I gave my first public reading last night from World Leader Pretend at Powell’s Books on Hawthorne Street. Like half the world’s population, I have a strong fear of public speaking.
What is interesting to me about stage fright is how it manifests itself in different people in completely different ways. It also often doesn’t have any noticable effect on performance, or at least to the outside observer, who can’t get into the performer’s head to know what they would have liked to have said, had they not been so flabbergasted.
In my case, my stage fright brings me to an effective mental paralysis, where first I think about what I want to say, and then, before I can bring it into words, I think about the fact that I haven’t said anything yet, and that all these people are waiting to hear something from me. Then comes the paralysis: I know that I can’t talk about the fact that I haven’t said anything yet, and my brain gets fixated on it, and then I’m stuck–I just sort of stand there with that thought in my head and I can’t let it go.
Fortunately, at a book reading, one has book material to read. So I do what musicians do: I say into the microphone something completely inane, like here’s a song about my mother, and then I start reading. The reading tends to go well, and the people in the audience quickly forget about that awkward opening.
Afterwards, I get patted on the back, and told how good the reading went, while all I can think about was the frightful opening, and how badly I biffed the introduction to my book, where I was going to explain in brilliant detail why people should be interested in it.