Strictly Personal

Continuing from my post on ticklebooth:

One of the greatest speeches. The best presidential speech I have ever witnessed. With such high expectations, with so much pressure, in a friggin’ stadium, with the biggest audience watching – he simply nailed it. It was so emotional even though there was nothing fluffy about what he said.

As I walked my dog afterwards, I realized that his focus must have been on intention. Behind every word, he did not emphasize the poetics of it but the why of it. I never understood how people were inspired by speeches. My cynical outlook saw speeches as verbal punches. And though there were many punches that landed on McCain. I was truly inspired. I was set to motion. Powerful stuff. My adrenaline is rushing.

I can’t stop thinking about it. Couple of belated thoughts. When one learns anything incredibly difficult, they are taught to be in the moment. Writing, acting, sports, relationships. The fight is to be immersed in the moment. Obama is the master of his moment.

Before he went on, MSNBC commentators said it might take him about 30 minutes to just simply read the speech, without pauses and emphasis. This was a problem. The plan was that at 10pm, a quick introduction from Senator Durbin would be made followed by a short video about Obama who would then walk out to deliver his speech that was supposed to begin at 10:15 eastern time. Television networks would cut to the local news around 11pm. That left Obama 45 minutes to make his case. He couldn’t just read the speech, he had to speak it out loud. If he simply read it, it would sound like Al Gore’s speech from earlier that night. He also had to have the proper entrance and exit worthy of a 70,000 stadium audience. Two minutes for entrance, 8 minutes for the exit. The Obama people were hoping for some quick soundbites (favorable of course) from their anchors before they switched off to the local channels. This could somewhat overlap with the exit. So in a sense, Obama had about 35 minutes tops.

Now if you didn’t know all of this, you wouldn’t have thought about it twice because Obama nailed it, along with the proper entrance and exit, the proper pauses and crowd interruptions. Everything worked. Here is how:

A couple minutes before 10pm, Senator Durbin started his intro. Obama’s intro video finished around 10:13. I was nervous. Around 10:14, Obama finally manages to get the crowd to quite down and starts his speech. Only a minute headstart, Obama must have felt the pressure because after brief thank you’s, the next 2-3 minutes of his speech seemed to be on the express train. I don’t remember anything he said in the period. But if you look at the text, it is classic Obama material. But because it had been said before, he flew past it. I remember wondering “this feels like a blur”.

It was only when he reached McCain, did he finally slow down. He was back to his normal pause and reflect kind of style. It kept slowing down but never to a point where it was eating up time. His pauses were just enough, his pace was steady but full of intent. Thinking back, this is what made it magical, that with all of these external time pressures, Obama relied upon his internal rhythm to keep pace. There was never a disconnect with what he was saying and feeling or acting. It was beautiful.

Now I didn’t get a look at the clock to see when he finished because I was pumping fists and jumping in elation. It was like a watching a incredible game with your team winning. But it felt like, he finished around 10:50pm. I could be very easily wrong here but there was plenty of time for the Michelle & daughers, Biden’s and all the rest to come out, wave, watch the fireworks and leave. All before 11pm. The anchors were buzzing about the speech before it cut to local networks. Incredible!