Welcome to Easy Stories in English, the podcast that will take your English from OK to
good and from good to great. I am Ariel Goodbody, your host for this show.
Today's episode is a conversation about performing and coming back to God. Quite a range, huh?
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So recently I've been doing lots of performing. I mentioned in a previous episode that I performed
at a sauna. I did queer tales for queer folks which was a night of improvised storytelling
in a sauna in... Well, Royal Victoria docks, but if you've never been to London, you probably
don't know where Royal Victoria docks are. And honestly, even if you have been to London
or even live in London, you may well not know where Royal Victoria docks are. It's a kind
of a strange part of London. If you've seen London on a map, you'll know that the river
Thames flows through it and it's quite straight in the centre, but then there's a part where
it gets very wiggly. It makes these little kind of curves and loops. And Royal Victoria
docks is inside one of those curves. It's in the wiggly bit. It's also right next to
the cable cars. So cable cars, I guess you could call it a form of transport. It's not particularly
efficient though. Basically, you go in a little cabin, a little vehicle and you are carried
in the air over the river. And to be honest, it's mainly a tourist attraction when they
built the cable cars. They tried to pretend that people would use it to commute to work
every day, but actually very few people use it now. So they're desperately trying to get
anyone to go on the cable cars. I have been on them and it was only when we got into the
air that I remembered I'm afraid of heights. So was it a fun experience? Not entirely sure.
But the sauna storytelling was really lovely. It was quite small the first time. I'm actually
going to do it again on the 29th. So when you listen to this, that will be a few days afterwards.
It's on Good Friday. If you don't know, Good Friday is part of Easter. It's two days
before Easter Sunday. And I'm looking forward to it again. I think it will be really nice.
It's very different to do storytelling and performance in a sauna. Obviously, I have
to think of a lot of factors. I have to make sure that I don't make the stories too long
so that people can take breaks and cool off outside. Some stories feel more appropriate
than other stories because of the sauna nature. And generally, it's a very relaxed experience,
which is nice because normally when I perform, I'm very high energy. So it's nice to have
a change of pace. So yeah, I do improvised storytelling because that's what I'm kind
of used to from teaching. Right now, I'm okay with that. I'm also getting into different
kinds of performance though. So I also performed at Tales at the Taven. Taven is kind of an
old fashioned word for a pub or an inn. Tales at the Taven is an open mic night for storytellers.
So an open mic night, mic is short for microphone. An open mic night is basically an evening at
a pub. Traditionally, it's for music where anyone can come and perform. So you sign up,
you get on stage, you maybe have 10 minutes to perform. And then sometimes there's a prize
for whoever's best. It's a great way for new artists for people who don't have so much
experience to get performing experience and just to have some fun. And maybe win a bit of
money. But obviously this open mic is quite unusual because it's for storytellers. And
it's really lovely because the storytelling community in London is quite small. It's
quite a niche form of performance, but they're really lovely, really friendly welcoming people.
So I performed at Tales at the Taven in February and I did some more improvised storytelling.
And I'm hoping to perform again this month, which will be the day after this episode comes
out, except I need to email to actually see if they have any places left still. So please
cross your fingers for me. I've just been very lazy. And this time I'm actually planning
on performing a story I've done already. So you may remember an episode of the podcast
called The Path of Pins and Needles. I took that story and I rehearsed it a lot. And I
actually already performed it at the London Esperanto Club. If you don't know Esperanto
is a constructed language that was made in the 19th century by a Polish eye doctor designed
to be the international language. There's actually a whole episode of the podcast about
that history, which is the boy who hoped. I think it's easy stories in English.com slash
hope. So the London Esperanto Club is a very different performance space because it's
a lot of old people, Esperantists. A lot of them are quite old generally, especially in
the smaller local clubs. And it wasn't people who were maybe so used to that kind of traditional
storytelling. It was also challenging because obviously I had to translate the story into
Esperanto and rehearse it in Esperanto. And I'm good at Esperanto, but it's not my native
language. So there was an extra element of challenge there. But I really enjoyed performing
the story. I'm really happy with how it went. If you follow me on Instagram, you probably
will have seen some pictures of that. And I'm probably going to perform the same story
at this open mic night, Tales of the Tavern. I also got, I've been doing so much. I also
helped out a bit at Torkioki. So Torkioki, that is a portmanto. So a portmanto is when
you put two words together into one word. For example, the countries Belgium, the Netherlands
and Luxembourg are sometimes referred to as Benelux. So Benelux is a portmanto of the
three names of those countries. And Torkioki is a portmanto of the words Tork and karaoke
as in singing when you're very drunk, singing very badly. And everyone's too drunk to
care, fortunately. That's what karaoke is generally. So Torkioki is something that an
organization called The People Speak does. It's a community-based organization in London.
My friend works there. Hi Margot, if you happen to be listening to this. And Torkioki
is kind of like a talk show, but for the public and for communities. So they often do it
at festivals. They have a circular table. And in the middle of the table sits the moderator.
And they have a microphone. Everyone else sits around the table. And the moderator guides
the conversation topics. And everyone just kind of gives their opinions. So it's like that
kind of talk show you would see on TV, but anyone can get involved. And the topics, they
change a lot because people just talk about whatever they want. But it's really interesting.
It's really fun. And I think it's a great way to have discussions across age boundaries
and class boundaries and people from different walks of life, people from different backgrounds.
It's basically just a great way to have discussions in a very open context where normally maybe
these people wouldn't be talking about these things together. So I went to Torkioki a few
weeks ago. And I actually had a go at moderating. Again, if you follow me on Instagram, you
might have seen the picture of that. So I had little headsets and I have my microphone
and I looked like a news reporter or something. But it was actually really stressful being
a moderator because I'm used to being a teacher, right? And when I'm teaching, I talk slowly.
I listen very carefully to my students. And I make sure they know that I'm listening. I
try to let them say everything they need to. Sometimes you have students who talk a lot
and you have to kind of cut them off. You have to interrupt them so that they don't take
over the whole class. But that's usually not a problem. But when you're moderating, you
have to keep the flow going. So you have to kind of literally be looking around you 360
degrees, seeing if other people want to say something, making sure people don't talk for
too long, asking different people, it's a very difficult role. So that was really interesting
to try. The other place I've been performing, I don't know if you could really call this
performing, is my church choir. So this year I started going to church regularly to a
Christian church, specifically an Anglican church, and I joined the choir. I haven't been
in a choir for about 17 years. But I love singing. And I'm so glad I joined. My experience has
been pretty evenly divided between really enjoying the singing, singing with other people.
It just gives you so much joy and I love singing in the mass and just hearing all of our voices,
harmonising together. It's a wonderful feeling. It's really very good for your health, I think.
There's a lot of research about the benefits of singing with people. So that's like 50%
of my experience. And then the other 50% of my experience has been frustration mainly
at myself because I played the saxophone years ago. And so I know some stuff about music theory
and reading music, but it's been such a long time and it's a different instrument. So I've
forgotten a lot of it. And so I'm having to learn and re-learn lots of things about reading
music and doing harmonies and it's frustrating. I really want to be better at it. Which is good.
I'm very motivated. So I think I might start singing lessons if I kind of fought it.
I've really wanted to take singing more seriously for years, but I never was really sure what
my voice was. Like I was singing types of music and I was singing in keys that just weren't right
for my voice. I was trying to sing like a pop star like oh yeah, that kind of stuff. But what I've
realized is I have a deep voice. Shockingly, I discovered at the age of 30 that I actually have
quite a deep voice. Who would have thought? So I realized actually I should sing with a
lower and kind of bassier voice. And especially with church singing, you can go really kind of
open and wide and deep. So now I'm more like this. You know, like more operatic. I guess, but obviously
we're singing in a church. So it's more kind of church hymns. Anyway, so on the note of the church choir,
I've been connecting with religion quite deeply. You know, since the beginning of this year,
I would say, well, it's been a long slow journey. So I was raised Catholic, Roman Catholic,
which is not the most common denomination. It's not the most common type of Christianity in the UK.
Unsurprisingly, the most common denomination of Christianity in the UK is Anglicanism or the
Church of England. If you don't know the history, basically, we had a king called Henry VIII
who had six wives. And he was only able to have six wives because he divorced two of them.
So actually, we have a rhyme that we say to remember what happened to the six wives of Henry VIII.
We say, divorced beheaded died, divorced beheaded survived, which means he divorced his first wife.
He beheaded his second wife. That means he had her head chopped off. His third wife died.
He divorced his fourth wife. He beheaded his fifth wife and his sixth wife outlived him.
He died before her. So, divorced beheaded died, divorced beheaded survived. But the Catholic Church
generally doesn't allow divorce. He wanted to divorce his first wife because he needed a son
and she couldn't give him a son. So he tried to get an annulment, which is basically when the
Church allows you to separate from your husband or wife because maybe they've cheated on you or
they've done something very bad. But the Pope, the head of the Catholic Church, wouldn't allow this.
Long story short, Henry VIII created his own form of Christianity, i.e. the Church of England.
That's a very simple history. But anyway, the Church of England is the biggest church in the UK.
But I was raised Catholic and if you know anything about Catholicism, you know it's quite a
serious form of Christianity. Catholics are not known for being very fun.
And I went to Catholic school and let me tell you, they were pretty serious about some things.
My Catholic school was actually quite relaxed and liberal, but are a lot of Catholic schools
and Catholic churches are not. So I became an atheist. I stopped believing in God when I was about
13. Basically because I realized I was gay and I didn't feel like I could be gay and Catholic.
At the time I really thought I was being very rational and it was all about, you know,
believing in God doesn't make sense rationally blah blah blah blah blah. And so I chose to be an
atheist. But looking back, I think it was more about this crisis of sexuality I had. Because
if I was straight, I don't know if I would have left the church. It's an interesting question.
So anyway, since I was 13 for a long time, I was atheist, but I definitely felt at certain points
in my life a lack. I felt this spiritual whole that I needed to fill. And a few years ago,
I had this big health crisis and I had to take a break from the podcast. And I just felt so
sad and alone and weak that I needed God. Like I needed someone I could rely on who I knew
loved me unconditionally. And you know, God ticks all those boxes. God is all those things. So
I kind of came back to God. It also helped that by that point, I knew other LGBT Christians.
I realized that I could practice Christianity without being part of the Catholic church or even,
you know, the church generally. And I began to build a personal relationship with God again.
And then this year, I started going to a church called St. John's in Waterloo. And they are,
oh, they're amazing. It's honestly the best church I've ever been to. So it's an Anglican
church. They're very welcoming of LGBT people. They are very diverse. Generally, they get involved
with politics when it comes to fighting like racism and climate change. Generally, it's just such
a wonderful accepting place. So really going to St. John's joining the choir, having this regular
contact with God has just really given me the sense of comfort and safety and deepened my
connection with God. I've been doing a lot of praying and studying the Bible. And I've finally
got to that point where I pray in a very intuitive way. Like sometimes I'm like, oh, I'm just going
to like close my eyes and speak to God basically. And I don't overthink it. It's not some like
ritual thing where I do it at the same time every day. It's very spontaneous and yeah, it feels
powerful. And I really do think it's changing my life because I do get very stressed with work
sometimes and with the world generally. And I've had moments recently where I've really broken down
and lost hope. And in the past, I would have sat with that feeling of despair and sadness for
several days, maybe a week. But now I'm really able to turn to God and just release all of those
feelings and submit to that higher power to both thank God for what God has given me to thank God
for sending me these challenges because I truly believe that God would not send me challenges
that I am unable to overcome. But also praying and asking for strength and to see the reason
behind all these things. I'm aware that this very spiritual language may not resonate with all of
you. It may not be something that all of you recognize, understand or like. If you're an atheist,
you might hate what I'm saying. But statistically, there are more religious people in the world than
non-religious. I think also recently I've really begun to understand, well, I've been studying
a lot more of the history of Christianity and the Bible and really learning a lot about, well,
the historical links between Christianity and Judaism because until about 300 AD, most Christians
were Jewish and Jesus was Jewish and all of the Old Testament is essentially Jewish texts. So
I think it's really important to recognize that Christianity has been used to oppress Jewish people.
It's been used against Jewish people in recent history, but that ultimately these religions
have so much in common and they have a strong shared foundation. I know there's also a lot that
shared with Islam. I don't know as much about this, but like the other day, I was reading about
the understanding of Jesus within Islam that Jesus is considered to be a great prophet, but that just,
you know, he wasn't the son of God, but he was a great prophet. And I find that really interesting.
So I'm becoming a bit of a religion nerd. I've been watching loads in those of YouTube videos
about like Bible history and things like that. Ooh, it feels weird to be talking about this stuff
because I think for people my age, it's quite unusual to be very religious, especially if you're queer,
especially if you're LGBT, but I'm meeting more and more LGBT Christians. My church does open
table, which is a mass for LGBT Christians once a month. And that's really cool. This is not
what I expected from moving to London. I expected a lot of things. I expected artistic opportunities,
and that's definitely happened since I moved, but I wasn't expecting to develop my spiritual
life in this way, but it feels good. It feels correct. I think we live in such a cynical world.
Right now. So cynicism is when people don't want to see the positive in anything. They just
want to focus on the negative. And cynicism makes it very hard to enjoy things genuinely with an
open heart. I really struggle with how cynical our world is, especially I think if you spend a
lot of time online on social media, it makes you very cynical. And religion is kind of the opposite
of that. Right? Like you have to be very earnest, very open-hearted and anti-synical to really
deeply engage with any religion. And I like that because I feel like it brings me closer to myself,
closer to God, and closer to the people around me. Okay, I think I'll stop there because
I've already committed enough of violence against my voice so far. I have had a cold for about almost
three weeks. It's really annoying me, but there you go. That's life. Anyway, if you want to say anything
about what I've talked about in this podcast, if you have any comments or questions or just anything,
do send me an email at aerial at easystoriesinenglish.com. Unfortunately, I realized that I had a problem with
my email program where it was just deleting a lot of emails people sent to this address. So I fix
the problem. If you sent me an email within the last month, it's possible it got deleted and I
couldn't save it, but I think I managed to save all the messages that got deleted. So if you
emailed me and you didn't hear anything, please do email me again and I will reply to you.
Thanks for listening to today's episode and supporting my work. I really appreciate all of you.
You are just wonderful. I'm not going to advertise anything today. I just wanted to say thank you.
And remember, language learning is a marathon, not a sprint. As in the story of the tortoise and the
hare, slow and steady wins the race. Chill out, relax and listen to this podcast. See you soon.
