Distraction? Inspiration?

When I'm not writing speeches, I'm a singer - so I often find music going through my head at odd times.  A few months ago, I got pretty annoyed by it.  I was on deadline, had to come up with a title and theme and write an abstract for a speech by the end of the day.  But every time I tried to think about the speech, there was this song.

I tried to swat it away, to think serious thoughts, but it kept coming back.  Finally, I just gave up and listened to it for a moment...and I realized that I'd found my theme.  That song turned out to be the perfect entry point for the discussion my speaker wanted to lead.  Fortunately, he's secure enough of his business cred that he was open to standing up in a serious forum and quoting Rodgers & Hammerstein (well, the Hammerstein part of that duo, anyway).

I got to hear him deliver the finished product and I've never been so proud to hang out anonymously in the back of a room.  The audience loved it.  They were engaged in the speech within moments and they stayed engaged throughout.  Lots of meaty questions in the Q&A proved that the fanciful statement of the theme had enhanced rather than masked the points he wanted to make.

So I pay attention to distractions.  Because sometimes they're the doorway to creativity.

Home-Building, Pueblo-Style

A musician friend of mine gave me a few chapters from The Dance of Life by Edward T. Hall, a study of how rhythms shape our individual lives and the way we interact with other people. It's intriguing enough that I'll be reading the rest of the book, once I get my hands on it.

Anyway, just came across this passage that resonated with me and thought I'd share. Discussing the different rhythms of Anglo-European American culture and Native American culture, Hall points out that before Anglo-Europeans build a house, they buy the land and secure the financing. Pueblo Indians, he says, do the same things but have one more precondition:

"Before a shovel of earth can be turned, all the right thoughts must be present. The Pueblos believe that thoughts have a life of their own and that these live thoughts are an integral part of any man-made structure and will remain with that structure forever. Thoughts are as essential an ingredient as mortar and bricks."

You Never Know (or, My summer reading so far)

I tucked into my first book of the vacation ready for some intellectual stimulation. Just because the sun is out doesn't mean I can't learn something that might improve me professionally, right?

The Black Swan turned out to be (as advertised) well-written and well-argued. Also an incredibly subversive read for a girl with a specialty in financial services who makes her living writing speeches for corporate types. This book could get me fired, I thought, even as I giggled my way guiltily through the author's dissection of...well, all the things that pay my mortgage, like narrative and causality and forecasting.

So my next selection - Brother Ray, the autobiography of Ray Charles - is turning out to be lemon sorbet for my overstimulated brain. And while I thought I would be reading it from my perspective as a musician, the speechwriter in me is extremely impressed at how the co-author, David Ritz, has captured Charles' voice perfectly.

Six Years Ago: Happy

Just stumbled across these notes I made back in June 2003 and they made me smile. It's not often you get such concrete proof of moments of sheer happiness; I'm glad I stopped to write about these.

5 June 2003
I need to write this down before the world intrudes and I forget how unremittingly happy I have been in the last few days.

All my life, since I began my life as a speechwriter, I have wanted to write political speeches. One week ago, I started my first – no, a week ago yesterday, Wednesday. By Friday, I’d sent in the commencement speech; by Saturday, the long (40-minute), substantive speech in which the candidate was announcing a new policy initiative. Saturday, pretty much all day, I was a wreck – convinced that the speech was too long, too wonky because of all the details they wanted included. I was convinced that the speech (to use a technical term) sucked.

Sunday morning, 11:44 a.m. – an email from the policy director to what seemed like everyone in the campaign, from campaign manager on down: “Attached is a wonderful draft by Elaine Bennett...” Monday an email to me from the same guy: “Elaine, you really are a wonderful writer. I’m thrilled to read your work.” Tuesday, my boss was driving around with the candidate and he says, with what sounds like awe when he recounts it, “Hey, you’ve really got a wonderful speechwriter there.” Yesterday, Wednesday, the candidate says to me, “Thank you – it was a wonderful speech” or – I don’t actually know what he said (I was too amazed that he was saying it to listen), but he was smiling when he said it.

Speech!

We always spend Thanksgiving in Northampton, Massachusetts - a quintessential college town. And I always check out the latest offerings in the store that sells dorm room kitsch, funky T-shirts and stationery, and - my new favorite item - fingerless gloves (great for writers too cheap to turn up the heat).

This trip, I found a new item in stock: a poster, probably four feet long and maybe a foot wide, bearing the text of the speech Barack Obama gave in Grant Park on Election Night.

Imagine that - a speech so inspirational that it's inspired a poster. It's been a long time since we've had one of those. What a wonderful time to be an American. And a speechwriter.

"we are fellow Americans..."

This week's issue of The New Yorker has a great exegesis of President-Elect Obama's victory speech. (And yes, I know that word is usually reserved for religious texts.) But as great a night as it was, and as eloquent and moving a speech as it was - exactly what was needed at the end of a divisive campaign and the beginning of an era of historic change - for me, the most memorable speech-giving of the night happened an hour or so earlier, and half a continent away.

I did not vote for John McCain, but his concession speech was remarkable in its sincerity and humility. I can't recall another concession speech in which the just-defeated candidate spoke so warmly and with such appreciation for the accomplishments of his opponent.

It reminded me of the John McCain I read about in a Vanity Fair article a couple of years ago*, talking in a speech about his imprisonment in Vietnam:

“Very far from here and long ago, I served with men of extraordinary character, honorable men, strong, principled, wise, compassionate, and loving men,” McCain told the students. “Better men than I, in more ways that I can number….Some of them were beaten terribly, and worse. Some were killed….Most often, they were tortured to compel them to make statements criticizing our country and the cause we had been asked to serve. Many times, their captors would briefly suspend the torture and try to persuade them to make a statement by promising that no one would hear what they said, or know that they had sacrificed their convictions. Just say it and we will spare you any more pain, they promised, and no one, no one will know. But the men I had the honor of serving with always had the same response, ‘I will know. I will know.’

"I wish that you will always hear the voice in your own heart, when you face hard decisions in your life, to hear it say to you, again and again, until it drowns out every other thought: 'I will know. I will know. I will know.' ”

If that John McCain had run in this election, the outcome would have been far closer - and perhaps not to my liking.

But at least that John McCain showed up on Election Night, to try to heal some of the divisions he and his campaign team exacerbated, and to point the way forward for us. The New York Times transcript captured it like this: " 'Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans. And please believe me when I say no association has ever meant more to me than that.' (Cheers, applause.)"

*Unfortunately, the Vanity Fair web site only carries an extract of this article. Look it up in the original mag - "Prisoner of Conscience" by Todd S. Purdum, February 2007.

Words of wisdom, free for you today

Alexander Graham Bell was a smart man. And not just because he invented the telephone, folks. But because he had a philosophy that allowed him to invent the telephone, by learning from past mistakes and moving on to make new ones.

"When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us."

Thanks to the folks at American Public Media for that tidbit. It's from The Writers' Almanac, a daily compendium of poetry and writerly wisdom, available to you - yes, and you too - simply by signing up for the e-newsletter.