I shake on stage. I shake off stage. The shaking on stage is what interests me. I developed a tremor in my hands as a side effect to a medication ten years ago. Now, when I am on stage doing SLAM poetry, my entire body, at least from my
(more) perception, goes bobble. Theodore Roethke wrote, “My shaking keeps me steady.” My shaking keeps me shaking. The avalanche begins from inside and takes over my cells from the head down. Performing and avalanching is not easy. The audience assumes I am nervous. “We won’t bite you,” someone said to me recently. I have no fear of being bitten; it’s too complicated to explain.
I am a seasoned public speaker. No tremor. None. Put me on a SLAM stage where I am performing comedy or drama and I twitch out. The material is less academic—more acutely personal--all about me. I am in another country where I don’t know the language. “Good shit!” a long-haired guy said to me last night after my performance (high praise in SLAM). I do know a few words but I am still learning. My confidence has not left me but what to do up there is an insecurity I have not mastered. To have a tremor that seems to bend me forward and backward in public is embarrassing. I don’t know what to do about it but keep performing.
The MC calls my name. I walk on stage. The disco light is turning like a small planet. Light flickers through the crowd. I see their quiet upturned faces. That first moment, as many know, is like parasailing off a cliff. Will I fall? Somehow the first words crowd themselves out of my mouth.
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