Welcome to the moth podcast. I'm your host Dan Kennedy, it's two thousand nineteen and its undeniable just how attached we are to technology how integral it is to our lives. Sure there are tight I'll actually. Literally making sure my phone is turned off, so we can record this and you can listen to it on your phone. There are definitely times we take those little breaks, those sort of did but all detox periods from social media or we put away messages on our email. Can go off and be one with nature, but even then we use google maps to get to our camp around or we download a meditation app to unwind while we're on that trip, but this week we're talking about the times when techno are, we really isn't. The answer are too

stories this week are actually from the same story. Slam here in new york city, fittingly, themed technology up. First jill bergman, here's jill live at the moth. This story takes place in nineteen. Ninety nine. At the time I had just turned thirty, and for my thirtieth birthday I decided to venture into the world of music and my past experience with music was a lessons for piano. When I was about seven and I read the music backwards for a week and the second venture into music. As in middle school. I took a clarinet back and forth to school for about a month too afraid to tell my parents, I didn't know where ban practice was so authority. I really had no experience with music and I thought I'd go for some real, easy

and went with an instrument that would make me happy and the one thing that I thought always made me happy was the banjo. So I got boy easy instrument, tolerance, not the best choice for someone who has no rid them at all and so I got the banjo, I'm gettin lessons and the short term me. Biometric known technology, metro, so I don't buy By the little because I really technology. I buy the one with all the bills and whistles and it's got. You know it's got the little rhythm, because b, b, b, b, b b, because all the different things, but it for me being very new into the music world. I had it sat very low and it's got the big red flashing lights or china b b b and I'm trying strung along with it

and I am working really hard at this in and counting before, has never been so hard in my entire life, and I have a business trip paired with a business conference and I'm gonna be gone for a buck, three weeks, and I decide that I'm going to take my banjo with me benjamin. I have a talk. We say: let's go on the trip together and we get on the airplane. We go. I practice very quietly in my hotel room. I have a pretty good trip. I have a pretty good conference, I'm very pleased myself for sticking with music and now I'm traveling home and I get on the plane, and it is the big jumbo jet that seats two five two,

first class upstairs and I'm way in the back and there's no room to put the banjo, and so a flight attendant ass if she can put it up in first class and torn, and I finally give her my banjo and goes up and a first class, and it disappears now at this point in the story which you need to know is my banjo cases, soft, it's very thin nylon and my metro, NOME is in the case and my mentor nome still has the reason it. What you also need to know is that after flight attendant number one put banjo and said closet flight attendant number to put something else in said: closet and flight attendant number three open said closet to the metro going. the so as this big John

both plane is nearly loaded with. Remember, first class upstairs downstairs huge plane. They start making announcements, everybody to get off the plane and the flight attendants are coming from the back in this military army yelling at everybody off the plane off point off the plane. Leave your bag leave your bags there, not letting anybody they're pulling bags out of people's hands they're getting your, Everybody gets off the plane in there all kind of mumbling and finally a start seeing you know, police car show up with lights and and another knows what's going on, whereby the big glass window they're telling us please stand back from the windows, and then, the police cars go away and they come and they say we're all getting back on the plane. It was a metronome musical instrument case and my heart just saying they have to retake it everybody and it takes a long time. So when I back I animal forms was telling

buddy, I'm starting to sweat profusely and the flight attendant. Who remembered me and remembered the banjo of course pulled me aside into the little galley, and she says, don't tell She's, a people going to get real upset just sit down, it's gonna be ok So I sit in my seat and I'm like on the edge and I'm sitting next to a family of five like mom and dad, and I got like the babies and everything and they're looking at me. They're, like we were a little scared and I'm like you, don't know how scared I am and- and we take off we're going back to where we're going and I'm flying thinkin they're gonna pressed me on the other, and I just know it or are they going to find me and I'm so in debt because of banjo lessons and you have no money left and I'm like. Maybe I can sell a kidney. Maybe I could donate my exempting in all the different ways. I could raise money to pay

they're going to arrest me on the other end, but we land and nothing happens, and everyone gets off the plane and nothing happens, and I let everybody go off the plane and I still have to go get my banjo, which is up in first class. So I go to get it and all the pilots and flight parents are waiting with the banjo sitting in this and I start crying and I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I apologize to everybody and- and I get my banjo, but that's not quit the end of the story because now go get my luggage, along with the five hundred other people who know a musical instrument, that's never mind that has delayed them two hours so see my luggage going around and around and from a couple of miles away, and I swooping at the last minute. I get it and I am sitting and waiting for my at taxi road. The the Van shuttle ride to come up and a man sits next to me he was like. Were you on the flight to Denver? We had a delay with a musical

comment, and I said I don't know I just learn from why jill Bergmann is an architect and story. Teller- believes that short well run. Meetings are a thing of beauty and she has a tiny magic door cut into her home. Tat is probably the best sentence I've ever read in a moth, storyteller bio. She also wants it now that she one third place at this story. Slam thanks for sharing your story with us jill up. Next, we have ably baker. From the same

story, slam that night in new york and just a quick clarification before we jump in early baker, was working as a baker before this story took place which you'll hear becomes a crucial part of her story. So here's ably live at the mall. It's five o clock in the morning and the sun is just coming over the horizon and I'm sailing assailing canoe intimate the pacific a hundred miles from land. Three years ago I was doing field workin the micronesia. When I meant ceasar yo one of the last traditional navigators in all of the pacific ceasar, you doesn't use a gps, he doesn't use compass, he doesn't use maps humans, the stars and the rising sun and the wind and the birds, young boy, his island or police and type pools at a young age, so that they can begin to feel the patterns of water and wind on their bodies. Some people say that they have the power to call whales to their boat, to guide them to their destiny.

and when it's a moonless night they can actually call the thunder and enlightening so that they can see the sea. This is our you invite me on this trip and there's just one night when the sky is completely covered in full, and he steering the bone only he's not actually facing forward. You spacing backward and sailing with only a handful of stars and sky into the mist too. He's leader after twelve days at sea we arrive. in ireland the size of this building Being a ceiling, canoe is kind of like being on a raft and camping in the middle. The open ocean, every person has a bunk and every person has a hammock your six year, six hours on and six hours off, but there's us Let me know: shooting you from the elements when it's real you're soaked in your freezing and when its high you're completely burning for me most of the time. I was also ready to throw up

but this area was teaching us so much in the morning. He teaches us how to read the clouds that we can tell the weather and ninety showing us the storm clouds. One afternoon he tells us the reason that the storm- the waves are so high at this time of year, so that they can rise up and clean the beach so that the turtles can go up and lay eggs. When there's this warm he's out there blowing the conscious that he can break up the thunderclouds there's this one night. There were, and it's raining and we actually have a sales down because it so windy and we're just trying to keep under this talk to stay warm or putting cocoanut going on ourselves, and I turned to my friend when we realised that we both worked at bakeries at one point in our life. I'm at this point. That is most exciting thing and we think when we finally get to land, we are going to bake bread and we decided we could we're gonna, make it but we need to look up our recipe on the internet because we don't know it by heart and societal over.

Here's us and he gets so angry. He says why are you so lazy? What happens if you lose the recipe? What happens if your computer dies? Can you big bread? Then you have to learn it to know it, and suddenly, I am blown open, I feel utterly helpless and I realise that the main difference between me and so sorry, it's a bizarre whose all issues information within him and I hold it outside of myself. There is absolutely nothing between ceasar you in the stars in the wind and the way, he holds it within him, whereas with me, if and without my journal or my iphone, I am utterly lost. So sorry It will never be lost and I realized, if I facing encounter of ingredients even me who worked three summers and a bakery waking. Ninety five loaves of bread a day. I will never be able to make something resembling bread and so finally, the night comes I'm going to tell us this area, my star points and I'm feeling really jazz time sealing. The

The paddle in moving forward and all of a sudden I looked down and water is rushing into the bank and I realize their boat is about to sink and law so quickly it so surreal. The sales are down people who are you to bail frantically using anything they can get. The bonus with water and we're tipping an officer in the left side of the boat is underwater and things are floating away, are of an iron ore pots and pans my sleeping bag. Everything is just drifting away and I'm scrambling to find my jacket to give to people and I fall in my leg is bleeding and all of a sudden I freeze, because all I can think of is the satellite phone? It's in the captain's box- and I know that is cheating- and I know that is going gets everything. Society was taught me, and I know that Who does I call that phone, I'm bringing my world or technology rushing into this wonderful world that we ve created, but I can't

myself Cesario, are you going to call someone and he stops bailing, and he looks up to me on the high side of the canoe and he doesn't say anything and I feel horrible. I know that this has been my test and I just felt the sun is rising and he climbs up to the top of the canoe and for the very first time in my life, he gives me a hug- and I don't know at first whether it's a hug that he wants to give her a child or someone out of pity. But he turns me and he says, a lie. Everything is going to be: okay, keep an open mind and a clear head, and everything will be fine and in that moment

I don't know that we are going to be picked up in six hours by cargo ship and I don't know that by midnight we're going to be back on dry land, but I do know it's a saga does not judge me. In fact, I think he knows as well as I do that I will never be able to sail on a boat in the middle of the fog and find my way, but I think he also knows that when I get back to new york, I am going to keep an open mind and I will try as hard as I can to walk down a busy street and know which way is north to be able to bake bread and for god's sake, to look out for my iphone and know that the stars are more than just points of light. That was ably baker and it seems only is living out her promise to be less reliant on technology. We reached out to her to follow on the story- are email bounced back because of a fool.

inbox. And then we tried to contact daily through facebook. We found a public status saying that she was taking a break from social media but sent her love to friends and family. We did. And they get in touch with early through a mutual friend in the moth family. Only told us that after the shipwreck, the community and micronesia rebuilt the canoe and they ve been sailing never since she said that in twenty twenty master navigator ceasar area will attempt the long journey across the pacific ocean once more to learn more about that coming journey, just check out our website, the moth dot org. So I feel like there's always a lesson to be learned from moth storytellers and I'm not necessarily saying that we should all go fully a wall, but maybe we can, I'll follow aways leave just taking a little break from technology every once in a while. That's it for us. This We hear the moth podcast until next time from all of us, here the moth have

story worthy weak dan Kennedy is the author of loser goes first, rock on an american spirit is also a regular hosting storyteller, with them off podcast production by Julia purcell them off podcast, as presented by pierre x, the public radio exchange helping make public radio more public at pierre ex dot org