I love a finished speaker.
By that, I don’t necessarily mean someone who’s refined but one who finally ends his monologue. Whew!
I don’t consider myself an expert at the dais but I do know that after 69 years of lending an ear or two, I’m entitled to an opinion.
Take the month of April that just passed. If I listened to one speaker expound upon the virtues of April 24th, I’ve heard a couple dozen. Perhaps I’m a glutton for punishment. Attending five commemorations may be four too many.
As a conscientious Armenian, however, I believe in supporting the cause, even to the extent of attending two observances in one day, then hopping a bus ride to New York the following morning in the rain so I could join 3,000 other brazen Armenians looking for justice.
That particular podium certainly got a workout with 15 speeches being rendered in one form or another, whether they were echoing someone else’s sentiments or their own. I sometimes think public speakers like to hear themselves talk, and Armenians are no exception.
Unfortunately, they never heard of the three B’s: be brief, be interesting, be gone.
They run the gamut. There’s the speaker who forgets his watch and is more likely to go by the calendar. Someone else with an addiction to diction. Another who approaches the microphone by wishing everyone well, then sends them into delirium.
You have the academic who’s better off having an interpreter and the loudmouth who speaks 145 words a minute with gusts up to 190. His pitch is compatible to a Mount St. Helen’s eruption.
There’s the American Senator looking to make an immediate impression and starts his delivery with a firm “parr-rev.” The crowd goes wild, not because he made a feeble attempt to speak Armenian but because he could certainly use a lesson in semantics.
There are those who go into gyrations and others who resemble a statue. We have the extemporaneous and the manuscript artist, counting the pages as he turns. Most of those I hear are men. But for my money, female speakers are a lot more inviting.
And don’t get the idea that the best writers are also the best speakers. More often than not, it’s one or the other.
I recall a speaker once expounding about the virtues of the Armenian language. To delineate his point, the man decided to recite the Armenian alphabet with a good deal of gusto. Each letter followed the other until he managed to enunciate all 38 letters.
The man was so good, so effective, that an Irish bartender offered this opinion: “I have no idea what he said but that was some kind of speech.”
They’re still talking about the time a speaker was given the hook—more precisely the watch—during a genocide talk in Merrimack Valley. It wasn’t until someone from the audience stood up and pointed to his watch that the speaker halted his remarks.
Embarrassing as it was at the time, today people are more casual about the gesture.
The thought often occurs to me as to why more people do not attend our observances and celebrations. Could it be because they find the speeches overwhelming and redundant? Are Armenians bored to death by the rhetoric?
Much too often, we wind up preaching to the choir, like the priest who chastises those in the pews for the lack of a congregation. I, for one, found it disappointing when the Times Square commemoration was moved indoors to a church because of a little rain.
Why the committee didn’t defy Mother Nature is beyond me. It was nothing a few umbrellas and a little perseverance wouldn’t have solved. Didn’t our martyrs die in the rain?
Had it been outdoors, we would have gathered many a pedestrian to our midst, gained more of an impact, and driven home a more valid point—that a little adversity isn’t going to stop 3,000 Armenians.
I felt bad for those dedicated Armenians, however few they were, standing in the rain waiting for the program to begin and not being informed of the site change. With today’s technology and hand-held do-it-all computers, it should have been an easy procedure.
As a speaker, I may be guilty of my own ineptitude sometimes. While getting carried away once during a political rally, I noticed people starting to leave their seats. One by one, off they went, and yet, I didn’t get the hint until only one other person had remained.
“How come you stayed?” I asked the lone guest.
“I follow you,” he retorted.
When all is said and done, my advice to Armenian speakers is this: Leave your audience before they leave you.
Tom Vartabedian
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Tom,
Well said. I think the biggest message in your article was the fact that the April 24 memorial was brought indoors. If I remember correctly the whole purpose of the April 24 demonstration in Time Square was to make a point to the Turkish government and the general public so they know we are serious about our cause. However, when I heard that it was brought indoors, the first thought was what a shame since our martyrs walked through the desert and died in the harsh conditions of Der Zor and now we are so lame that we can not withstand the rain in the middle of New York City. Where there is an umbrella for sale on every corner. The second thought was who we are demonstrating for? All the people who were there already knew about the genocide. I looked around and there was no Turk present, no usual Turkish journalist to report on the event and no American general public who forsakes their values and supports the so called Turkish alliance with the US. It reminded me of the old tree falling in the forest and no one to hear its noise. That was when I got up and left, before this pitiful demonstration of the Armenian resolve was staged. If I was in the Turks’ shoes I would wonder how serious the Armenians are about the genocide, when they would not even brave few drops of rain to demonstrate. Certainly no one of consequence heard about what happened in the basement of the Diocese except some Armenians. It was funny to read how people were patting each other on the back about the great speeches.
Armen
The banners at the Diocese April 24 (25) events were nice. Really hardnosed for a change.