real forte. Hopefully, as you grow older, you keep finding new things to get excited about, and that informs what you write about, of course. But the biggest changes stemmed from a growing confidence in what I'm actually good at writing about – a confidence in turning inward. 

 BH: What's the most unexpected column you've ever written?  

MP: All the best columns, my very favorite ones, just showed up out of nowhere. Writers talk about how "it all just poured out of my head." Well, that really happens – and it's the best feeling. If you have some writing skills in place and a solid voice so you're ready to capture a gush of ideas ... well, it's like nailing your target from 5 miles away. It still takes some hard work, but it's just different, more exciting. The problem is, we intentionally try to repeat that magic. And the harder you try, the bigger mess of it you make, and you end up feeling like crap. So it's a numbers game. The more you write, the more it happens. That's it.

 But you didn't ask about that. One time I started writing about pajama pants and ended up writing about our tiny place in this cold, black, vast, unfeeling universe. That was unexpected. I promise I'll talk about that column at the Craft Talk.

BH: What's the column you're most proud of?

MP: I wrote a column about the weird light you see at night in the wintertime, here in the city. Staring out your windows at night. I feel like that was a culmination of where I was at, at the time. Emotionally. And I was exploring things people like my wife had taught me to see over the years, realizing this is a shared experience, this weird light. Shared by the people of the Midwest. And I didn't feel the pressure to be funny or make jokes about it. 

And like most of my columns, as soon as it was published, I found a hundred things to change about it. 

BH: Spoken like a true writer!

Click here to listen to the most recent version of “Dark Winter Light” which appeared on Wisconsin Life in January 2017.