…I’d cry.<\/p>\n
Why?<\/p>\n
Because (as I’ll explain in another blog) most art of his time\/culture leaves me cold. The exception to that rule, however is this Pieta of Michelangelo’s\u00a0in the\u00a0Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, in Florence. \u00a0I’ve seen it twice now, and been close to tears both times.<\/p>\n
With apologies for the shoddy video, (I only had an iPhone withe me – no kit at all, as I was on holiday!), here’s a bit of a look at the masterpiece…[yframe url=’http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AAqpnQt71ck&feature=youtu.be’]<\/p>\n
So why do I love it so much, so very, very much? \u00a0And what has that got to do with making presentations?<\/p>\n
Well one of my pet hates for presenting, presenters and presentations is the overly static, or ‘staged’ presentation. In other words, presenters who are so rigid that they might as well be (barely animated) \u00a0statues. Perhaps it’s fear; perhaps it’s the unusual nature of standing up to talk to people; perhaps it’s over-rehearsal (yeah, right!); but whatever it is, nothing ruins perfectly good content more than overly-rigid delivery. (Maybe overly sloppy delivery, but stay with me here! ;) ). Most of the art I see is static, posed and the ratio of pretentiouscrap-to-genius is too high for my liking.<\/p>\n
(As an aside, the same could be true of many professional speakers and presenters ;) )<\/p>\n
This pieta is is different.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Different because it’s unfinished. Because it’s flawed, broken.<\/p>\n
\n
- Flawed<\/strong>, because the marble broke and the statue had to be repaired. Rumour has it that Michelangelo himself was so pissed off that the stone wasn’t good enough that when the flaw manifested itself, he attacked the statue with a hammer.<\/li>\n
- Unfinished<\/strong> because there was no point in finishing something so clearly broken. Indeed, as you move to the right of the statue, you can see that the stone becomes rougher and rougher, as it has been worked less and less.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
So too, can your presentations be… genius doesn’t have to be perfect. Genius can have mistakes and flaws in it. Genius, almost be definition, will break things sometimes, will get it horribly wrong. (Maybe that’s for another blog however!)<\/p>\n
The point is that this ‘unfinishedness’ gives the statue a sense of movement, of dynamism, of ‘life and reality’ that more posed and poised works of art don’t and can’t.<\/p>\n
Have you ever sat through someone reciting<\/strong> a presentation? It means the wording is perfect, the delivery flawless, with no umms and errrs… and it’s boring – no personality.<\/p>\n
So rehearse… but don’t do it until you’re perfect. Too much gets lost – the originality, the organic nature of the ‘conversation’. Think of your presentation more like a tree than a marble statue – something with life, with movement… and you’ll do better than the deliver-statues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
…I’d cry. Why? Because (as I’ll explain in another blog) most art of his time\/culture leaves me cold. The exception to that rule, however is this Pieta of Michelangelo’s\u00a0in the\u00a0Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, in Florence. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-key-posts","category-personal-blog-related","category-presentation-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}