The Spirit of the Story
BY LUCRETIA VOIGT INDEPENDENT ARTS WRITER
If today were a regular Wednesday in the Middle Ages and we were reveling in the Italian Renaissance, John Porcino would be known as a troubadour. Porcino travels across the country, weaving tales and whimsical songs into entertaining performances. This Friday his travels will bring him to Nantucket, making a stop at the Nantucket Atheneum Great Hall from 7 to 8 p.m.

Porcino: "You keep learning. You keep figuring out how to do it better. The learning sometimes is despite yourself. All of a sudden your spirit figures out what to do."

Porcino was a traveler even as a young child. Like most young boys, he was seldom without his bicycle. Being innately resourceful, he befriended the local bicycle shop owner. "I was a kid who was really into my bicycle," he recently explained when asked about the events that led up to his career choice. "I befriended the local bike shop owner, a guy named Peter who was an Italian-Argentine man living on Long Island where I grew up. [Peter] got kicked off the Argentine Olympic Team because he was grabbing the chains off trucks and getting drafts from them. I befriended him and really loved bicycling. I had a dream to do a bike trip around the country."

Porcino does not just believe his dreams can come true - he finds it hard to fathom that they will not. The words "cannot" and "impossible" do not exist in his vocabulary. So the dream of traveling across country on his bicycle was not a nice story he told himself when he was bored with life as a teen in Long Island, but a goal he set out to achieve. Knowing he would need to make some money along the way, he turned to his guitar and started his troubadour training. "I went to a weekend called 'Folksinging and Storytelling' in the Adirondacks to collect new songs," he said. "However, in my memory there was hardly any music there, just storytelling and I was blown away by the power of the storytelling. It was pretty remarkable. After this weekend of heart-changing experiences for me of falling in love with the beauty and power of storytelling, I added on storytelling. I decided to sort of combine the two, the music and the storytelling."

He planned his trip, wrote letters to schools along the way offering to perform in exchange for overnight accommodations and a warm meal, copied a story and stuck it in his map bag, attached his guitar to the back of his bike and hit the road. Fifteen schools along his 3,000 mile route took him up on his offer, beginning with a school in Quincy, Ill. on the banks of the Mississippi River. "I started telling 'Where the Wild Things Are' and I was nervous about it," he recounted. "When I got to the part where the wild things roared their terrible roars, the kids roared back at me, all 150 little kids! It took me like a day or two to realize that they didn't even know they were doing it. They were so involved in it. That moment made me feel that 'Hey, I like this!'" He had found a new love to join his passion for bicycles.

Many individuals would have returned from their cross-country trek, put their Jack Kerouac books on the shelf, gone to the local Brooks Brothers for a new suit and settled down to a traditional life. Before he could punch the time clock of a worker bee, however, John Porcino was hit with a tragedy that would change his life. "When I was 26 my older brother died of cancer, and I was floored," he revealed. "It was the first death of a person close to me in my life. I was like 'Ooh, this could be over quick, you better be doing what you want to do.' So I decided it was storytelling. I made a brochure and became a storyteller. The combination of story and music, which are only two of my loves, I put the two together in various ways and figured out how to make it work."

Since that time he has added a symphony of strange and unusual international folk instruments to his repertoire, including a rain stick, a fiddle, a cello, a Chinese erhu and a Russian balalaika. A traditional American classic, the jaw harp, punctuates his songs, as well as the resonance of the Celtic harp. He performs 150 to 200 shows a year, each uniquely geared to the audience that happens to show up that day.

Twenty-five years after storytelling wove its way into his soul, Porcino is still amazed and delighted at the power of the spoken word with musical accompaniment. "You keep learning. You keep figuring out how to do it better. The learning sometimes is despite yourself. All of a sudden your spirit figures out what to do."

His spirit is still flying on his bike, songs and stories the soundtrack of his life. He continues to ride his bike daily, just without his guitar

attached to the back. I

- John Porcino will be performing his Celebrations of Light, a night of holiday stories and songs, on Friday, December 7 from 7 to 8 p.m. at the Nantucket Atheneum Great Hall, 1 India St. Tickets are free and available at the Weezie Library or at the door.