|
have you ever been to a poetry reading?
even one should be enough to show you that there's no necessary connection.
spekaing in public is a strange practice and there was for me no way to figure it out except to do it.
it is good to fail a few times so you can figure out that you wont die if you do. that removed much of the anxiety.
what you can do and how is situationally defined.
when i was getting used to lecturing, it took a while to figure out that irony and self-depricating jokes were noise in that context. people give you authority when you are standing in front of them, much in the way that people decide their bartender is a parent-figure or super-attractive because they mediate the drinking experience. many people like to be dominated. it is among their most tedious qualities. the "o for gods sake what are you listening to me for?" response doesnt register.
for public performances, you need a script even if you dont refer to it, i have found. for interpersonal performances--of the type done in that christopher buckley thing referenced in the op--i find that a couple of beers works just as well as a script.
people listening have little attention spans. tiny little attention spans. so you cant do anything like what you can do in written forms in terms of complexity. so you cant spread the elements of your argument or piece out too much or the limits of listening-attention will interfere and folk will decide there is no argument or structure. you have to tell them stuff directly and then seduce them into leaving the tiny little box of their customary attention spans. it isnt easy all the time, and it wont work with everyone at any time. its just like that.
audiences want to be entertained. you can fuck with them, but it has to be entertaining. this irritates the hell out of me. it's one reason i prefer sound performances to speaking--you can turn the outs up and force an audience to either commit or get out--but speaking is harder that way. because audiences want to be entertained, they tend it seems to adopt a spectator relation to almost anything you present. you should keep this in mind so that yu do not simply mount atrocity exhibitions thinking that you are going to shake people. blasé uber alles: its the smug bourgeois way.
the main thing is never panic. if you forget what you want to say, wait. the upside of audience passivity is that they give you control of the situation so use it. silence can be effective, but you have to learn how to use it. once you learn that, even if you head is full of nothing but scatter, you can use the interval required to find something coherent in there to your advantage.
i am kinda shy in 3-d, believe it or not. what i learned that edged me away from freaking out when my mind would sometimes go blank in public is that people do not see you as a human being--they see a mask--they see a character--they see what they want. speaking in public is low-wattage theater. if you speak in the first person, this "i" is a character, not you.
i learned the most in a grad-school colloquim dring which humilitating the speaker was a kind of bloodsport. speaking in public is fashioning and manipulating a mask. i dont know if this translates to anyone except me, but realizing that made a huge difference. live gigs can be fun. you just have to figure out how to let yourself have that fun.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|