“The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger - but recognize the opportunity.”
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)
Staring down at my dark slacks I carefully pick off a small piece of white lint while waiting my turn in the back of the nondescript lecture hall. Looking around at the two hundred people in attendance I am relieved that I made the correct fashion choice in wearing a jet black pin striped suit with a crisply starched white shirt and a conservative gold tie laced with silver highlights. I had a feeling that the crowd of city and governmental officials would be dressed a little more formal than most. Seldom do you see business suits and ties anymore which I believe contribute to a general feeling of malaise and insecurity in people. There is nothing more empowering than wearing a tailored suit with sharp pressed creases. People will walk more erect, confident and self assured. Maybe I hold this belief due to my father’s career on Wall Street where a three piece suit and a felt fedora was a daily uniform.
A middle aged woman in a stylist business suit seated three rows in front of me turns to steal a glance with probing blue eyes. With a subtle motion I smile and nod my head in acknowledgement of her attention. Slightly embarrassed she turns forward and whispers something to the gentleman seated next to her. The crowd is aware of my presence as I sense an eager air of anticipation. My mind drifts back to the pounding surf and sweet salt air of the Coral Sea. It stuns me to think that it has been 30 days since I removed my sandals and brushed the last grains of sand from my feet. The memories are already fading and becoming indistinct like a misty fog rolling over the shoreline. The images are there but the sounds and scents are disappearing with each passing day. Time is so fleeting and every day life is filled completely with activities that the weeks rip in rapid succession like a sign posts on a speeding highway. This week alone I am speaking in Baltimore, Kansas City, Indianapolis and San Diego. Something has changed in the past few months, a subtle shift in recognition, an ever so slight transformation. It is something I can sense but do not yet understand completely. I need to realize the increased demand for my time and limit my schedule accordingly.
My eyes aimlessly roam the patterned blue gray carpeted floor of the lecture hall when I am amused that below my perfectly pressed slacks is a pair of black wing tips slightly caked with mud from some recent site visit. I am immediately reminded of Frank Lloyd Wright’s quote “You can tell if a person is grounded by the soil on his shoes”. I attempt to discern the origin of the soil by its color and texture. Could it be the northeast or south or even the pacific west. I come to the conclusion that the soil could be from almost anywhere and it is going to be impossible to isolate the moment when my foot touched the moist earth. Quietly I spend the next few minutes scuffing my shoes together in a weak attempt to improve my spoiled appearance, but finally decide I rather like the eccentric appearance leaving most of the red earth clinging to the leather like a cluster of barnacles hugging an oaken hull.
Clasping my hands together slowly my head tilts toward the floor allowing all emotions to slip from my thoughts as if my skull was a sieve. My mind envisions that I am standing before a calm still body of water completely content and relaxed. The water is a symbol of power and adaptability assuming the shape of its container. This has become a ritual for me, a gathering of internal energy and focus exhibited in a brewing of a storm, a force of nature building in the sky. It’s like filling the cannon with gunpowder, canister by canister until the full charge is loaded in preparation of firing. As if being pulled by an invisible harness I rise to my feet as the voice at the podium recites an elegant list of accomplishments. It is always embarrassing to hear the litany of tributes which always makes me feel like the crowd is now expecting someone more important than me.
At a moments notice the crowd erupts into a loud and sustained applause as a roomful of eyes turn to stare at me. In an instinctual response I reach with my left hand to the lavaliere attached to my belt. With a familiar intimacy my hand caresses the wire next to the switch as I turn the microphone on. The fuse is now lit as kinetic energy explodes in my veins coursing like a hot fever. Suddenly I become another person, my alter ego emerges as the confident extrovert I always wanted to be. Somewhere in the recesses of the brain a switch is thrown as the Gemini twin awakes to command the spotlight. I find it similar to the euphoria an alcoholic feels during a blackout. Disconnection of an outer body experience as rambling muses of a madman prepares to extol the depths of his madness. I tease myself that the crowd is entertained as if watching a car wreck. They know something horrible is occurring but are unable to avert their eyes, the sadistic fascination with violence. This statement probably contains more truth than I would care to admit.
For me it is an internal dialogue, a discussion about passion to the point of fanaticism. It is an oral internal debate as opposing dilemmas are resolved on an imaginary verbal chalkboard. Simple proven diatribes strung together into powerful mantras which slither on the ground like cobras searching for a commonly held belief to sink their fangs into. It must be the almost thirty years of interviewing for projects and commissions that allows me to read the emotions of the room like a blind man reading Braille. My gestures slowly hypnotize the crowd as I draw raw emotion up from the earth and cast it over the crowd with each choreographed moment. I have developed a hard rule during interviews that when I ascend to a sequence of reasoning that become so inspiring and so emotional that goose bumps briefly crawl across my arms, its time to immediately shut it down and close. It is that critical point where nothing you can ever say will be near as profound as what you just said. All that is possible after that point in the interview is to talk the selection committee out of selecting you. Live the fundamental rule, stop selling after you have closed the deal.
The shift in recent months is subtle but evident. I have graduated from one of the featured speakers in a conference to the keynote speaker. Five of the last seven lectures were in the role of keynote speaker, a much different position in the agenda. No longer assigned to one of the six or eight lecture halls where you compete for audience with provocative topics. The keynote is the ultimate primetime slot during the delegate’s lunch or during a plenary session with the entire assembled conference attendees. Your name moves up on the marquee, you become the reason why people attend the conference. This increased stature comes with dramatically increased expectations.
A keynote speaker is the life blood of the conference business. It is no longer acceptable to rank along the top handful of featured speakers, but you must demonstrate an exceptional mastery of the craft that excels your presentation far beyond the pool of featured speakers. The keynote speaker must inspire, motivate, and empower the audience to change the world through wisdom, logic, character and antidotes. You must call on the wisdom of past leaders to teach. The keynote is as much illusion as substance with a commanding control of truth as they see it. I’m not sure I’m ready for the jump to the big stage, the center ring, the first chair. The margin for error is razor thin as now television cameras peer from the back row capturing every detail in stone. The words are no longer surreal drifting as a song on the wind, but precise and concrete so that it can be dissect over and over to remove the soft flesh and examine the intricate skeletal structure. Small strips of magnetic tape stream behind the curtain recording very hesitation and stumble.
Once again the Gemini twin explodes into a fiery climax remaining calm and erect as the crowd applauses. The high energy switch is turned off as a dizzying spin back to earth allows fear to grab my ankles. For a brief second I once again feel like the alcoholic confused, awaking from another blackout, wondering if I covered all my thoughts. I search my short term memory to reconstruct the dialogue but find it surprising empty. As I step down from the podium, turning off the lavaliere, my insecurity forces me to seek opinions from the people around me about the message, finding reassurance in the positive reviews. Today I captured the buzz, I succeeded in bringing the crowd new insights by challenging their percepts.
With each step into on this new stage I feel confidence growing, which will allow me to dig deeper into my fundamental beliefs and fearlessly bear more of my soul. It will allow me to stray further into the jungle, to push the madman closer to the cliff, to wade deeper into the dangerous currents to navigate uncharted waters. The next step won’t take long because tomorrow is another keynote is San Diego. This time I’ll put an extra canister of gunpowder in the barrel testing the limits of the crowd’s indulgence as I move up in the draft.
“Great wisdom is generous; petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech cantankerous.”
Chuang-tzu (369 BC - 286 BC)
