“Making a few comments” in the spur of the moment is right up there in the pantheon of nightmares with snake handling.
Among communication skills, the ability to create an interesting and coherent message ‘on the fly’ varies greatly from person to person. In jazz, a “riff” is phrase or entire solo, usually made up on the spot. In public speaking the same kind of moment may be called an “impromptu speech,” which is its own category in oratorical competitions. In a theater or club we know the same kinds of instant exchanges as improvisations. Some actors are great at it. Others need a script to find their way. But there can be no doubt that skill at improvisation is a significant gift for a musician or actor. One of the high points of Damien Chazelle’s La La Land (2016) is a tryout where an actress is asked to tell any story. The riff that results is the poignant song “Audition,” a tale about her Aunt’s years in Paris, and a turning point in her life.
I once knew an academic colleague whose role required a lot of introductory comments for speakers and panels. He was confident he could produce insights on demand. But what usually came out was a stew of badly mismatched ingredients. “Winging it” was not his strength, and made worse by his tendency to lose track of the time. I’ve also known another academic who spoke as if he were reading prose polished on a diamond lathe. No syllable was out of place. He was mesmerizing, and also the source of more than a little envy.
Jazz gets its energy from the creative riffs of its performers; public speaking gets it’s notorious dread from the same requirement. “Making a few comments” in the spur of the moment is right up there in the pantheon of nightmares with snake handling.
Don’t memorize your comments. We now expect that a public presentation is a form of “heightened conversation.”
Interestingly, ancient orators were not that different. Preparing for the moment of delivery was something to stew over. But their solution was to memorize their remarks. Any figure in Greece or Rome with aspirations in civil affairs needed to be able to commit long speeches to memory. Words and their effects mattered that much.
But memory is now considered “the lost canon” of rhetoric. We no longer teach it. And some of us suspect that our toasters probably have more RAM memory than we possess. In addition, most of us are not very interesting when reciting ideas that have been over-rehearsed. Think of a poem from 7th grade whose meaning has been drained away because it was learned by rote. Those who are especially good at this kind of thing we call “actors.”
The trick is to split the difference. Think about what you want to say at an event where you will be called up. Take and use few notes (never a manuscript). Don’t memorize your comments. We now expect that a public presentation is a form of “heightened conversation.” A few non-fluencies that creep into our remarks will not matter, if the trade-off is the impression that we are thinking about what we are saying as we say it.
The boiler that should be white hot in youth can now seem too tepid, a long way from generating a significant head of steam.
Mental Health professionals often recognize a common symptom in patients characterized by an immobile face, little interest in the world around them, and a very narrow expressive range. This at the end of a scale that is far away from the idea of an animated and expressive individual. “Low affect” is sometimes a sign of depression. It can also be a side effect of certain medications. But I also wonder if it is becoming a comfortable norm for too many young Americans who have overdosed on the sedative effects of screens.
This thought came home a few weeks ago watching a college drama instructor working with her students in an acting class. A course in acting can be a wonderful experience even for students with no interest in a theatrical career. Taking on a role is a chance to try out the feelings and emotions of another character. It’s a way to step into alternate personas. Add in the fact that most plays keep a character’s pain or joy close to the surface, giving new and productive emotions a rare workout. I recommend the course to any student in any field of study.
In this particular class the instructor was working with one young woman who was doing a monologue in which a daughter explains to a friend a newly discovered cancer that may well claim her mother. Over the years the parent-daughter relationship has been stormy. The last line of the speech included a hint that it might be better if the mom succumbed sooner rather than later.
The segment from a Christopher Durang play suggested a long and complicated backstory that included the sometimes ambivalent feelings between mother and daughter. Tensions between the two have ebbed and flowed over the years. Yet the young actress could only motivate herself to “play” the reading in a gray apathy. Her lines were spoken in a monotone and with a face that gave nothing away. That was her understanding of the character’s state of mind, she noted, in spite of the teacher’s insistent plea that this character surely had other emotions—anger, disappointment, fear, regret—that needed to surface. The frustration of the instructor over the flat reading was obvious, similar to what Dustin Hoffman’s perfectionist actor felt in the iconic Tootsie (1982). Hoffman’s Michael Dorseytries to get his girlfriend and acting student played by Teri Garr to perform “rage” for an upcoming audition. That’s what her character needs to feel, but Garr’s is up to little more than a whimper. That is, until Dorsey finally coaches her to bring the anger out in the open.
Of course it’s risky to draw much from these simple examples. But they fit with growing evidence that too many young adults have been benumbed into a muted conversational style. “Performing” one’s enthusiasm for an idea or activity seems out of style. The boiler inside that should be white hot can seem too tepid to generate a sufficient head of steam.
Anyone who teaches the arts of advocacy beyond high school knows this challenge. We typically want students to issue full-throated spiels of passionate conviction in their debates or speeches. What faculty often hear instead is a shocking statistic or example delivered in a whisper, stripped of all anger or irony. The effect is similar to a musician who may have an instrument capable of many octaves, but chooses to use only the middle two.
We might extend a booming greeting to a friend we are surprised to meet on the street. But that kind of vocal and physical effort makes no sense if our thumbs are doing all the “talking.”
We have research from Sherry Turkle (Reclaiming Conversation, 2015) and others suggesting that conversation—at least the traditional form of face to face exchange–is not the defining moment to make an impression that it was for early generations. Younger Americans now “meet” on screens, keep in touch on screens, and deliver news in the staccato shorthand of texting. We see this as “connecting” and “talking” through “social” media. But staring into a screen for six hours a day requires us to mobilize almost nothing of the physical tools of expression. Face, voice and emotion do not easily reconfigure into words seen as pixels or heard in compressed digital channels. We might extend a booming greeting to a friend we are surprised to meet on the street. But that kind of vocal and physical effort makes no sense if our thumbs are doing all the “talking.”
Then, too, greater numbers of students are now showing up on the nation’s campuses with increasingly complicated mental health histories that might explain restrained expression. More now depend on the use of psychotropic drugs to treat anxiety, depression, eating disorders and ADHD. The effects of the relevant medications overprescribed for them can vary. But some can subdue what might otherwise be a buoyant personality.
In the 1960s sociologist David Riesman noted a broad cultural shift that changed the nation’s character: an alignment that re-oriented Americans from the “inner-direction” once common to individuals in an agrarian culture toward a more adaptive “other direction” required to succeed in industrial organizations (David Riesman, et, al, The Lonely Crowd, 1961). The other directed person had to be more social to survive. Our growing attention to personal media may signal a smaller but similar kind of characterological shift that leaves its own marker represented as a drift toward low affect. In the process the body becomes a more constricted medium than it once was; it’s owner less inclined to “perform” passions and interests with the kind of vocal animation that we might now judge to be nearly “manic.”
Interestingly, over a longer period of time the problem ceases to be an anomalous result. The subdued self just becomes a new norm that makes the natural enthusiasms of childhood stand out in contrast all the more.
