public speaking

1. I've done a fair amount of public speaking over the last couple of years to try to promote my book (which seemed necessary, given that I basically had no platform before the book was published), and what strikes me reading your comments is that most of my gigs have been the sort of thing you describe: The event or conference organizers, at least, and often a good number of the audience members (or at least the most vocal ones) too, had already read the book and wanted me to come and have a conversation with them about it. There has always been a lecture, but that's rarely been the main course, so to speak. It's almost always been about the conversation with me, and those are the things I remember about my trips as well, not so much the lecture themselves.

2. This is Wesley Hill, by the way. Not sure why my Google account is showing up as "Unknown."

3. A text-based mind is at odds with an orality-based mind; as a prisoner of the page many have difficulty relating thoughts on an acoustic plane; public speaking is a play, it is theatre, it is enhanced conversation…it is difficult when one spends all hours as a prisoner of text. the rules of grammar,syntax and punctuation do not apply on the acoustic level, coding/decoding rules are acoustically based on poetry, pacing, voice, pauses, emphasis, tone, etc.

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