Your Own Personal Cadence

I mean, that's so you!

Have you ever tried to write something
But been stuck?
By stuck I mean all the things
Blocked, empty, overwhelmed, confused.
Frustrated.
And then so much so
That you try calling someone - a friend - or a coach - a sponsor.
You try talking it out?
And then - wow.
Oh that’s what I was trying to say.
(Don’t forget to record and transcribe… I like rev.com)

That’s because talking
Actually out loud - not just to yourself
Puts you in your rhythm.
And the rhythm of your voice
Is the wave
Your inner truth
Rides in on.

An audience - of one or one hundred thousand
Is like a poultice.
Pulling from us
What is lodged comfortably in our shadows.
Seducing us into our rhythm.
Maybe it’s the thrill of connection
That makes our cadence come to life.

And once the cadence is there
Words seem drawn to it.
Like surfers to the waves.

Fingerprints are such a perfect visual
For your own personal cadence.
Each one unmistakably a finger print.
But each one is so singular.
And I love the way fingerprints
Are screaming at us.
You are not linear!
You are a wave.
Look!
When hands wave
It’s waves waving.
And I think sometimes
When we can’t say what we are trying to say
It’s because we’re trying
To iron the waves out
To turn a swirl
Into a horizon line.

Fingerprints are swirls, whirlpools, waves.
And the breath too.
A wave.
In and out.
Your breathe
Uniquely you.
You have a cadence.

They’ve recently discovered (scientists!!) that our breath
Is as uniquely our own
As our fingerprints.
They call it the ‘fingerprint of breath’.
Not sure why they don’t call it a breath print.
(Scientists!!)

Cadence comes from a word for fall.
You rise and fall
In your own way.

I was once in a dance class
College. Brown. (Lately I’ve had a hankering to be back in dance class!)
Our teacher, the brilliant Julie Strandberg
Had us form a circle and start walking.
She called out someone’s name
And told the person behind them
To walk like them.
Imitate them.
And then person behind them and the person behind them.
Until the whole circle was walking like the first person..
And after a bit the next person did their own walk.
And we mirrored them.
Eventually I learned
I do a little kick with my right foot.
And I favor a tippy toe thing.
It was life changing for me to see - feel.
How we are all so completely ourselves
Without trying.
It’s often the trying that erases us.

Now I occasionally sit and watch people walk by.
The real parade.
No floats or flutes.
Just flavor.

And with talking
You can’t see it.
It’s not as obvious as walking.
But there are verbal
Kicks and sways and tilts and tippy toes.
There’s a cadence.
And when you are true to it
It makes to easier to say what you mean.
To find your real story.
It makes it easier for audiences
To really hear you.

Back in the day when we were first doing UnCab albums
(lots of UnCab for you to enjoy now on audible)
I’d be in another room
And hear a track the editor was working on.
I’d know instantly who it was.
Not by the words - I was too far away - but by the sound of it.
The rhythm of it.
I’d sometimes go in and listen
And I loved looking at the different wave patterns
How different one person’s voice looked from the next.
Seeing the invisible thing is always a shift.

In fact one of the reasons I knew I had to get out of comedy clubs
Was my love of personal rhythm.
That comedy club rhythm that tricks people into laughing.
Drove me crazy.
Audiences were (are still!) being duped!
And because the rhythm was so powerful
Comedians could be lazy about the content.
But Beth, you might say, isn’t the point laughing?
If it works, does it matter?
To me it does.
Because I really love to laugh.
And I never do when I feel manipulated.

And I have an attachment - and yes I know -
Attachment itself is a problem - working on it
But I have an attachment
To this idea of authenticity.
Where people ‘sound like themselves’.
Using sound like in a general way.
For a visual artists it would mean looks like.
And just tonight a wildly talented friend told us
She never sang better than that one time
She wasn’t playing the game.
Just singing from her heart.
She sounded so much - we all agreed - like herself.

In Taylor Hackford’s wonderful doc Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n Roll -
A chronicle of shows celebrating Chuck Berrys 60th birthday
The backstage interviews include one where
Kieth Richards is trying to descrbe what it is about Chick Berry
That makes him so great.
I seem to remember a heater behind him.
But maybe that’s just my mind telling me the this is a hot memory.
Keith says - in that accent,
In that honey coated gravel of a voice.
It’s not just the sound of it….
Long pause. Searching.
It’s the total sound of it.
I think about that a lot.
The total sound of it.

The cadence.
The rhythm.
The total sound of it.

---

And in life
We rise and fall
In our own time.
We have our own seasons.

There’s this great sequence of scenes
In the Truman Capote biopic Infamous
Where he’s telling his swans a story
One after another
Letting his voice find the truth
Before he goes to pen.
You see him discovering the story of In Cold Blood
And he talks.
Trying things out.
And I mean talk about a personal cadence.

The relationship between writing and talking
Is, I don’t know
Maybe a kind of love story.

With the writing longing for perfection.
And this longing at odds
With another one
The longing be brave enough
To be vulnerable.
Because only then is it possible
To be known.
To be seen.
To be heard.

The willingness to know
You won’t live forever
The ultimate vulnerability
And that while you are here
You may as well
Do it in your time.
You may as well
Spend the time you have here
In the timing that you were born with.
Your pulse.
Your beat.
Your rhythm.

Your own
Personal
Cadence.

xx
Infinitely yours,
B

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🌀 Your own personal cadence - just one of the ways to be you—but funnier.
I rarely teaching this workshop these days, but I’m thrilled to be doing it at The Crow at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica —
Monday, November 17.
My only live LA session this year.
🎟️ Register now!

🎯 Before that... pick the right project.
Because if you pick the wrong one, all the cadence in the world won’t help.
I've been helping creatives choose successful projects foreva.
Pick Your Next Project
A free live webinar on Zoom —
Wednesday, September 10.
🎟️ Register here!

🎭 Want to see me and my own personal cadence... live on stage? You do? Yay!
Come to my solo show:
It’s A Lot: Adventures in the Goo Age
Friday, October 24 at El Cid in LA.
💃 Tickets here!

💬 Curious about what your cadence is calling out for?
Let’s explore together in a free mini coaching session.
📅 Grab a spot on my calendar!