Devil's Spoke

"If you are not nervous, it means you don't care enough."

When speaking in public, we are often advised to picture our audience in their underwear (the PG13 Glee version) or completely naked in order to take away from the power they have over the speaker. As a collective, they can be more judgemental, protected by those around them. As Anonymous states, "None of us are as cruel as all of us". It has never worked for me. Maybe I lack imagination. I tend to think a degree of nervousness is good, because it makes you excited about presenting, and pushes you do do well.

The presentation at school went fine, well even. Maybe going back was a good thing, if not only to see what has changed, but also to realise that teaching teenagers may not be for me, if I had the choice. I used to be part of the youth, now it is this strange in-between stage where you are neither completely an adult, but you have lost the idealistic arrogance of adolescence.

To celebrate the success of the day (and it being the start to the weekend), we went to watch the Hipster Event of the year, Dear Reader performing at Open Window. Not that the band itself is excessively hipster/underground, but aided by the setting and the audience we earned ourselves enough hipster points to be able to not wear skinny jeans for a year and still be considered 'cool'.

They performed in a small lecture hall, with around 50 people sitting on the floor and on a few chairs. I thought it was a bit audacious, charging for admission and then not even providing enough seats. We had to go to the auditorium to steal some chairs. It is not like I mind standing during a concert, but if everyone is just going to stare at the stage for an hour and a half and not show any emotional reaction, I prefer my butt to be comfortable in the face of such restrictions.

Ordinarily, I would expect people to at least sway around or tap their feet to the beat for a bit, but the height of expression was one guy uttering "Brilliant." after each song. Sure, there was clapping, and it was an entertaining enough concert as such. I just felt as though the mood transmitted by the setting was one of seclusion, elitism,  and hipster-ness where one is not allowed to be into anything too much.

If you live in Germany, you can check Dear Reader out live since the main member resides in Berlin now, for the rest there is YouTube.