That Long Walk
A couple years ago I made a two-hour drive on a Thursday night to tell a five-minute story. It went splendidly.
On the way up I practiced the story several times, considering where to put different points of that story, aiming for what I thought would best keep the audience interested from the first word, “In,” to the last word, “toilet.”
In some future piece I will retell the story I told both nights. It involves a pop star I admired and got to meet.
The plan for after the Thursday event was to spend the two hours driving home practicing the story some more to improve it for another opportunity two nights later on Saturday. My story on Thursday, though, went so well I decided I didn’t need to change a thing.
When I got on stage for the Thursday night storytelling event the audience was captured from the start, quiet in all the right moments and laughing at points expected and not. Out of about 10 speakers I finished second, a tenth of a point behind the winner. (I still think I was better than the guy who won. I’m not bitter.)
On Saturday I bombed. That event was a comedy show. It was the first one I had ever done. I was offered the chance and I accepted, figuring it would make my storytelling better. That night and many since have done that.
What I forgot that night, or never considered until failure hit me, was that I had a different agreement with the Thursday audience than I had with the Saturday crowd. On Thursday they expected a story and got one. The laughs were a bonus. On Saturday they expected comedy, and in that context what had been funny two nights earlier when laughs were unexpected fell flat when comedy was the main course.
As I launch this work with this story, I am fuzzy on what my ultimate agreement is with any audience I manage to gather. There will be stories, lots of those. It’s what I came to appreciate in the 16 years I was a newspaper reporter, telling peoples’ stories. In this media I will be telling a lot of my own.
Like the story I told above, most will have a point.
What my agreement is ultimately, however, may only be discovered as this effort evolves. I’ll write pieces that will resonate, and others that will fall flat. Most will do both, because I assume more than one person will be reading on any given day.
If you’re wondering why you should care at all about anything I have to say, I’m with you. I mentioned I was a reporter. I work in elections now. I am a 58-year-old white man, married, with three kids, and it’s not as if people in my demographic haven’t been heard. I just trust I’m capable of writing valuable things, and that you will, at least sometimes, find it as worthwhile to read as I do to write it. And I enjoy doing this, which is reason enough.
About the title: In the Bruce Springsteen Song Thunder Road Springsteen sings of Mary, urging her to join him as he sets out to make a place in the world. To me it is the most romantic song ever written. Within it is the line, “... my car’s out back if you’re ready to take that long walk from your front porch to my front seat.”
Some risk and succeed, but the world is full of people who took that long walk and found eventual failure. So do 24 of the 25 contestants on The Bachelor, or The Bachelorette, so I’m told. Most, though, stay on the porch. I’m willing to fail, but not ready to stay on the porch. This work, and others I’m doing, is me taking that long walk.
