What can we learn from storytelling?

I told the story behind this fragment of a guitar at a “show and tell” hosted by WEAVE. In a Zoom room of strangers, I recounted how I’d smashed a pink guitar on stage in front of over a thousand people at Cherry Blast, a massive event I produced several years ago with aerial dancers, music, site specific art installations, video projections, and interactive art jammed into a warehouse that eventually turned into a co-working space. Cherry Blast was an annual art party in its fifth year at that point and one of hundreds of art events of all sizes and shapes I’d been organizing for several years in every part of DC to showcase the arts and culture of our city. I was pretty burnt out at that point.

Smashing the guitar was my friend Bud’s idea. He liked destroying guitars in public ways for significant occasions, like a big birthday or maybe a divorce. He assured me this kind of destruction was highly cathartic and he wanted to share that experience with me. I hadn’t told him how overwhelmed I’d been feeling around that time. Maybe he sensed I needed to break something or that I was on the verge of breaking.

The guitar smash was exhilarating. The night before the event, Bud taught me how to strum a couple simple chords and we rehearsed rock star gestures, like playing the guitar placed behind my head, windmilling my arm, and taking a swig of bourbon from a flask. I felt comfortable in front of an audience but I wasn't comfortable performing. That is, until I walked on stage wearing sunglasses, a bright pink mini dress, and very tall shoes as people hooted and hollered. I felt powerful and transformed. After a few minutes of creating a cacophony of electric sound that reverberated through the rafters, with adrenaline coursing through my veins, I lifted the guitar high over my head and wallopped the stage over and over with all the force in my body. The instrument had a solid body, not hollow like an acoustic guitar, and didn’t obliterate easily in the way I’d seen rockers smash their guitars in videos I’d watched to prepare for the moment. The metal strings sliced my skin and by the time I was finally able to break it apart, my palms were a bloody mess and sweat trickled down my back. I exited stage left emotionally exhausted.

Bud filmed the smashing and I turned the video into an April Fool’s Day joke about how my years long foray into the DC art scene had actually been a performance art piece and that I’d be returning to law practice shortly after. Going back to lawyering was never an option, but I knew I needed to make a change, to evolve. A few months later, helped along by a catalytic cancer diagnosis later that year, my life took a new direction. I let go of the thing I had become known for, the thing that had become my identity, an arch organizer of all things arty in DC. Cancer had given me cover, but I floundered for a while, lost without an identity.

I had picked this object to show and tell because I thought it was a fun visual that screamed, “There’s gotta be a story behind that!” The guitar remnant was so much more than just a party souvenir, though. I keep it as a reminder to be unafraid of the discomfort that comes with shedding the familiar, to always challenge myself.

While I was telling that story to my new WEAVE friends, I started to realize I was at another inflection point in my life. My guitar smashing story ended somewhere I hadn’t expected -- with me pondering whether another major shift was about to take place in my life, once again in the midst of another health crisis.

Objects can help us formulate stories about ourselves, which forces introspection and highlights the things we value. Storytelling can open the door to deeper conversations, too. My fellow Weavers asked really meaningful followup questions, which helped me think more deeply about what this object had meant to me.

What’s an object you could show and tell a story about?