Speak Easy

I have to write a speech and give it. This can’t be just any old speech, because I’ve won a drawing for everyday people who want to participate in the national convention for the Democratic party. Only one name was selected - mine. Oddly enough, there was no requirement to belong to the party; my friends submitted my name as a joke. Everybody who knows me is aware of how I have a very hard time speaking in public. I stammer and stutter, break out in a sweat that gives me a shiny face and drenches the back of my shirt. I look flustered and I am. It’s very easy for me to lose track of what I’m trying to say. 

Because I get so nervous, I know I cannot improvise even ten seconds of speaking; I have to read from a printed copy and I’m going to do research on how to write a good speech. There’s a lot of information the internet and I have followed it. Here is what I was able to write after fifty hours of work. I’m going to share the parts of my speech with you, but please note that I won’t use numbers and instructions when I actually go out onto the stage. Guess this is more like a rough draft. You are welcome to make suggestions, especially if I’ve made any glaring errors or have left out important things. I really want to nail this!

Here goes. I see there are eight steps a person can follow when they want to prepare what the website calls ‘an engaging speech’:

Choose an important topic. 

There are so many topics that are important. How can I possibly choose just one? There’s climate change. There’s safe drinking water. Countries like Honduras really have challenges in supplying water to the people. I’m also thinking disease, especially epidemics or pandemics, has to be considered. New illnesses appear all the time, and once-eliminated ones return far too frequently. They can be devastating. And what about the shortage of teachers, of medical personnel, of sashiko thread, even aluminum foil and coconut palms?

I debated between the need for prison reform and the overpopulation of ladybugs (which is really not a big deal when compared to the disappearance of lightning bugs). When all is said and done, however, I think I’m going to go with genocide. It’s apparently not going to disappear any time soon, and I’m getting horrendous nightmares seeing bloody, headless and legless babies. Clearly the parents aren’t able to keep their children out of the way of drones, so we must do something. The question is, what can we do?

Consider your audience. 

This is tough. Who wants to listen to a speech about bloody babies? It sounds like the bloody countess invented by Angela Carter. Yes, some people will say I’m exaggerating things; others will accuse me of making it all up. I could concentrate on dead baby hippos or yaks, perhaps. That might attract interest. Or I could voice strong criticism of book banning or writing in books, which as we know is very disrespectful of both their authors and the owners of the books. I could get very worked up over a big book problem, but it would seem throwing in the bloody part would capture more attention. Maybe school children blown to bits along with any adults near the classroom? Having them photographed afterward, shredded books still in their hands, would really blow people’s minds (no pun intended). 

Prepare a structure. 

Hmmm. I’m not very good at structure, but maybe can just stick with the format of (1) tell them what you’re to talk about; (2) talk about it; and (3) draw conclusions, telling the audience what you’ve just talked about. Shouldn’t be all that hard. Now in the case of genocide, which I’m leaning toward using as my topic although am not completely committed to it, I have to be careful: people usually ignore it, or they refuse to believe it is happening now. Maybe I could go with an old genocide, one proven to be historically horrific? Or I could try to engage the people listening to me, in a kind of call-and-response structure? Plato or Aristotle and dialogues? Not sure who invented that. Inductive reasoning? Aristotle or Thucydides or Herodotus? Those names are hard to get to roll off your tongue when you’re in front of a large audience.

Or I could do the what-if structure, hypothetically speaking, so what if there were a genocide? What would we do? What wouldn’t we do? Maybe the audience would need a definition, in which case that would be the first segment of my structure: define the term. Next, give examples people can relate to, if it’s possible to relate to such a calamitous situation. (At this point, I’m leaning slightly the other way, because the complete loss of lightning bugs aka fireflies is unfathomable and people would cringe at the thought of all the future childhoods lived without them.)

Another problem with the topic of genocide is framing it in time. When did it start and when did it end? How is also important, because ending lives can be carried out by many means. 

Let’s stop and back up for a minute. While I’m now considering the double topic of how people can’t write cursive any more and also why fountain pens (the kind you don’t use with cartridges), I’m still mulling over the loss of human life. It seems to me I do need to provide you with a definition, which you can shape as you please. Genocide = the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race. The term, derived from the Greek genos (“race,” “tribe,” or “nation”) and the Latin cide (“killing”), was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-born jurist who served as an adviser to the U.S. Department of War during World War II. Oh, I need to put quotes around that and cite my source, which is the Britannica. More history: It was coined in 1944. 

I can see a big problem here, because deliberate and systematic are vague terms, plus who’s got the right to say mass killing is deliberate or systematic? I think that’s in the eye of the beholder. Very subjective. Nowhere do we see any statistics in this definition - for example, what percentage of a group? Over how long a period? If the process takes four centuries, is it genocide? Four days? Months? Years? Clearly I need to delve into this topic more.

Begin with a strong point. 

A strong point could be that genocide is good (for some) or bad (for some). For many, it doesn’t exist. Like fantasy sports. Or fairies. Which reminds me, nobody has done a speech on Hobgoblins recently; that topic might draw a crowd. I could start off with: Do hobgoblins exist? I think my moral compass is going to insist that I condemn genocide, although I could include the concept that it may be no more real than leprechauns and the phoenix. However, just because genocide’s bad doesn’t mean it exists. Did it ever?

Use concrete details and visual aids. 

This might seem easy, but permission to use images or sound files can get pricey. I need to think about the face(s) of genocide and there are photos on the internet but the majority are black and white. That kind of works against the visual value of the colors red, carmine, vermilion, watermelon, garnet, etc. They have real appeal to an audience. In black and white, blood just looks like smudges of dirt, and you have to pair it with blown-out brains, missing and frayed limbs, fire-blistered bodies to get any real effect out of an image. Floppy babies, unraveled arms and legs, heads missing. Too true to be real; people will think I got some soft plastic dolls like they had back in the fifties and altered their appearance.

Other visual aids could be flattened buildings, piles of rubble. Not a number one attraction for audiences, because if you’ve seen one razed city you’ve seen them all. Although adding the sound of drones and missiles could help spice things up. The bombs bursting in air… just like in the national anthem of the USA. Emotional, very moving. Maybe I can pull the geocide theme off after all.

Include a personal element. 

This seems very important. I can bring people to tears with my portrayal of a black walnut tree. My grandfather still appears in my nightmares, but no thanks to Freud. Nobody wants to hear about my grandfather, though. Someday I’ll write something about his starched white shirts and his Phillies cigars. Not this time, however.

I suppose I’m not qualified to speak on genocide, since I never was in one. I never even saw one and don’t understand how they can happen. Does this disqualify me? Maybe I should have chosen deep-river fishing’s merits, or challenges of small-town living. Or the treasure that is Portugal. I’ve done the fishing and have been to Portugal many times, but never experienced a genocide. On what can I substantiate my rejection of this human condition? How can I get people to accept my belief that genocide is bad? Or that there is such a thing? With all the sports on tv and all the bloody injuries, people have enough to keep track of already. Then there are the mass shootings in many cities and states that are horrifying. People don’t have time for genocide.

My personal connection is a hatred for war. I’ve talked about this on other occasions, just not in a speech. The abbreviated story is that I’m the daughter of a veteran. A sweet man, so sweet that I never asked him about his time in war because I didn’t want to know how many people he had killed. My father the killer. Not a happy thought. Mostly genocide is connected to war, in any event.

Consider rhetorical devices. 

This is complex, but I’ll be brief.

• Alliteration: Repetition of the sound of the first word or syllable of each word in a phrase. Eg, Genocide was not a great idea for Germany. If it is happening in Ghana and Congo, then it is not a great gesture in those places either.

• Anadiplosis: Start the next part of a phrase with the last word of the previous phrase. Eg, we’re all convinced that the situation in Iceland is not a genocide. A genocide is extermination. Iceland is not exterminating anybody. Extermination is not necessary in Iceland.

• Antimetabole: Reverse certain words or phrases and repeat them in successive clauses. Eg, If you bomb somebody, you will be bombed. Or: I cannot see you, but I see that you can (eg, target a hospital or wedding).

• Antithesis: Put two opposing ideas together to display the contrast between them. This one isn’t so easy. I could use the quote from the web, from Neil Armstrong, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." That’s one small step toward war in one country, one giant step toward World War III.

• Metaphor: Compare two aspects or ideas using a term or phrase that isn't literally true yet conveys a meaning that's easy to understand. I’m too tired to come up with any good metaphors, but I can try the color theme again. Eg, a mother to her flattened daughter: ‘My love is like a red, red rose…’ oh, but that’s a similar. Maybe: All around the encampment was strewn with human poppies.

• Simile: Compare two ideas or aspects using the words as or like. See Metaphor.

• Asyndeton: Omit conjunctions, such as and, to increase the tempo of speech or highlight an idea. A popular example of asyndeton that Julius Caesar said is, "I came. I saw. I conquered." I can’t use this. Hillary already did when she said of a leader in a far-away place: ‘We came, we saw, he died.’ That never seemed very nice. Gangsters talk like that. Maybe I’ll try a ‘what if’ scenario and get my audience smiling. Eg, ‘What if there were no war (shades of John and Yoko), what if there were peace, were gardens of real poppies, red roses of love for the living, roses, just roses…?’

End memorably. 

You tell me what is memorable. Or true. And wrong, wrong, wrong.

Genocide. What is good for? Absolutely nothing!

I will scream that song at the top of my lungs!