"That Were The Fear"
This is a SECRET SOCIETY
First I must tell you that NEXT WEEK I will be taking a fast ferry across Lake Michigan to bring justice, songs, and surprises once again to Wisconsin.
I surely will have a new GREAT LAKES BEACH REPORT for you at that show, so click this link to join us in MADISON, or this one to join us in THE TWIN CITIES, where we will be performing the next night.
Meanwhile, I had a lovely time in Portland, Maine on Tuesday, where I sat on stage to be interviewed by Ray Routhier of the Portland Press Herald as part of their MAINE VOICES LIVE series, even though I and my voice are from Massachusetts.
The audience did not murder me, and I am grateful.
Some of them were obvious SECRET SOCIETY members. And speaking of Maine Voices, one of these people even dared me to apply my terrible Maine accent to the “Litany Against Fear” from the novel DUNE. And so I did it.
If you roll back a little in the video, you can hear me explain how meaningful this passage actually is to me when I am not making fun of it.
I first read the Litany Against Fear when I was 13. It was my first try reading DUNE, and a failed one. My brain was not ready yet for a wordy book about space MBAs negotiating planetary trade deals and the physiognomy of drug pooping giant worms.
But luckily the Litany came early enough in the story that it got into me before I literally tossed the book aside in boredom to go see GHOSTBUSTERS.
As I mention in the video, the Litany was my first introduction to the idea that big feelings are not fatal. This was hard for a conflict averse only child to take in. Fear, shyness, anxiety—I took these all to be advance proof that I did not deserve to succeed or be happy.
The concept that I could accept fear as information—a blunt chemical message from the animal part of my brain designed to keep me alive in a wilderness setting—and that I could accept this message, read it, and throw it away, was profoundly freeing.
As I mentioned on the BLANK CHECK podcast, I used to recite it before big tests in high school. And I still return to it now, because to be very honest, doing these live JUDGE JOHN HODGMAN shows is very scary.
Unlike my one person shows, which afforded me the confidence of a script, every one of these JJHO shows is different. They are essentially improv with strangers. And while I’ve done lots of them, there is always a full, barely-bearable 40 minutes or so of abject terror when my brain is screaming at me that THIS TIME I will absolutely fail.
I wish I could tell you that the Litany helps calm me down in these 40 minutes. But it doesn’t. Nothing can help. There are times when those big emotions simply hold you for 40 minutes, but the Litany is at least a reminder that you WILL break free.
The fear will pass. And the way it always passes for me is to wait out my time til curtain, force my legs to move until I am on stage, and then: survive. My brain kicks in, it sees jokes, it connects dots, it comes up with questions, it flows with answers.
The part of my brain that wants me to survive is almost always a little bit stronger than the part that wants to sabotage me. If I succumbed to the fear and did not go on stage, I’d have it as my nauseating passenger forever. But when I get out there and do the thing I’m afraid of, only I remain.
I hope that’s true for you too.
This isn’t to say I don’t have a lot of fun on the road as well. I do! Mostly because I get to visit with YOU. I’m grateful to all who came out to see the shows, including all the precocious children who always sit in the front row, two of my five aunts in Philadelphia, and that haunted painting of Baby Marty.
Oh, you will be hearing more about Marty the Haunted Baby Painting soon.
And of course I will be returning to Maine with the full JUDGE JOHN HODGMAN show in November, and you can join me there by clicking HERE.
But now it is time to ascend the stairs to the SECRET ROOM so that I may fulfill my promise and my threat to continue murdering MOBY DICK for you….
