Storyteller’s notebook: Backstage with the host of TEDx Salem 2015

ANTICIPATION

7:30 am

Morn­ing sun­light pen­e­trates through the win­dows, through the locked gate drawn down over the open­ing to the main gallery of the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter, and onto the vol­un­teers mak­ing final prepa­ra­tions for the oncom­ing rush. Gift bags are laid out in dozens of rows, next to name badges for over 400 atten­dees, guests, vol­un­teers and speak­ers. A chaos of activ­i­ty the night before, of late-night piz­za box­es and miss­ing tables and fran­tic last-minute errands, drifts into a calm of antic­i­pa­tion in the final min­utes before the doors open.

Inside the locked, dark­ened San­ti­am Ball­room, tech­ni­cians fin­ish lay­ing and tap­ing cables across the floor, check­ing sound, video angles, light­ing, seat­ing, vol­ume. Glow sticks light the path to the stage; cym­bals com­plete the drum set in front of the TEDx Salem logo.

In a loose pur­ple robe, Lou Rad­ja walks to his mark, a red car­pet at cen­ter stage, and takes in the scene to be. The last speak­er of the day, he wor­ries if his finale will res­onate. He spends a few moments with event co-cura­tor Bri­an Hart, and then turns away toward the back­stage area, robe bil­low­ing behind. Many speak­ers are sim­i­lar­ly anx­ious. Many months of prepa­ra­tion, of rehearsals and retakes and revi­sions have led to this moment.

The last sounds are a med­ley of snare drums, mic checks, clink­ing glass­ware, and voic­es both pleas­ant and urgent. A cacoph­o­ny before the sym­pho­ny.

THE HOST

7:50 am

Kei­th Seck­el sits back­stage, index cards sprawled across a table as he pre­pares for his first appear­ance onstage. For the host of TEDx Salem 2015, though the theme is “FEARLESS,” the day is about togeth­er­ness. It’s his biggest hope, he says, to con­nect an audi­ence of indi­vid­u­als as a com­mu­ni­ty.

“A lot of us are alone,” he says.

“I like the idea of a whole being greater than the sum of its parts,” Seck­el says. “So with a com­mu­ni­ty there is togeth­er­ness and a group iden­ti­ty; an ethos which can­not exist sole­ly in the indi­vid­ual. Togeth­er we com­fort and sup­port, encour­age and exhort. Togeth­er we achieve and grow as we learn from one anoth­er.”

“That being said, I believe there is still an ‘I’ in the midst of com­mu­ni­ty,” he says. “Belong­ing to a group does not abro­gate my indi­vid­u­al­i­ty or in any way lessen my val­ue as one per­son in a crowd.”

“When I remove myself from the crowd I allow my own cre­ativ­i­ty to rise free, but if I iso­late myself alto­geth­er that sin­gu­lar­i­ty is with­out effect, with­out response.”

8:59 am

The RiverCi­ty Rock Star Acad­e­my band sprawls across all the seats and arm­rests avail­able back­stage. Gui­tars and bass in hand, they pound out an unplugged walk-through of “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll,” by Joan Jett and the Black­hearts, and “Cher­ry Bomb,” by the Run­aways, before giv­ing it full-vol­ume to the TEDx Salem crowd.

Kei­th Seck­el is a blur of motion as he changes cos­tume for his intro­duc­to­ry com­ments. Note­cards now in mouth, he stuffs his yel­low and black bag, and heads to a qui­et spot in the ser­vice area around the con­ven­tion cen­ter. He re-enters moments lat­er with a gray rain jack­et, then enters the door to the stage.

Applause means it’s go time.

How we inter­act with oth­ers, he says in his intro­duc­tion, either lets peo­ple in or push­es peo­ple away. “What would you think if I approached you” wear­ing the gray jack­et, or a priest’s col­lar, or a nurse’s scrubs, he asks the audi­ence, as he removes each item to reveal the next in his cos­tume.

It’s an aus­pi­cious start, one of the best moments of the day for him, he says, “sens­ing every­one’s hearts and minds real­ly lean­ing into the day with eager antic­i­pa­tion.”

“I find it true in my life that I judge oth­ers on their actions, yet want to be judged for my motives,” Seck­el says.

“Rather than make assump­tions about some­one’s char­ac­ter based sole­ly on their appear­ance, I’m learn­ing to stay open — to risk vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty — and adopt a ‘wait and see’ atti­tude.”

9:48 am

 

Kei­th approach­es a ner­vous yet pre­pared Bri­an­na Miller, the event artist-in-res­i­dence, and offers a reas­sur­ing tip about the crowd below the stage light­ing: You can’t see them.

“You can make eye con­tact, with­out mak­ing eye con­tact,” he says.

10:30 am

Kei­th Seck­el kneels before a board, both a red and a black mark­er in his hands. Writ­ten on the board is the prompt: “Fear­less is…”

With both mak­ers, Seck­el care­ful­ly writes, upside down: “Doing things your own way.”

“Fear­less is, para­dox­i­cal­ly, not the sim­ple absence of fear,” he says. “Fear is a gut response: a vis­cer­al and emo­tion­al knee-jerk reac­tion.”

“Fear­less­ness does not negate that response,” he says, “it sim­ply mit­i­gates it.”

“Fear­less­ness is a choice: choos­ing the action one believes to be best despite the fear roil­ing inside.”

10:57 am

Every­thing on cue… Rich McCloud up next.

11:29 am

“There’s a say­ing in endurance run­ning, ‘Trust your train­ing,’ ” Kei­th Seck­el says to a vis­i­bly relieved C.M. Hall, after she emerges back­stage from her wild­ly suc­cess­ful TED talk. Behind them both, Maya Kaup fin­ish­es her final laps around the cof­fee table, rehears­ing her talk in her mind a few more times for good mea­sure.

12:35 pm

Seck­el meets and greets atten­dees between lunch tables, and starts con­ver­sa­tions with one sim­ple ques­tion: “What was your favorite moment so far?”

Halfway into the day his view of the role of host evolved, he says.

“As a con­nec­tor of things, I saw myself as ‘just a semi-colon,’ ” he says. “I did­n’t want to dis­tract from the speak­ers and those who were on stage.”

“I went into this know­ing my role was impor­tant, but also not want­i­ng to make too big a deal out of it. Dur­ing and after­ward though, I real­ized that while the flow of the day and the seam­less­ness of peo­ple’s expe­ri­ences were every­thing I want­ed them to be, I was far from invis­i­ble, and that was OK. I like to think I did not dis­tract from any­one’s pre­sen­ta­tion, and yet I now know that being intense­ly vis­i­ble is actu­al­ly impor­tant!”

2:05pm

3:00pm

4:00pm

“TED’s brand recog­ni­tion is grow­ing con­stant­ly,” Kei­th Seck­el says. “Salem’s long­stand­ing rep­u­ta­tion is of a sleepy back­wa­ter. [That rep­u­ta­tion] was per­haps war­rant­ed in the past, but not any more. TEDxSalem helps put the TED brand with the best of Salem, open­ing the eyes of peo­ple both inside and out­side the local com­mu­ni­ty to the mer­its of Salem and its res­i­dents and busi­ness­es.”

“In terms of what I got out of host­ing I’d say the most sig­nif­i­cant is: con­nec­tion — to the core team, the speak­ers, and the audi­ence; the Salem com­mu­ni­ty at large.

“I left this year’s event know­ing that I am part of some­thing much larg­er than myself…and yet owing to that expe­ri­ence I am myself that much more enriched as an indi­vid­ual.”