We’ll compliment each
other, like Dick and Tommy Smothers.
Because, sloopy as I am, I can
be intense. I try to bring it, yes, but everyone can see, I’m sloppy.
You’re intense too—you shut
your eyes and sway back and forth on stage. You’re very accurate, and very
loud.
Our performances are a mixed
bag. Here’s the deal: you either have to play loud in bars, and have the
audience sort of ignore you (it seems),
or you have to connect more
intimately in coffeehouse venues, where being loud and stagy doesn’t help.
Now think of a poet promoting
their book. The book is the cool thing—the performance can be, and usually is,
desultory.
The poet just says, here’s one
of the poems in my cool book. Then people buy the book—or not, but some do, and
some will even read it.
Point is, the actual poem
performances are not important.
The cool bar musician must be
more engaging than a poet with a book. If they’re not, the performance falls
flat.
The poet’s performance can’t
fall flat because it was never intended to be engaging.
OK, we’ve had the cool bar
music performer and the poet with a book. Last, we have the sloppy-warm coffeehouse
performer.
In a bar, or as a poet with a
book, you have an audience because you’re cool—people will listen to you (or shout
over you, or zone you out), whatever you play or read.
As for the coffeehouse
performer, I’m already afraid they’ll be too smarmy. They’re sloppy like a big
sloppy kiss.
So what do you need to be a
performer? You need some interesting material, and you need to perform it in an
engaging way.
“Engaging” means respectful of
the audience’s need for two things, one positive, one negative: to be
entertained, and not to be put upon.
Paradoxically, the audience
wants both to be touched and to be left alone.
To be touched by someone you
don’t know is yucky.
That’s where music helps. The
audience can listen to the music and be touched unawares.
So if you’re going to perform
music in a coffeehouse, be sloppy enough to be warm, but be sure to play and
sing accurately, so that you’re enjoyable.
If you’re going to perform
poems anywhere at all, be sure to bring a harmonium, as Ginsberg did.
