The Moth

When you hear the words “The Moth,” you don’t automatically think “nonprofit dedicated to the art of storytelling.” Or maybe those of us who still live in the dark don’t. According to the organization’s website, The Moth events are often standing room only. After witnessing how packed Royce Hall was on a Thursday night, and judging by the enthusiastic applause, they’re not joking.

But why would you name your organization after a bug? As I sat in Royce Hall waiting to be entranced by live storytelling, I couldn’t get this question out of my head. What was the significance of The Moth? The enlarged graphic of the creature adorning the T-shirts being sold in the lobby loomed in my brain. Unable to stand the suspense any longer, I whipped out my iPhone and googled the organization. So here it is: George Dawes Green, the founder of The Moth, was a native Georgian, and on humid summer nights, he and his friends would get together on his friend’s porch and share stories. Attracted to the light, moths would get through the holes in the porch screen. Thus, the storytellers started calling themselves The Moths.

I have to be honest: when I read that explanation I was a little let down, as it’s not the most romantic of origin tales. As a former UCLA English Major, I like symbols to have more profound meaning, to be more “symbolic” (if you will) of something larger. But as I started thinking more about the moth as a symbol for the organization, it increasingly seemed apparent to me that the symbol has taken on a larger meaning than its initial adoption suggests. [I feel I must apologize in advance for the following paragraph. My brain started thinking I was in college again and got a little carried away.]

The moth, much like its cousin the butterfly, starts life as a caterpillar, before emerging fully formed from its cocoon. Live storytelling is a lot like that process: the storyteller is transformed by sharing, in real time and without notes, a tale of personal experience. With each word spoken, the raconteur breaks free from the cocoon of isolated experience and turns it into a shared, immediate experience with all of the listeners. What makes the moth an apt metaphor (rather than the butterfly) is that when it emerges from its cocoon, its colors are muted—ordinary. Its transformation is not flashy. So too the storyteller’s; shared human experience is not a tangible product, but it is no less meaningful, and the storyteller is still an ordinary person when he or she walks off the stage.

Oftentimes, though, ordinary people can do extraordinary things. Kodi Azari, a hand surgeon, talked about how he helped pioneer the field of hand transplantation. After having completed the first hand transplantation surgery ever, Dr. Azari explained how he and the rest of his surgical team sobbed in the hospital room of a U.S. soldier, who had lost his hand overseas, as he slowly wiggled the fingers on his new hand.

During Jennie Allen’s story, about how she dealt with the effects of losing her hair from chemotherapy, she recounts how she felt when she lost her eyebrows too. She felt naked, because “my hair was part of my head, but my eyebrows were part of my face.” It’s an immensely enjoyable moment when a storyteller utters a simply worded statement that speaks volumes.

Jerry Stahl’s story was less uplifting than the previous two stories, chronicling his life as a drug addict, but with a dark humor that had the audience laughing out loud. (With the exception of one moment: wanting to avoid his landlady in order to score more drugs, he drove right past her frantic waving. Later, he found out that her husband had had a heart attack and she had been signaling for help. Her husband later died. Apparently, we Californians were too polite to laugh at the situation.)

Rounding out the storytellers were Brian Finkelstein, who chronicled his fateful last night as a volunteer for a suicide hotline, and Annie Duke, who spoke about her emotional journey as a professional poker player.

The Moth’s goal is to put on three live events a year in L.A. Rudy Rush, the host for the evening and entertaining in his own right, also promoted the nonprofit’s poetry slams. After having enjoyed one evening of live storytelling, I’m looking forward to the next live event The Moth puts on.