I went to the two-day conference as a paying guest yesterday, but took along my digital recorder and a microphone to get some tape for the community radio station. I talked to several people and came away with about five interviews. It's a balance - I wanted to participate in the workshop but also knew that with the growth of this movement in our city, it'd be a great story for radio.
So that meant taking time to chat with people at lunch, and slipping interviews into break time. I made myself work when I wanted to relax, but I'm happy I did. Today I'm exhausted.
Marshall Rosenberg spoke for two days, and broke us into pracitise groups only twice. This gave him almost no breaks in his speaking, story-telling, ceaseless demonstrations of the techniques of Non-Violent Communication, and songs. His energy filled the room, making him seem younger from a distance than he appeared up close.
Time after time he coached participants through difficult conversations, helping them to breakthroughs of empathy and understanding. I saw profound healings of old emotional wounds all day, and believe that, on an energetic level, the healers in the audience also participated in making this happen through their attention, presence, and engagement.
But there was also a strange thing happening to me. Because I wanted to cover the story for radio, I'd emailed the organizer ahead of time asking for an interview with Marshall Rosenberg. I'd been a bit sloppy and left it to the day before. However, I knew another reporter would be at the conference, and that she'd emailed well in advance. So I thought we'd get one interview between us, and expected a fifteen - at the outside 30 - minutes shoed in somewhere.
Instead, I got an extremely chilly shoulder from the organizer when I introduced myself on the first morning. And continued to receive the same chilly demeanor when I bumped into him for the next two days. On the morning of day two, my colleague revealed that the organizer said he hadn't even asked Marshall about an interview. We put together a note with our bios and left it on his chair.
Funny thing was, I knew the organizer! We'd actually conducted a conference opening some years previously, and had attended a couple meetings together. I thought he'd at least put together half a smile at some point in the day. But it felt like I'd received the label 'Press' and he couldn't see past it. I felt sad that at a conference where we learned for two days to speak heart-to-heart, I'd been labeled. And also sad that the radio station for which I'm creating the story, was put together by the same organization (Simply Living) whose conference we'd opened together in 2004!
We didn't get the interview with Marshall. Although we approached him during a break, he referred us to his team. And when we approached the team at the end of the conference for one final bash at it (reporter 1: if you go up and ask, I'll give you lots of empathy if you get rejected. reporter 2: Deal.) their manner was closed down and brisk. Get rid of the press.
I loved the conference. I received tools I'll use for the rest of my life. But I wanted to share that joy with a wider community through my gifts of communication, and got blocked by being labeled as a pest.
Do I have a point? Maybe. Perhaps they've been burned in the past. Perhaps he's too frail to give one ounce of extra energy during two days of teaching, that he must reserve all juice for his healing work. Fair enough.
An editor once said to me: "Don't be a reporter unless you enjoy sticking your head in a meat grinder." In situations like this, that piece of unfortunate advice still seems to ring true.
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