As a kid, I was always pretty shy, but up until age 12 or
so, public speaking didn't really bother me.
I won the poetry/short story contest in my home town until they
discontinued the contest, and I always had to read what I had written at the
summer festival when I got the certificate or whatever it was I won (I
seriously don't remember now...that's funny).
I also did the public speaking competition for 4-H for several years
(and yes, I won that one, too, until I quit 4-H because I hated it and thought
it was a waste of time). I'm not entirely
sure why I won that one. Looking back,
I'm not entirely sure that "Mother and Son" by Langston Hughes was
all that meaningful coming out of a 10-year-olds mouth...although they may have
been impressed that I could remember all of "Father William" by Lewis
Carroll. Who knows.
So anyway, for a long time, I was totally fine with public
speaking and reading my writing. I was
in a couple plays, but it really wasn't my thing. It was fun, but I'm certainly not a born
actress. I am not sure what changed, or
when it changed, but by the time I got to college, I hated public
speaking. Maybe it was starting college
at age 14 and trying (unsuccessfully)
to sneak by unnoticed in my writing classes.
I have no idea. All I know, is
that by the time I was actually in real college at 17, I would get physically
sick before giving presentations. I had
an extremely difficult time speaking in class.
Luckily (though I wouldn't have admitted this at the time), I went to a
college and was in a department that was big on presentations. I gave many of them and, by the time I
graduated, I could handle giving academic presentations and contributing to
class discussions on occasion. I had to
push myself, and I hated it with a passion, but I could do it.
I was writing relatively regularly at this point, but I only
shared it with very few people. Most of
my writing from this time period has never been read by anyone else. At this point, it's going to stay that way. If you had asked me to read something I had
written (something not academic) in front of others, I would have laughed in
your face. There was no way in hell that
was ever going to happen. In grad
school, I lightened up a bit with all this, and had to do presentations all the
freaking time, so I can talk academic-speak in front of people with no
problem. I share some of my writing
here. But reading my work aloud, in
front of other actual living people is terrifying. It feels like handing them a piece of my soul
and just hoping they'll take care of it.
Part of me always expects nobody to "get it," or to tell me
it's a shitty poem, or to laugh at it, or...I don't actually know why it's so
nerve-wracking or what it is I expect people to do. It's just really freaking scary.
It's even worse when other people are reading. If it's just me, and there is nobody to
compare me to, it's a tiny bit easier.
But when there are others, they are automatically about 500 times better
than me in my mind, just because they're not me. I don't even need to hear what they're going
to read. They could read total utter crap,
and I'm still going to think they rocked it.
So at any rate, I've mostly dealt with this insecurity by
not dealing with it. But today, I
decided to tackle it. So I did. I went to that damn poetry reading--alone--and
I signed up for the open mic, and I read a poem. And the world did not cave in. No tomatoes were thrown. All my words came out in English and fully
formed. I didn't forget any words, and
no dead poet rose from his grave to kill me for the abomination of reading a
shitty poem out loud.
And, as if that wasn't fantastic enough, people actually
really liked it! And they told me
so. I went between two men, neither of
which I heard because I was completely overwhelmed and self-absorbed
immediately prior to and following my turn.
However, I came out of myself long enough to hear the man who followed
me say, "I have to go after THAT!?!
Who wants to follow THAT!?!"
Everybody laughed and my face turned red. I felt bad, even though I didn't really want
to. Maybe
I should have read a different poem, I thought briefly. How I wish I could think things like,
"sucks to be you, buddy!" in those moments instead. I'm pretty sure I'd be a completely different
person, if that was the case, but damn...I think that would feel good.
Afterwards, I was approached by several people--including one of the featured poet
people--who all wanted to know where I was published (nowhere), where else I
read (nowhere), how long I have been performing (I haven't), and if I had a
card (I don't). Because the story of my
life is that everybody from the clerk at the grocery store to the janitor at
work to the man next to me on the metro wants to tell me their life story, a
woman came and was very sweet to me about my poem, and then proceeded to tell
me about her menopause symptoms, her bitter divorce, and her mother's death. She said she could tell that I was quiet,
like her (like who!?!), and that "sometimes quiet people have the most to
say, when you stop to listen." I
believe that with all of my heart and always have. In
the remainder of this 5 minute conversation (we covered a lot of ground in a very short time), she
told me that, while she was listening to my poem, she got a mental image of a
picture she had seen once. In this
picture, there was a woman who looked like me who was looking into the mirror. The actual woman had a big pair of angel wings--but
she couldn't see those wings in the mirror.
"We never see who we truly are," she told me, before walking
away.
I'm still not entirely sure what to make of this. Crazy lady?
Or is there a message I'm supposed to get take from it?
You just never know what's going to happen at the poetry reading, especially if you get up and read your poem.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations for facing your own self doubt and reading your poem. I know exactly how that guy felt, having read poetry with you before. Own your wonderfulness!
Hello Can you tell me where you got the art work of the angel??
ReplyDelete