Being in it, and out of it, at the same time

(Bill here)

So I'm reading Anna Deavere Smith and thinking back on telling my story today, and the whole thing starts to resonate.  And I thought I'd relate a little bit of my inner dialogue to you - the one that I had while telling "The Courtship...".

I've practiced that story/poem a lot.  So much so that I find my mind sometimes wandering while I practice and swapping up whole sections of the story into a nonsensical mess - a cautionary tale.  I've told it to six or seven groups, ranging from family, to friends, to colleagues.  Once, a few weeks ago, I told it to 20 or so members of my extended family gathered in the breakfast area of a Philadelphia Hampton Inn for a little extracurricular socializing surrounding a wedding.  Incidentally, I told it to 6-7 strangers who happened to be hanging around, and a desk clerk who was truly captive.

I've noticed that certain parts of the story tend to elicit certain reactions, and have come to expect those reactions.  So, when I was telling to you folks this morning, I was sort of "waiting for" those moments.  My inner dialogue (once I got over mis-naming the author) went something like "yup, they laughed at that" and "there's the little smile that comes when I tell the title."  But you caught me by surprise a few times: "Your snoring is most like a gong" usually elicits a guffaw or two, but the previous line "You silly girl, you've got it wrong!" has never merited a reaction before, but you all laughed.  And so it went, even at the end, when "...all the other monsters, under the bed." didn't signal the end to you, as it usually does.  All the while I'm wondering "Is the linkage between this little bedtime courtroom drama and my real-life experience with conflicting executives coming through?  Did I say enough in the intro to lay the foundation for that - or is this just a cute story about a little girl's fantasy monster?"  And I'm disinclined to further analyze the performance - I'm only offering it for illustrative purposes, anyway.

My interest is in that "inner dialogue", the little observer in my head who guides my delivery and - if I listen to him too closely - distracts me until "Oh, no!  What's the next line???  THINK, Bill!"  Does everybody have that little critter, sitting on your shoulder and whispering in your ear, on about a 3-second delay?  On the one hand, he makes me crazy with his tendency to distract or to make me second-guess myself.  But on the other hand, I think he's exactly what ADS is talking about in that second letter.  He gives me the ability to watch myself, to imagine (or detect) how my audience is feeling, and to adjust.  Though I gotta say, verse drives one to different kinds of adjustment, having more to do with delivery than content.

To friends and colleagues who ask about my plunge into storytelling near the end of a very engineer-like career, I often say that telling is like surfing: you're just up there on the wave and going with the flow, making something of the experience.  But the little critic on my shoulder is like having someone hovering behind the surfboard saying "Missed that cut-back, didn't you?" or "Wow, nice tube!" or even "Do you see that cross-wave coming? What're you going to do with it?"  

By and large, I think I like my little companion.