Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
Friday, March 11th, 2005[One of my best friends gives me grief when I make statements like this. Mostly comparing me to the comic book guy on The Simpsons. So be it.]
The best consistent storytelling in the US happens weekly on PRI’s This American Life (TAL). For the uninitiated TAL is an hour-long show about the stories of the daily lives of American’s. Sometimes they have fiction, but for the most part it is radio documentary. Each week they pick a theme and do a number of stories around the theme. Every week I laugh, or cry. Often times I do both.
It is a wonderful show because the stories that are told are so great because they contain truth about the lives we live. It is not they tell the truth about what happened. That is impossible because every person who tells a story has a point of view. (Don‘t believe me? Have a number of people from your family try and tell the same story. You can’t get to people who had a conversation with each other to recount the same story.)
The fact that documentary doesn’t tell the facts, as they happen, isn’t important. What is import (as with any story) is the truth that is in the story, the part of the story that resonates with us. I might not be able to relate to a shepherd in twelfth century Spain, but I do know what it is like to seek my own place in this world. That is the truth that resonates with me. One of the reasons that documentary (like TAM) works so well is because the stories that are being drawn upon are so rea,. There is real art in pulling that truth out of the mess of daily life to tell a good story. Sometimes it is easier to tell a story of fiction from a far off time because the teller is able to create all the piece. The art of documentary (film or radio) is the ability to cut away all the excess to find the story and the truth.
I just saw an amazing movie. It is called The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. It would be easy to say it is the story about a flock of parrots that live in the wild in San Francisco. It would be simple to say it is a story about a man who takes care of these birds. But it is really neither of these things. The story line is of the relationship between Mark and the 45 birds, but that is not the truth of the story.
I wish I could say what the truth of the story was, but there is so much truth running around inside the movie. It is a movie I am going to need to see a few more times to digest it all. At one moment you think Mark is “St. Francis of Telegraph Hill”. The next you are thinking he completely nuts. A moment later you think he is both.
There is this beautiful story of how he came to San Francisco from Seattle to become a musician. After giving up his dream of music, while looking for what he needs to be doing next, this relationship with the birds just finds him. Some how his calling just finds him. Something he would never dream for himself. Something he now can’t image living without.
At the same time there is so much truth about relationship. Mark comes to the point where he starts to see the relationships the birds have with each other. The relationships he is talking about could be human, not the animals he is talking about. If I would have seen this movie years ago I would have dismissed him as a wacky animal person who has lost grip with reality. Now, that is not the case.
It is amazing how the story of this gentle giant and 45 birds can be so simple, but so full of life. It isn’t a multi million dollar action film (or multi-million dollar Sideways), but instead the study of one life of passions.
It is truth. It is gospel. It is the story of us.