I am a public speaker.
This is my element. My first and forever love.
I have been on stage since I was 7 years old, playing Toto in “The Wizard of Oz.” (Yep.)
Since then, I’ve performed in theatres of all shapes & sizes (with and without walls), taught at festivals and conferences (indoors and out of them), facilitated and sat on panels, led workshops at Amazon & event spaces & communities & corporations of various kinds.
In all those years of performing, and holding court, and holding space, I have never been so nervous as I was in December 2021, on the stage pictured in this image, the VOICES stage, for the Business of Fashion conference.
So nervous, my loves. Push back my cuticles nervous. Long deep breaths for 4 speakers worth of speeches nervous. Utter admiration of the oratorical prowess of Janaya Future Khan yet unable to give more than 37% of my attention as I was about to follow them nervous!
For most of my speaking-in-front-of-people life, I’ve recited someone else’s words.
Well. Not exactly, I suppose.
The 4 years worth of words I spoke on the podcast are all mine. They only had an audience of one or two when they were recorded, however. One time there were nine. 50 max (when I hosted horizontal storytelling events in front of a live audience). But those people were all lying down, and so was I, and that’s… horizontality. Horizontality lets air out of the pressure cooker. That’s why I do it.
But this. This was something different. (Verticality.)
Not just verticality. These were my words. Not just my words, but my work. My framework. My thought leadership. My years of summiting the depths and holding complexities in my open palms. My grasping for what is missing in the discourse around intimacy, plucking glimpses from the absence until they began to crystallize.
To share my words, my work, my framework, is exposing in a way I had never before experienced in Theatre, podcasting, Tango, AcroYoga, Clubhouse, Shibari, or any of the other things I’ve ever done and lead and taught and loved.
A childhood friend of mine once told me that she didn’t want to share her special self with just anyone. So if people didn’t like her, it didn’t really matter, because they hadn’t seen the real her. But if she’d shown her special self to someone, and then they didn’t like her, it was actually her that they didn’t like. She didn’t want to give them the opportunity to reject the true her.
I understand. We are so tender.
This talk is called “The Intimacy Equation.”
It begins with me, willing. To share a bit of my special self with the audience. The audience in the room there in Oxfordshire, those watching the Livestream from all over the world, and anyone who might view it in the future. And I don’t know who most of those people are. I don’t know who will be privy to my minor secret. I share it all the same.
I go first.
The talk begins with me, willing. And it ends with: “Connection is worth the risk.”
Connection
is worth
the risk.
So is standing behind my own words.
Thanks to my life on Clubhouse, the Superconnector skills of their Head of Community Steph Simon, and the exquisite care, curatorial prowess, far-sighted visionary skills, & kind invitation of the impeccable Imran Amed, I had the opportunity to bring this talk, 3 years in the making, to light. And to stand, beside, inside, and in front of my own words.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
