[Your Voice - VII]
I watched a new Jim Gaffigan release the other day. He went on and on about being over weight for twenty minutes (no surprise there). He followed his food and weight jokes with a ten minute run about horses. I noticed two things while listening to his endless stream of jokes: 1) He notices and highlights the the funniest details (eg Imagine wearing metal shoes and putting them on with nails), and 2) his delivery is funny; his content is mostly true (eg A racehorse retires from racing at three years old to a life of studding—that seems like an upgrade).
Not all of us are cut out for standup. But all of us have a voice, and standup and voice always share these two things: 1) paying attention, and 2) telling the truth.
Your voice is not a broad stroke endeavor. It requires looking closely over a long period of time. What’s your subject matter? Pay attention. Take notes. Look for nuance and bias and idiosyncrasy. You will begin to see trends, interactions, and influences that you were previous blind to. These details can only be shared with precision. Paying attention always precedes precision.
Your voice cannot be plagiarized or faked. That’s someone else’s voice (or propaganda). Who’s your audience? They need the truth. Your voice is the conduit for that truth and if words are cherry picked from elsewhere, minced, or faked, their lives are deficient. To be clear, truth-telling is not cold fact-sharing. Truth-telling is as much a measurement of whether the content being communicated is consistent with the convictions of the teller as it is a correlation to some measurable fact in the world. Truth-telling is the pulse of your heart.
Pay attention. Tell the truth.
