— Dan Kennedy, host of The Moth Podcast
It’s July 12, 2011. I’m sitting in the Nuyorican Poets Café in downtown Manhattan on a Monday night, though the buzz in the room makes it feel like a Saturday. It’s hot and crowded. A possible firetrap. The smell of stale beer lingers in the air. Hipster is piled upon hipster, sitting in metal folding chairs, standing at the rear of the club, and crowded around small, wobbly tables. A spotlight is trained on a small stage peppered with Igloo coolers, black electrical cords, and audio equipment. A single microphone stands at center stage under the spotlight’s warm glow.
Dan Kennedy — a man I’ve never met but whose voice I know from his audiobooks and The Moth Podcast — is standing onstage, hosting the show. Dan is lean, with a wry smile and dark hair. He’s in his midthirties. Relaxed. Confident. Everything that I imagined from listening to his voice so many times. Plus, he’s funny. Effortlessly funny. Also sweet. Within minutes, he’s wormed his way into my heart.
This is my first time attending a Moth StorySLAM. The first time I plan to take the stage and bare my soul. Ten minutes ago, I dropped my name in a canvas tote bag. Dan called it a hat, but I didn’t dare quibble over terminology. All I know is that from that proverbial hat, ten names will be drawn to tell stories.
I’m praying that my name doesn’t get picked.
After months of imagining this moment, the last thing I want to do now is perform for this audience. I’m only here because I stupidly promised my friends that I would someday tell a story at The Moth. Now all I want to do is bolt. Either that or sit here silently for the rest of the night. I’d be willing to remain silent the rest of my life if I could avoid going up on that stage.
Two years ago, my friend Kim recommended that I listen to The Moth’s weekly podcast. The Moth, an international storytelling organization, produces shows that feature true stories told live onstage without notes. Experienced storytellers, terrified rookies like me, and the occasional celebrity take the stage to share meaningful moments from their lives with hundreds and sometimes thousands of people. Kim suspected that I’d enjoy the stories featured on The Moth Podcast, and she was right.
Listening to The Moth’s storytellers, I instantly fell in love with their vulnerability, humor, and honesty. A Moth story offered me a rare glimpse into an entirely new world. I was amazed by the instant connection I felt to storytellers whom I could not see and did not know.
I didn’t know it at the time, but even though storytelling seemed mysterious and impossible, I was already immersed in the craft. Whether I was delivering a talk about my latest novel or speaking to parents during an open house or even flirting with my future wife, it turns out that I have been telling stories for a long time.
More importantly, I also had a natural affinity for sharing my less-than-noble moments with others. I’ve always known that embarrassment could get a laugh. Telling about my most shameful and foolish moments had always brought me closer to listeners. Honesty is attractive. A friend of mine once said that I “live out loud.” It describes me well.
Perhaps I first learned this lesson on the page. Having written a blog since 2004, I’ve long understood the power of unbridled honestly and unflinching vulnerability. I’ve managed to capture the attention of a sizable audience by writing openly and truthfully about my life. I’ve established friendships with people from around the world through the power of my words. But this was new. Listening to a storyteller share a private story so openly in front of an audience captivated me.
I eagerly awaited Tuesday afternoons for the new episodes of The Moth Podcast to drop. I researched other storytelling podcasts and began listening to them too. Consuming stories in greater and greater numbers. I didn’t know it yet, but I had begun my education in storytelling.
Over the course of the next year, The Moth grew in popularity, and as it did, more and more people began finding their podcast. Friends who’d become fans of The Moth were soon calling me, telling me that I should go to New York and tell a story.
“You’ve led such a horrible life!” they’d say. “Your life has really sucked. You’d be great at storytelling.”
Although I wouldn’t say that my life has sucked, they weren’t entirely wrong. To say my life has been colorful would be an understatement. The short list of moments that my friends were referring to includes:
• Paramedics brought me back to life through CPR on two separate occasions.
• I was arrested, jailed, and tried for a crime I did not commit.
• I was robbed at gunpoint. Handguns pressed against my head. Triggers pulled.
• I lived with a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses, sharing a small room off their kitchen with a guy named Rick, who spoke in tongues in his sleep, and with the family’s indoor pet goat.
• I was the victim of a widespread, anonymous smear campaign that included a thirty-seven-page packet of excerpted, highly manipulated blog posts that was sent to the mayor, the town council, the school board, and more than three hundred families in the school district where I teach. This packet compared me to the Virginia Tech killer and demanded that I be fired, along with my wife (who was teaching with me at the time) and my principal. If I wasn’t fired, the authors of the letter warned us, the packet would be sent to the press, and legal action would commence.
• I discovered that I am a carrier of a gene that will ultimately lead to a disease that killed my grandfather, my aunt, and my mother.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
My friend Rachel recently told me about the time that her alarm company called as she and her husband were driving home from Cape Cod. “Your house might be on fire,” the representative from the alarm company warned. “We’re sending the fire department over right now just in case.”
Rachel and her husband, David, spent the next twenty minutes wondering if their house was a smoldering pile of ash before finally pulling onto their street and discovering it was a false alarm.
“Oh!” I said excitedly when she was finished telling her story. “That reminds me of the time my house caught fire when I was a kid, and firefighters pulled me from my bed while I was asleep!”
“Of course that happened!” she said, rolling her eyes. “I have a story about my house possibly burning down, and you have a story about an actual fire, complete with firefighters and a midnight rescue. Is there anything that hasn’t happened to you?”
It was a good point. I’ve led a difficult life in many regards.
So as more of my friends began finding The Moth Podcast and listening to the stories, more and more of them began reaching out, encouraging me to go to New York and tell a story for The Moth.
Tell the story about the time you went headfirst through the windshield and died on the side of the road!
What about the time you accidentally flashed our sixth-grade math class?
What about the time you called your dog back across the street into the path of an oncoming truck?
Tell the story about the time you were hired as a stripper for a bachelorette party in the crew room of a McDonald’s!
Weren’t you hypnotized onstage once and somehow ended up completely naked in front of the entire audience?
“Yes!” I told my friends. “I’ll go to New York and tell a story.”
They were excited. They were certain that I would succeed. They were so enthusiastic that I couldn’t