MOLI VIEW™

My 23-year-old niece was in town for a few days, so we made a reservation to make a recording for the StoryCorps oral history project. There are two booths in NYC where people can interview each other, one at Grand Central Station and the other near City Hall. There are more booths in the US, with one in Milwaukee and another in Nashville, besides three mobile booths that travel cross country, each affiliated with a local public radio station. The StoryCorps recordings of regular folks (like us) are housed at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

Everyone wants to make history, so we popped over to the booth at Foley Square after battling our way through hoards of shoppers on Canal Street in Chinatown, buying art supply gifts at Pearl Paint, and fingering tooled leather belts at the largest cowboy shop in NYC. I had a list of questions I printed off the StoryCorps site, but Faye had the courage to wing her questions. When we got there, the facilitator assured us that the 40 minutes would fly by. They did!

We sat across from each other at a slim table with a small lamp, and received instructions to keep eye contact with each other and keep our fidgeting to a minimum. Then we were told that if there was a lull in the conversation, the facilitator might offer us a question or two. Out went the overhead light, and the darkened room felt intimate as we began the interview with our names, ages, the date, and location.

I didn't know what to expect, but I know what happened. Through the interview, Faye and I really got to know each other. Sure, we'd seen each other when I visited Maryland for family gatherings, and she'd met some of my friends when she came to NYC, but this interview was a completely different experience. Like Orson Welles said, "The enemy of art is the absence of limitations": The confines of the booth, the time limit, and the structure gave us the opportunity to really listen to each other.

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