Writers Reading

I went to hear 5 writers reading their work last week and, though all 5 were present, I ended up hearing 1-1/2 of them.

I got a coughing fit, which I do when I don’t realize that I’m angry. The knees of the publisher sitting next to me were jumping out of control. Because we couldn’t hear most of what was being read to us.

Always on the side of the performer, I’ve tended to blame the sound system for my hearing problems in that hall. But not this time. Not after being able to hear 1 out of 5 clearly.

What went wrong? Let me count the ways:

Did they practice with the sound system? I doubt it.

They rushed, giving us no time to hear a word before they went on to the next one. An audience of 100 people needs more time to assimilate what it hears than does a group of 6.

They were not sharing the work with us. They were reading into an auditorium with people in it.

They were not reliving the stories they’d written. They were just reading the words.

1 of the writers avoided all these problems. She was engaged in her stories; she embraced the audience; we heard every word.

Did I mention that I was sitting next to a publisher? His knees stopped jiggling. He said, “I need to sign her.”

"Control" of the Diaphragm

I was looking forward to seeing “The King’s Speech” (my field, after all) until I read that Lionel Logue wrote, after his first consultation, that Prince Albert had poor control of his diaphragm.

No kidding! If we could control our diaphragms, no one would ever hiccup.

Back in college I had a singer friend who was very proud of her diaphragm, which she would display. What she was showing off was what looked like a role of fat below her ribs. Her vocal teacher had told her that that was her diaphragm.

The word “diaphragm” is bandied about by voice and speech teachers who don’t have a clue what the diaphragm is–a horizontal set of muscles between the lungs and the guts. A muscle set that gets pushed down by the lungs when we inhale, and that gets pushed back up the guts when we exhale. A muscle set that gets pushed around, not one that we can “control.”

At least two prominent voice coaches advise bouncing one’s voice off one’s diaphragm. They don’t explain how this can be accomplished anatomically. Nor do they seem to realize that, in advising a student to bounce a sound anywhere, that student is likely to tighten some muscles in the throat to act as the bouncer.

Even the Best

I recently attended a performance by a well-known radio personality that was irritating as hell. My party was seated in the balcony. The performer was positioned so far forward on the stage that we either had to assume a partial-standing position so we could see him, or close our eyes and pretend we were listening to him on the radio. You can imagine what happens when, at my age, I close my eyes.

My host at the event became so angry that he vowed to complain to theatre management. How could they, in all conscience, cut off the sight lines of an entire portion of a paying audience?

But I had seen this performer a decade ago at the 92d St. Y in New York, where I could see him clearly, and where, even though a decade younger, I fell asleep at least twice.

The first time, I assigned blame for my snooze problem on his material, which wasn’t that interesting. But at this performance, he had great material, and his delivery–the ebb and flow of tension and release, the timing–could have served as a “how-to” course for any public speaker. And yet, there I was, off in dreamland again.

Inconceivable as it seems, even to me, this performer has not learned, after decades on stage, the difference between the energy required for a radio audience and a live audience.

Radio requires intimacy. The performer’s energy is concentrated through the mike to a virtual audience of one person or one family, listening in car or a living room. Very different from a three-balcony theatre where, even though one is using a microphone, the energy has to expand to include everyone.

Claim the Job

Another inspiration from The New York Times business section: This time a man hunting for another job describes his transformation from question-answerer to question-asker.

His interpretation of the change is that he became more assertive. True. My interpretation is that he recognized that he had more power, and therefore more responsibility, in a job interview than he had thought.

A job interview may be conducted one-on-one, but it nevertheless involves many aspects of public speaking.

Claim the job, just as you would claim the stage. In the interviewer’s mind, the subject of the meeting is the company and its needs and how well you fit both. Too often, the interviewee thinks the subject of the meeting is him or herself.

Do I need to say that when the speaker and the audience are not in agreement in their expectations, they’re off to a bad start. I once talked three friends into attending a film that had been billed as a romantic thriller. So much blood and violence that one friend left the theatre, and I pulled my sweater up over my face and missed the crucial murder. No one would talk to me on the way home.

“When we claim . . . the job as our own, we begin to fall in love with it. We nurture it, care for it, give it our full attention. When we focus on our material, we find the courage to live through the anxiety of performance, and the drive to learn how to perform it well.” (Speak Up: The Public Speaking Primer (Press 53, 2010), p. 104.

Tell a Story

Read Chrystia Freeland’s essay, “How to Succeed in Business Journalism,” in the August 22d issue of The New York Times Book Review. I could quote here 2 or 3 full paragraphs, changing no more than a phrase or two, and make them directly applicable to public speaking.

I’m going to quote, instead, from Speak Up: The Public Speaking Primer, where I give advice to public speakers that is similar to Freeland’s advice to business journalists.

“Humans are storytellers. We try to understand our lives and the events around us by creating stories. Until we learned to scratch symbols that represented our words, we told our history, our beliefs, our warnings, and our fears in stories, in parables, and in myths.

“We remember best what we hear or read in story form.” (p. 11)

And,

“In our culture, we often believe we are oriented to the bottom line and that facts are the only reliable bases for decisions. Human brains, however, are not as well equipped to work mathematical of logic problems as they are to make judgments based on intuition and experience. . .

“An attorney asked me how he could get a jury to understand the complex financial instruments that led to the recent economic collapse. He said, ‘I spent days trying to work through them myself. Finally, one night at two a.m., I got it. So how do I reduce all the work I had to do into something a jury can understand?’

“By telling the jury that story. Tell them the process that led to your discovery. Tell them about the wrong paths you went down, and your frustration, and how stupid you felt. Give them a chance to empathize with you. They might not fully grasp all the complexities themselves, but they’ll feel a connection to you and to your side of the argument.” (pp. 75-76)

Are You Ready?

The New York Times business section is providing more advice that can be applied to public speaking. In the October 10 paper, Howard Schultz, chairman, president, and CEO of Starbucks, was asked for his advice to new CEOs.

He said that very few people coming into the job believe they’re qualified. Every time we speak in public, it’s a new situation. Very few of us believe we’re qualified, or have rehearsed enough for this new subject or that new audience.

So, his advice about insecurity? Use it as a strength, not a weakness. Let people see that you’re vulnerable, and you’re showing them that you’re human.

Translating that paraphrased statement for our needs: So what if you make a mistake or two? Steve Allen once said that a performer would have to fall off the stage into the bass drum before someone noticed. I’ll add that if you do fall off the stage into the bass drum, hitting the cymbals as you go, everyone in the audience will be thrilled that they were there to see it, and will buy more tickets with the hope that you’ll do it again.

Apologies Not Accepted

When I was growing up in the midwest, a hostess cooked twice as much food as her guests could eat, and then apologized for whatever she presented or had failed to present: “I don’t know what happened to the corn pudding;” “My cake didn’t rise like usual;” “At least I remembered to take the Jello salad out of the refrigerator this time.”

Dinner began with assurances from the guests about the quality of the corn pudding, was interrupted with the story of the missing salad, and ended with a slight argument over the lightness of the cake. Not leaving much room for conversation about politics, or even the weather.

I attended a presentation this week that followed that pattern. The presenter began with a story about having failed to appear at a presentation the week before, and segued into an apology for having arrived late with disorganized materials. He said several times that if his wife/business partner were there, she would be able to better explain this concept or answer that question.

Why apologize as you’re serving the corn pudding? If the guests had previously loved the hostess’s corn pudding, now they’re forced to reconsider. Maybe it doesn’t taste that good after all, or maybe their taste discrimination is off.

What is the value of telling an audience, in detail, that you forgot to keep an appointment? Are we going to trust anything else you say?

Last month I heard a band member say, halfway through a performance, “and we’ve only practiced twice.” Now the audience is sitting there reassessing the entire evening: “Maybe it was more ragged than we thought.”