You’re In The Game

Transcript

Welcome, beautiful thinkers!

I was just thinking about this idea.

You’re in the game, you are the one with your behind on the line.

Let me elaborate on that.

I was just watching this video, my friend sent me this video on Tik Tok. And it’s labeled like the worst rap battle in history.

Once upon a time, and all of y’all know this about me. But once upon a time, I was a battle emcee in my hometown or in New Castle. And I remember my friend, Madman, would say to us, you know, the, “The smallest person on stage is bigger than the biggest man in the crowd.”

And what he meant was, it takes courage, it takes real courage to put yourself up on stage and put yourself in the scrutiny of the eyes of the entire crowd.

Those people are so willing to criticize, so willing to say what you did wrong, or you know? How you could have done better or whatever, it just blew your, you know, not appreciate what you’re putting into it. But you know what? Those people are on the sidelines. They are not even in the game. They don’t even have skin in the game. They don’t have anything in the game. They haven’t done what you’ve done.

So, when you wonder about those people, you know, a lot of people might might criticize, just like these people watching this worst rap battle of all time, I tell you, this is not comfortable to watch.

I think, he actually said the cringiest rap battle of all time.

But this fellow, although he didn’t have, you know, a lot of talent, I think he rhymed about once in the entire 40 seconds of his rebuttal, or in his improvised verse.

But this guy was, he was improvising, it’s seem pretty obvious.

And he was standing there in front of a group of people trying to do something that he was passionate about.

And that counts, that really counts.

When you can put yourself out there like that. When you can establish that skin in the game, that you believe in something enough, perhaps to be embarrassed about it. I don’t think I ever, ever really bombed on stage, but you know, it’s not even that bad. If you bomb on stage, it has to be spectacular, spectacular fail for people to take notice.

Normally what will happen if you fail on stage is people will at least clap politely. Depending on the culture of the audience, you know, at least they want you to succeed.

There’s something my friend Link McElvenny always said, he said, “You get up there on stage and, well, so many things would happen, when we’re doing these shows in Melbourne. And I wouldn’t always realized when I’m watching one of his shows, when he was performing with High Society or one of these Melbourne crews.

And sometimes the sound would go out, or they wouldn’t be able to get the beats up or whatever.

And somebody were up on stage would start beatboxing and somebody else would start freestyling and then just like, “Okay, well we don’t know exactly what we’re gonna do. We’re just gonna make something up.”

And the crowd loves it. They love it. And they think it’s part of the show.

They think like you planned it. You plan to improvise something when something went wrong.

They, well the thing was, Link always say to me, “They want you to get it. The audience wants you to make it. They want you to get to the next line to remember the line, or to come up with something cool. They want you to succeed, they are on your side.”

It’s not the case all the time, but a lot of the time, it is true.

And when we are up on stage, putting ourselves at risk, in fact, one of the greatest risks that we can take as humans.

Because, of course, historically and perhaps evolutionary, sympathetic to that point of view, one of the riskiest things a person could do, was risk, ostracization.

And that’s what we do. When we get up on stage, or when we take a chance, generally in life, starting a new business, some kind of endeavor, some, we put our art out there, we’ll make it public, show people what’s in our soul, and actually give people the right to take a big old cramp on it.

Make no mistake, that takes guts, and you don’t have to worry too much about the opinions of others. Because you are the one who took that plunge, you are the one who put yourself in the game.