In a famous survey released by someone-or-other more than a
decade ago, respondents were asked to rank their worst fears. Death
emerged as a popular choice, as you’d expect -- yet it placed no
better than second. What species of horror so unnerved the populace
that even the Grim Reaper had to settle for first runner-up in the
great phobia pageant? Being trapped in a burning building? Being
attacked by a swarm of killer bees? Going insane? Having to sit
through a Jerry Lewis marathon, which is essentially the same thing?
No, the hobgoblin that topped them all was public speaking. In other
words, given a choice between addressing an audience or turning into
a slab of carrion, more of us would opt to become vulture food.
Why this terror of the lectern? What dark demons haunt those of
us faced with the prospect of grunting into a microphone before an
assembled crowd? Let me tell you about it, because I had to deliver
a speech just the day before yesterday. The pervasive sense of
dread, the escalating panic as the day approached, and the inner
certainty that I’d have a nervous breakdown in public all
conspired to make premature burial seem like a preferable fate.
How did I end up in the sorry predicament of having to deliver a
speech in the first place? Surely a professional cynic would rather
skulk in the soothing shadows of his den, socializing only when
necessary and avoiding the kinds of public spectacles that turn
reluctant writers into talking heads.
It all began back in Allentown ten years ago, when I volunteered
to help save my favorite movie showplace. Built at the dawn of the
talking picture age, the 19th Street Theatre was the only venue in
the region for quality foreign and independent films -- the kind
that rarely make it to the malls. These willfully intelligent films
didn’t attract the pimply 14-year-old moviegoers who routinely
turn bubblegum fare into blockbusters. So naturally, the 19th Street
Theatre was in danger of shutting down its Coolidge-era arc-light
projectors forever. This would have been an irredeemable local
tragedy. Finally a group of concerned film buffs launched an annual
membership drive to rescue the theater, and my letters were
persuasive enough to help lasso the needed funds. Now, ten years
later, the theater was hosting a special anniversary gala for its
loyal members. And I was nominated to prepare a five-minute speech
to express our gratitude.
Though I can express myself reasonably well for a man of sluggish
wit, I’ve never counted myself among the fleet of tongue. I sit in
awe of veteran glibsters like Robin Williams and Bill Clinton --
people who can fill hours of airtime with fluent and often coherent
chatter. For me, just leaving a thirty-second message on an
answering machine taxes all my improvisational resources to the
limit. I’m likely to stumble, stall, backtrack, repeat myself and
lose my logic -- all without the added stimulus of a live
audience.
A confident speaker can command the attention of an audience
without notes or nerve pills. A phobic speaker hopes merely to walk
off the podium without a major cardiac event. Timorous and tentative
speakers can always fall back on the old prop of reading their
speeches. After all, it was no disgrace when Lincoln read his
remarks at Gettysburg -- and his oration was only half as long as
the one I was supposed to prepare. But I’ve observed that words
tend to lose vital heat when they’re delivered from the printed
page. I wanted that crowd at the 19th Street Theatre to hear a
spontaneous, heartfelt expression of appreciation. So I resolved to
get up there and emote without a script.
As the designated date drew near, I started to fidget and grow
profoundly uneasy. What if my speech sounded like one of my bumbling
phone messages? What if I lost control of my verbal sphincter and
uttered low-grade Joycean gibberish from the stage? Worse yet, what
if I went absolutely blank -- mouth twitching, sweat cascading down
my forehead, blood pressure soaring to hemorrhagic levels? As if
these grim forebodings weren’t enough, I knew that all this juicy
anxiety was setting me up for failure, if not some unspeakable
public disaster that would reduce my life to smoking cinders. The
phobia was numbing the more relevant portions of my cerebral cortex:
suddenly I couldn’t recall more than three or four of the great
films that had played at the 19th Street Theatre over the past ten
years; I could barely remember my own Zip Code.
Anne, my lovely and ever-resourceful wife, noticed my distress
and advised me to prepare the speech in advance. That way I could
familiarize myself with the terrain and feel more at ease when I had
to open my mouth. Great idea -- I’d write it all down and have the
words in front of me when I mounted the stage. I’d still try to
deliver the speech without falling back on my text, but it was
comforting to have a safety net just in case I toppled from my
flying trapeze. If Lincoln could read his speeches, it would be no
disaster if I did. Spontaneity be damned.
Midway through the morning of the evening gala, I sat down at my
computer and composed my speech. The words flowed -- perhaps because
I was being sincere rather than witty -- and within an hour I had
filled nearly two single-spaced pages. I felt the palpable relief of
constipated souls who finally dump their burden. I looked it over
and it was good.
Anne agreed to drive us up to Allentown so I could practice my
speech in the car. She asked me to read it aloud to her, and I did:
"I want you to know how grateful I am -- how grateful all of
us are here at the 19th Street Theatre -- for your amazing
generosity over the past ten years." It sounded like a sales
letter, not a heartfelt address. Even Martin Luther King wouldn’t
be able to rescue this speech. It was going to be a colossal dud.
Two thumbs down, way down.
As we drove up Route 309 from Philadelphia to Allentown, I could
feel us drawing nearer to the precipice. The miles left to go
dwindled along with the minutes. At some point in the near future,
both meters would read zero and I’d have to perform. Between
glancing at my speech and gazing out the window at the strip malls
and furniture stores, I could feel my mind turn to porridge.
I wondered what was at stake that evening... what malign demons
would be unleashed if I failed as a speaker. After all, people are
accustomed to hearing dull, vapid, bumbling and incoherent speeches
all the time. And still we elect those speakers to high public
office. No, there was something more at stake than the quality of my
words or the conviction with which I delivered them.
To give a speech is to present ourselves as a complete human
package for the approval of our audience. In the mute spaces between
our chosen words, what we’re REALLY saying is, "Look at me,
regard my clothes and bearing, see how I comport myself on the
podium, watch my mannerisms for telltale signs of courage or fear,
decide for yourself if I’m intelligent or lamebrained -- a valid
and eloquent human being or an utter and dismal failure."
A speech is rarely such an all-or-none affair; in fact, most are
merely middling. But try telling that to a terrified speaker. Maybe
the majority of speakers fail to persuade us of their eloquence, yet
almost none ever collapse in a heap of sweat and bones. Utter
failure is almost unheard of, and I’m convinced that’s why most
of us live in terror of mounting the podium. We don’t want to be
the first and only human catastrophe ever glimpsed by our audience.
We can do without that dismal honor. We shudder at the prospect of
coming unglued, of revealing our fragile underpinnings in a public
and mortifying manner.
Why this gnawing fear of self-destructing before an audience?
That’s easy: we spend our lives building an image that our
fellow-humans will respect, and a single disaster could undo it all
within minutes. We’ll be exposed as idiots or incompetents -- or
worse yet, we’ll be exposed as our real selves, quivering with
dark and lamentable pathologies that we never reveal in public
places. With the swiftness of a terrorist attack, we could be ripped
open and toppled to our foundations, our gnarled innards on view for
all to see.
People tend to judge us according to how we judge ourselves; the
public naturally responds to someone who thinks well of himself
without being obnoxious about it. Low self-esteem is like a bald
pate, visible for everyone’s perusal. You can try to sound more
self-assured than you really are, but the effect is like sweeping a
few long strands over the top of one’s dome. You’re not fooling
anyone.
My own self-image tends to fluctuate like a publicly traded
stock, probably as a result of hearing unreasonable amounts of both
praise and criticism over the years. I have my bull markets and bear
markets of the soul. When I get up in front of a crowd, sometimes I’ll
feel the praise, and all will be well. At other times, especially before
I go on, I’ll hear the derision and see the solemn
head-shaking of those who thought me hopeless thirty or forty years
ago. During a bear market the derision carries more weight than the
praise.
The fact that I’d be addressing a friendly audience that night
in Allentown did little to comfort me. Just the opposite, in fact:
they wanted to like me, but I’d dash their expectations
into a thousand pieces. They’d look at the floor in vicarious
embarrassment. I’d provide fodder for hushed conversations after
the event: "Did you ever see such a disaster?" "And
to think he got himself that messed up without drugs." "He
must have serious self-esteem issues, but even Nixon was never that
bad."
I was setting myself up for abject failure, and it was getting
too late to reverse the damage. I tried to distract myself by
rereading the speech. I even penciled quick-reference summaries of
each paragraph in the margin so I could glance at the page and jolt
my quivering mind to action. The fool in me still thought about
charging gallantly onto the stage and speaking from the heart.
We arrived at the theater just as the early birds were assembling
under the marquee. We ran into some of my old Allentown friends and
acquaintances -- people who had worked side-by-side with me to save
the film program. Merrill and Nancy, probably the most indispensable
of all, strolled up the sidewalk and greeted us. There was Bob and
his wife whose name I could never remember. Frank and Marcie, who
had moved to Princeton a few years back but never lost touch,
arrived looking radiant. Marcie, her arms extended, gave Merrill and
me a simultaneous hug. But I still wasn’t completely there. Good
thing Anne was on hand to carry my end of the conversation.
Anne and I entered the theater, greeted a few more friends, then
nibbled at the handsome buffet at the front of the auditorium. We
took our seats so I could review my speech in the final minutes
before I had to mount the steps to the stage. Twenty minutes to go,
then fifteen, then ten. Anne offered words of encouragement. I
glanced up at the lectern and microphone -- my gallows, my
guillotine. The auditorium seemed humid and oppressive. My kingdom
for an air conditioner!
As I was sweating those final minutes, half a dozen friends
stopped by my aisle seat to chat. One of them was Barry, the
chairman of the theater. A man of high spirits and a naturally
effervescent speaker, he was due to follow me to the lectern that
evening. Barry never needs notes. When he saw me poring over my
speech like a freshman chemistry student, he playfully snatched it
away and scrambled up the aisle. His prank gave me a chance to look
up from my lap and chat with John and Diane, old friends who never
fail to give my neurotransmitters a welcome boost. John is, like me,
a cultural pessimist to the core, and he engaged us in a wry
conversation about the latest folly perpetrated by our incumbent
president.
Suddenly I felt like myself again; I had been yanked out of that
self-induced death-trance and into the flowing stream of everyday
conversation. Then Barry returned with my script, just as Scott, the
theater manager, took the podium and introduced me to the audience.
I felt an electric surge of nervous energy as I bounded up the
steps and grabbed the sides of the lectern. I thanked Scott and
looked around at the sweeping panorama of faces, three hundred of
them. I had never realized the theater was that wide. I spoke
to the crowd, explaining that I was the guy who wrote them every
year to part with a little of their money, that every single person
sitting there had helped save our film program, and that they
deserved to give themselves a round of applause. They applauded. All
this was in my written speech, but I was sailing over that sea of
words free from the bonds of paper and ink. I was speaking from the
heart, but I knew what I wanted to say. Somehow, miraculously, my
sentiments shaped themselves into grammatical and even marginally
inspiring sentences. The gods were with me for once, and so was the
crowd.
When I finished, I knew I had overlooked at least half the points
I had wanted to make. (Extemporaneous speaking has attendant risks
other than going blank or disintegrating in public.) I still hadn’t
mastered the art of glancing down at those notes in the margin, then
glancing up again to expand an idea. But the speech was
accomplished, people liked it, and it felt like a victory. Over
whom? Over the demons that make me, and so many others, dread
speaking in public. In fact, I wouldn’t mind taking to the podium
again to exercise my vocal cords. I just wish someone would knock me
out about three days in advance, then revive me when they announce
my name.
