June 27: Interview Tonight, Sounding Unintelligent, Poems

I will be interviewed tonight by the documentary filmaker.  I'm a little nervous about it.  It's the same sort of nervousness I get when I give a poetry reading or sit on some kind of discussion panel or teach a class.  I know what the source of this anxiety is:  I'm worried about sounding unintelligent.  My biggest fear, when I'm speaking as an authority on any subject (and I'm not an authority on any subject), is that I will look or sound like an absolute idiot.  (I'm picturing the scene from Bruce Almighty where Jim Carrey makes Steve Carell blather and babble like a rabid chimp during a news broadcast.  That's what I'm worried about.)

However, I'm just going to show up with my little notebook of poems and be myself.  I've already picked out a few poems that I think are appropriate.  Either the filmaker is going to like me or she's not.  I will either end up in her film or deleted from her hard drive.  I can't do anything about it, except be the best "me" I can be.

Hopefully, Saint Marty won't fart when the camera starts recording.

This is what I don't want to sound like