I used to be so nervous about public speaking that even when I was not on the roster of speakers, I had anxiety attacks for the people who were. It was sympathetic fright, not unlike the labor pains some highly attuned fathers have alongside their pregnant wives. Eventually I found beta blockers, tiny pills that reign in a runaway heart, enabling you to focus on something besides your own skyrocketing blood pressure.
Last weekend, I went to a performance event that invited seasoned performers and amateurs alike to take the stage and do something – anything – for 10 minutes.
There was a wide range of talent, from able poets and entertaining storytellers and nimble dancers to a number of other people biting at the bait to have their chance in the limelight. Many of them confessed to a case of nerves. And most of those with a case of nerves also confessed to being completely unprepared. Only they didn’t call it that. They said they were “indecisive” about what to present. That they had only in the last day or minutes, put together the thing they were about to unveil to us, their audience. That they, by circumstances beyond their control, had had no opportunity to rehearse what it was they were about to sing or say or show.
A word about rehearsing and nerves: Practicing what I was going to present never, ever quelled my anxiety. Before beta blockers, I spent untold numbers of days swimming in a soup of terror, knowing I was going to have to state my name at an upcoming conference or meeting. Presumably I have always known my name and so do not need to practice it. Yet I was so panicked at the prospect of speaking it, I thought I might faint.
So I am the first to admit that there are people for whom practice does not make perfect, nor does it make calm. Still, I left this weekend’s venue feeling vaguely dissatisfied and a little bit dirty. Maybe it’s just me, but observing an unrehearsed stage performance by someone other than a professional improv actor is a little like sneaking into a stranger’s house and listening to them sing in the shower. Or reading their diary. You know you are there under devious circumstances, witnessing things meant to be private.
That said, although some of the performers were nervous, not one of them, as far as I could tell, was embarrassed. And so I wondered: Have we seen so much reality TV – unscripted programming that forgoes the underpinnings of plot and structure – we believe that all the world needs, in order to feel entertained, is a warm body and/or the possibility of an emotional train wreck somewhere down the line?
Or is there something else at work here that I am failing to adequately appreciate: Namely, that the opportunity to express oneself in public, without having to first get an agent and then get a contract, is a beautiful thing and opens us all up – performer and spectator alike – to something that is beautiful precisely because it is impulsive? If I think back over my life as a writer and artist, I don’t have to go back very far to recall essays and paintings that made it into magazines and art fairs that frankly should not have. That I know I did not pore over with the attention necessary to make them something truly polished, because I just wanted to get them out there.
While some people liked the essays well enough to read them and the paintings well enough to buy them, that early acceptance, that maybe I did not really earn, gave me the courage and the energy to keep writing and creating. And that was the most beautiful thing of all.
So, with that in mind, I say carry on, suddenly inspired singers, dancers and poets! The world is your audience. And my sympathetic heart, plus or minus beta blockers, will always tremble for you.
Email Dana Shavin at danalise@juno.com.