On Stage at The Moth: No Notes. No Net. No... Problem?

Telling a true story live is terrifying. And exhilarating. Here's what happened.

I’m standing on stage at The Moth STORYSlam at the Miracle Theater in Washington, D.C., and I have five minutes to tell a personal story to a sold-out audience of several hundred people. The venue is aptly named for this moment in my life. It’s a miracle my name got drawn from a hat five minutes ago, lottery-style. And it’s an even greater miracle that I had the guts to put my name in the hat in the first place.

This Moth story slam event is a big deal to me. If you’re not familiar, the Moth is a renowned storytelling event and radio show featuring true, personal stories told live and without notes. The founder, poet and novelist George Dawes Green, named the show after summer evenings in his native Georgia, where moths would be attracted to the porch light while he and friends shared captivating stories.

I’ve listened to the radio show for years, marveled at the storytellers, and wondered if I could ever be one of them. So when my friend SG said a story I’d written would make for good Moth material, I bought a ticket for the March show.

Only now that I’m here, it feels absolutely nothing like sitting on a porch on a summer night entertaining my agreeable friends. For starters, there are no friends here. I didn’t tell anyone I was going to do this, except for my husband at the last minute, and I have come alone. I had two reasons for this. First, I wasn’t sure I’d even get picked to go on stage. The names are drawn over the course of the evening, so it’s a matter of chance. Second, I figured that if I was selected, it would lower the stakes to be among strangers. My logic was, best to bomb on stage with a limited blast radius into my personal or professional life. Especially since the difference between a Georgia porch and the Moth stage is like the difference between singing in the shower and auditioning for American Idol. (And I am very much tone deaf.)

I’ve never been on a stage with high wattage flood lights aimed at me, and as I stand in their uncompromising glare, I have the unsettling sensation of being in a tunnel at night, right in the path of an oncoming train. I cannot see a single face. Just blinding light. There’s no escaping, so I might as well start talking.

I start telling my story, which is about the time in Miami when I was stopped mid-workout by a man who told me I ran too loud. I can hear some friendly laughs, but the all-consuming spotlight makes them feel far away. I plow along, trying to be inside the story instead of inside the light, present to what I want to say instead of wondering how I’m doing. It is very hard.

And that’s when it occurs to me that maybe I’m not at the Moth so much as I am the moth. Moths fly toward lights because they evolved to navigate by distant celestial sources like the moon and stars. When they encounter much closer artificial lights, their navigation system gets confused. Normally, keeping a constant angle to a faraway light like the moon helps moths fly straight, but doing the same with something like a nearby porch light causes them to spiral inward. They can do this to the point of exhaustion – and crash or burn.

I wonder if this setup is some kind of inside joke by George Dawes Green, to make moths of his storytellers. It’s certainly got me in the middle of a spiral. But something about this realization shakes me out of my disorientation. I remind myself to navigate from a better place – the more reliable inner compass that is both personal and universal. I’m here because I want to share an experience that is both individual and bigger than me, because it’s an experience that all humans have in common. I’m not here to zigzag around a light source like a lost insect.

The theme of the evening is Beef, and so I frame my story as starting with a beef with this Florida man which becomes a beef with myself because I wasted my breath justifying how I run to the guy who stopped me from running. I describe the frustration I felt with myself: how, after all these years, am I still running to or from the expectations of others? When will I run my own race without apology? I wrap with how it’s a matter of remembering I’m at my best when I take up space and make some noise.

I make it to the end in just under five minutes, and there’s a respectable amount of clapping. I have no sense of how it went. But I made it through.

Except for the judging. Once the evening had gotten underway, there was a plot twist for me. I hadn’t realized that after you tell your story, three teams of judges hold up numerical ratings of your performance. And the host writes your result on a big tablet on the stage.

In line with the theme of the night, the teams of judges have given themselves beef-inspired names which seems ominous. Beef Jerky. The Grill Masters. An Eye for a Ribeye. I am the fourth storyteller, and so I return to my seat fervently hoping not to come in fourth. What if I end up burned not by the light but by my raters, roasting me with all zeroes?

To my relief, I land right in the middle. I feel like the miracle moth. I have flown close to the light, but I did not crash. Or burn. Or win. Or lose. I just told my story and the world has not ended.

Better yet, I have accomplished the one thing I’ve wanted most – to tell a story that resonates with other people’s stories. As I wait outside the theater for my Uber home, several people approach me to say they liked my story. They can relate to it. They tell me their stories about when they too have struggled to run their own races.

There we are, under the light outside, communing in our universal experience.

I do not notice if there are any moths in the air. But let’s imagine them above us, because that makes for a perfect ending.

*Photo credits to Edward Sledge. Next to me in the audience that night, I met two strangers who became friends over the course of the evening. Edward’s wife Christina also got called to the stage – and she nailed it.