Mirroring

I’ve talked about the perpendicular and the horizontal before.

Let’s talk about these differently.

People refer to “mirroring”, a term that means that someone identifies with someone else.

If you’re a speaker, how do you want to connect someone else’s “perpendicular” with your own when you speak? How do you get people to identify with you and what you are saying?

Simple language helps.

So does repetition.

But don’t underestimate your audience. Don’t consider a speech an elementary school session that will bore the life out of your audience due to endless repetition, and dull subject matter.

In order to engage your audience, you need the following key elements:

1-the stimulation of something new

2-surprise

Something new:
Don’t be afraid to teach your audience something, or at least remind them of it. You do not want your audience to f eel that you are talking down to them. You do not want them to think that you are part of elite, and they are not.
On the other hand, elite opinion does matter, because it helps provide clear definition and appropriate context required to fully explore and explain vital subjects.

So, you need to “frame” or set a context for your subject matter. When you do that, you need to do it in simple, yet meaningful fashion. You shouldn’t talk down to your audience by seeming to be more intelligent than they are, but you shouldn’t talk down to them by patronizing them, either, appearing to oversimplify complex matters.

Surprise:
Repetition can help make your audience comfortable. But you don’t want your audience to be TOO comfortable.

Remember in an earlier post when I talked about people’s minds insisting on a totality and so showing discomfort with silence.

You can also lead people down a road and suddenly bring them to a sharp turn that they did not anticipate, just as composers put in elements that bring in a new key or a new tempo, or even sudden loud notes to get their audience to pay particular attention.

Get people to identify with you, your thoughts; make that horizontal as strong, varied, and stimulating as it can be.

Stay tuned.

Content and Cadence and Yes We Can

What do composers and speechwriters share in common?

They both need to balance the interplay on the one hand between elements of content, whether pitch for musicians or text for writers and on the other hand, elements of duration, rhythm for musicians, cadence for Speechwriters.

What happens when one element or the other needs to govern in a particular creative situation?

In the late Renaissance, composers, particularly those active in the fledgling art form of opera, decided that the rhythmic elements of speech had to take precedence over concerns of pitch. This philosophy, self-consciously harking back to the dramatic arts of the ancient Greek stage, was known as "Prima Practica".

If text and cadence are two perpendiculars, what sort of horizontal can unite them to make a brilliant speech?

Well, consider two, an inviting silence, and the human mind of the audience.

If you've ever been in a situation of observing speaker and audience, neither element is happy with silence. It's thought of as the equivalent of "dead air" in radio.

But the skillful speaker uses silence to crucial effect. He or she does the same thing with the human minds of the member of the audience.

Since the speaker knows the audience abhors a vacuum, they are more than willing, with the right cue, to help provide the totality that their minds demand.

The most visible example of this horizontal between the perpendiculars of speaker and audience are Barack Obama's "Yes, We Can" answers from the audience.

Which do you think are more important, the questions he asks, or the fact of repetitive and empowering response?

He'll take the rhythm of the response every time over the content of the questions he's asking.

Prima Practica, alive and well in the 21st century world of politics. Stay tuned.

The Perpendicular Problem

In my last Post, I talked about the difference between the message of a prophet and a genius, how the first, according to Kirkegaard is pertuated in more of its totality, mystery, and essence, while the second, no matter how brilliant, still gets broken down and somehow dissolved.

Well, let's return to the problem of how a speaker considers that difference when deciding how to approach his or her audience.

Each potential speaker, whether in private or in public, considers how to connect with some sort of audience, of one person, a few, or a crowd. Picture the potential speaker as a vertical entity, with a point of view, images, and ideas. Other vertical entities exist in the form of the audience, irrespective of size.

What horizontal connects these verticals of speaker and listener?

In the last post, we talked about the insistence on "takeaways". This insistence is akin to the notion of repetition, or being "on message" for a political campaign. We have to say the magic word or phrase, over and over, like some sort of superstitious incantation, lest we step on the crack of the political sidewalk and break the campaign's back as a result.

This is the same approach that commercials use, bludgeoning listeners' minds, particularly in radio, with a repeated, and, as radio ad reps term it, "intrusive" message.

That notion of enforced repetition is the language and idiom of fascism.

Should we be surprised at the coarsening of political dialog, with the suspiciousness and anxiety that the wrong thing might be said and the right thing might not be repeated enough?

And, when politicians see a particular audience, because they've polled that audience exhaustively, they think they know what the audience's perpendicular is, and they think they know what horizontal will "connect" the speaker with those voters.

Add to these concerns of the horizontal and vertical, the problem of market segmentation. What's that?

Well, you love your very small music devices because you can control exactly what you listen to on it. Your choice rules the device. You've never had more choice in this regard, in these smaller and smaller, sliced pieces of media that bring you exactly what you want. Niches...market segmentation...advertisers love these phrases, and so do consumers, who are able to make individually imposed choices and intense satisfaction.

What a perpendicular feast!

But can voters get the same satisfaction in a democratic universe where compromise is a prized value? Are they more inclined or less inclined to get the whole in a world where they are used to getting exactly what they want as consumers?

Notice the perceived famine for the horizontal as a result.

Part of this phenomenon is the localized, messy, deconcentrated, and particularly American democracy, designed in its splendid quirkiness by the Founding Fathers who distrusted the public and each others.

Market Capitalism and democracy raise expectations.

Market segmentation and consumer choice challenge politicians to create a horizontal that can join their vertical to that of the voters. Who will do a better job in discovering or creating the better horizontal in the coming elections?

In short, who will bring "axis grease" and balance the vertical and horizontal most effectively?

Stay tuned.

Ideas That Speak-Returning to our Roots

Wecome to the first post from Ideas That Speak, a new company that works with aspiring speechwriters and helps non-profits with direct mail.

Speechwriting, in a sense, has never been more difficult.

Why?

Because we are centuries removed from the oral cultures that, no matter what our background, began and sustained our communication.

How many times do you, or someone you know, insist, "PUT IT IN WRITING!"

What's the message? The oral isn't authentic somehow. We can't rely on it.

And yet, a politician bursts on the scene, and even without informing or necessarily satisfying voters on his policies and the details of those policies, he makes history by inspiring those voters, sweeping them up on the coattails of his words and the way he speaks them.

How?

Soren Kirkegaard, the Danish thinker, said that the difference between a prophet and a genius is that no matter how brilliant, the message of a genius will be broken down and its essence lost as a result.

However, a prophet's message always retains its totality, its core, somehow. Politicians who speak well, no matter what the details of their message, rely on the prophetic tradition to move voters to give them their trust, despite the unknown choices that such politicians will face in office.

I remember about six months ago, I was at a gathering where an outside speaker spoke about Emotional Intelligence. I think he moved most of us in the audience. However, some, especially, those at the higher end of the organization were uneasy. They wanted more details on how to improve their own and their subordinates' emotional intelligence.

As a result, they missed the point. Their insistence on "takeaways" made them miss the essence of the positive context and inspiration the speaker was trying to provide.

Let that be the feeling you give your audience. Even if they do not remember the details of your speech, even if you don't provide them, move them with your essence, and they will be receptive to your message.

Thanks for joining us here at Ideas that Speak and stay tuned for more posts.