You Need a Little Punctuation

Hey Rockstars, Reggie Dawson here, your host of the Being On Stage podcast. Welcome back. Thank you so much for tuning in. You know, I tend to get my ideas and my inspiration for these podcast episodes from some pretty interesting places. You know, sometimes it's a song or a quote, you know, kind of standard there. Sometimes it's from a movie, a TV show. Sometimes it's from a book I read or from something I heard on the news. And it's all sorts of different places. Today, a little bit of a different place. Today, this podcast is brought to you by the English language. Grammar, to be more specific. You know, I always try to do some type of analogy. And I got to say, originally the idea for this episode, there's a bit of a story and I'll get into it. So before I do listen again, I'm Reggie Dawson. I'm a stage performance coach. I help performers elevate their performance, take it to the next level and just, you know, get moving in their careers towards that dream, that vision that they have, that you have in your head of what you want to be and where you want to be and who you want to be. I just help get you there, whether it be through this podcast, through one-on-one coaching, through trainings. There are all sorts of different stuff I do. I'm here to help get you there. And that's, that's what I do. So I've been mulling on this for a little while. So it's probably been probably been about a week ago. I really started to listen to this song, Whatever It Takes by Imagine Dragons. And I really like this song. It has a good message. I mean, based on just the title of the song, you can tell it's pretty much about doing whatever it takes. And one of the lines in the song is, I'm an apostrophe. I'm just a symbol to remind you that there's more to see. Okay. And so that spawned this whole idea about doing a podcast episodes specifically around an apostrophe. And as I dug a little deeper, you know, I made, I made the mistake of thinking the apostrophe is the big movement that's going on. Now you see a bunch of people getting tattoos and apparently, and I'll own that. I got my grammar punctuation marks confused. Um, that's a semicolon that that's a big movement going on now. A lot of people are getting semicolon tattoos and that symbolizes that, you know, uh, something has happened and now something new has come and something new is happening. It's, it's a symbol of a turning point in someone's life. They get a tattoo of a semicolon to represent that. And so when I realized that I got those two confused, I'm like, well, there, there's gotta be other punctuation marks that I can talk about performing around. Of course there is. Why turn punctuation into a podcast about improving your performance and moving forward in your career? That's just who I am. And honestly, listen, if, if you don't know by now, that really is who I am. I, I take different analogies and, and like I was saying earlier, different, uh, areas that I get my inspiration from for a podcast to, to kind of drill a point home and, and help you realize certain things and motivate you and hopefully inspire you and, and boost your confidence. As you go out on stage and crush it for your audience. So we'll start with the apostrophe. Uh, there's actually a few, a few grammatical punctuation marks we're going to discuss today, kids. Uh, the first is the apostrophe, as I mentioned, you know, in the Imagine Dragons song, whatever it takes that spawned this whole idea for this podcast, he mentions that he's an apostrophe. Um, and that's a symbol to remind you that there's more to see. And I'm sorry for rhyming. That's the lyrics of the song. I'm not apologizing for rhyming. Rhyming is awesome. There's not a word that rhymes with awesome. Otherwise I would rhyme awesome with possum, but that doesn't work in the context of this podcast. Man, there's so much wrong with me. Uh, so an apostrophe, you know, I, and I went and I looked it up. I'm going to help you out. An apostrophe is that little mark that you put in a word. It symbolizes the, a contraction. I think that's what it's called. A contraction, um, in the like can't or don't it's, you know, D O N apostrophe T or haven't H A V E N apostrophe T. It symbolizes really that where there was once two words, there's now only one word. And it's kind of a shortened, uh, it's the way we shorten things here in America with our English language. And I don't know if this is proper English, but I'm, I'm just going with what I've learned as a child. So the apostrophe symbolizing the, the omission of some letters that, that that's you, you know, when you get out on that stage and you, you know, you're putting together your performance, there's going to be things that you just can't communicate, but there's also, there's also things that you should keep to yourself. Like, and I know I, I get on my soapbox and I talk about being authentic and leaving it out all out on stage, but there should be some mystery to it. There should be some curiosity left at the end of the show. You can't leave absolutely everything and tell absolutely everything while you're on stage. There should be some mystery. It keeps them coming back. It keeps them interested. And that's your apostrophe, you know, that's, that's you going out there. And, and I don't mean to use the words can't and don't, and I'm talking about how much you can and you do. Oh man, this is a great episode so far, isn't it? Tune into the end. It gets so much better. I promise. I promise. Ah, so your apostrophe is that something more that is going to pull them back in, you know, so apostrophe things that you have left out that will keep them coming back, keep them digging for more. Now I mentioned that I got the apostrophe confused with the semi-colon. I don't know how, because, well, I do know how, because they do have something in common. Okay. So the apostrophe, you know, symbolizes letters missing where two words became one. Something's missing. Something's not there. Something you can't quite see. A semi-colon is connecting two thoughts or two ideas. Seemingly separate, but they do have a shared thread, if you will. That's why it's not a period. It's a semi-colon. And the semi-colon is like the comma on the bottom and then the dot above it. Semi-colon. It's like a colon, but it's a semi-colon. Oh, all right. We're going to keep it together. I promise. I promise. I'm saying I promise a lot. So the semi-colon movement has come about because, and I don't know where it started. No, I have not done my research on this, but the semi-colon came about, and I know a couple of people that have gotten the tattoos because people needed something to feel like they had permission to move past something that had happened in the past. And as performers, I feel like we just have a bunch of semi-colons in our life. You know, there's going to be things that are going to happen, whether it be in your personal or your professional life, that it's just going to seemingly slow you down and put a barrier in front of you, but then you're going to break through it and you're going to be onto something new. And that's your semi-colon. So I guess what I'm trying to say is if you're in that point of your performing, or if you come to that point in your career that it seems like there's a barrier and there's no way to move forward, it's not a wall. That's your semi-colon. That's your turning point to where you're going to break through. You're going to move on to something new. That's your turning point to where something new, you just haven't done it yet, but you will. You 100% will. Okay. So since I decided that, you know, the apostrophe means you have to leave some mystery and the semi-colon means that you're going to crush through any barrier that comes up against you. I figured let's go find more punctuation marks that are underestimated, underappreciated. And, and, you know, I can use to talk about performing because I'm a geek like that, you know? I'm that guy that's going to go find out a punctuation mark that I can flip into an analogy to make a point about motivating and inspiring you to move forward in your career. I can't change it. So I went out and I found the ellipsis. Okay. Yeah, the ellipsis. So the ellipsis is the three little dots, dot, dot, dot. You've seen it on Twitter posts, I'm sure. Facebook, Instagram, you've seen it on social media posts will generalize. I'm sure you've read it in books and it, it symbolizes. So what the ellipsis does is it symbolizes an omission from speech or writing, uh, of words that are superfluous or, um, unneeded unnecessary, uh, to be able to understand what you're trying to do or what you're trying to say. So your ellipsis as a performer. Okay. So there's going to be things that are going to happen that are not going to happen. And that can, it's little things too. It's, it's little drama BS with some people that are going to get in your way and try to crush you. It's, it's those little, little arguments with other performers. It's those people popping up, trying to tell you you're not good enough. It's those nights that just seem like they're never going to end because you already feel like the performance is not going the way it's supposed to go. Those, all those little things, long-term, not going to matter, not going to matter one stinking bit. That is your ellipsis. your dot, dot, dot. So in the English language, language and grammar the ellipsis is used to indicate things that aren't needed like for example if you were writing a novel and in the novel you're counting down from ten to one you are not going to write ten comma nine comma eight comma six comma no I can't even speak it that much you're going to write ten nine eight dot dot dot three two one that's the dot dot dot you don't need seven six five four to understand that that countdown went from ten to one okay so in your life as a performer you don't need to to keep track of all those little dramatic fights and spats and in all those little tiny moments that that tried to hold you down and kick you down and hold you back you don't need to keep those around you know you don't need to keep track of those those are not going to matter in the long run that's going to be your dot dot dot it's going to be this was an amazing performance dot dot dot this was an amazing performance dot dot dot this was an amazing performance those dot dot dots those are the performances that don't even matter those are the those are the nights and the moments that not going to matter in five ten years not you might even remember it in one year to be to be quite honest with you so that brings me to my final and quite possibly my favorite punctuation mark and I couldn't I couldn't dedicate an episode of the podcast to the grant to grammar and punctuation without this podcast is dedicated to grammar and punctuation yep that's me without mentioning the exclamation point so the exclamation point is an amazing punctuation mark okay punctuation mark exclamation it is it is it indicates X exclamation oh an exclamation point indicates exclamation so what it what is it so it indicates high feelings high volume or showing emphasis so how does this translate to a performer hmm where might we as performers need to indicate emphasis ding ding ding ding ding you got it on stage every single time your performances are little exclamation points all over your life that's the emphasis and even even listen even when you're on stage not every moment is going to be Wow boom zing pop not every moment is gonna be crazy not every moment is gonna be an exclamation point but you need to have those moments in your show that are exclamation points you need to have those moments that are emphasized for your audience and for not just for your audience but for yourself as well you know you need to emphasize certain areas of your show your climax being one of them a lot of times you have to break up your show and depending on how long you're on stage you know you're on stage for a half an hour you probably want to come out with an exclamation point maybe like another five ten minutes later another exclamation point end with an exclamation point and then you got a couple of dot dot dots in the middle of there add an apostrophe and a semicolon and boom we got this so listen this has been a wild ride and I told myself I was gonna do a grammar and punctuation podcast and I kind of kicked around kind of put it off for a little bit but well I got it out so if this is not completely scared you off two things you can do one you can hit the subscribe button leave a rating and a comment on this podcast and two if this has inspired you and this has made you want to push yourself a little further let's work together and get on building your dreams so hit me up on my calendar you can go to being on stage comm slash calendar again that's being on stage dot-com slash calendar pick a date pick a time put in your name and email I'll call you and we'll get it going we will build your semicolon build your exclamation points and all the other dot dot dots that came before won't even matter baby because you're an apostrophe okay I think I got them all in there signing off read you being on stage podcast and you keep on shining