New Tricks (For Old Dogs)
Of course I am going to record my book. My mother didn’t know it, but she paid for a whole lot of lessons just in case I ever wrote a memoir and needed to record it.
As the final edit of my memoir, Not Yet, was completed, arrangements were being made to organize a studio, a producer, a director to create an audiobook version.
I was ready. I have been performing all my life… literally. I’m pretty confident I gave my mother plenty of in-the-womb heartburn as I went through my routines before arriving on Planet Earth. After arrival it was de rigueur, at the drop of the hat, for me to go into a song and dance for whomsoever crossed my path. I performed my last one-woman show, presciently titled Before I Forget, six years ago. This new project did not involve hopping all around a stage panting for breath I no longer had. I would be sitting down in front of a microphone and reading from my book. Piece of cake.
Right??? Of course, right!!! WRONG!
Think of it this way. Tap shoes ain’t toe shoes. Performing on a stage, in a movie, in a television show requires a different skill set than someone who narrates an audiobook through voice only. I ate my piece of easy cake, settled myself in the chair positioned in front of the microphone, and thought I would easily finish my narration in a couple of sessions.
A week later I am one very chastened actress.
At the best of times when I tell a story I use every ear and eyeball movement, every nose wiggle or wrinkle, every mouth gesture from sneer to smile to give my whomsoever audience the bigger, and the operative word is bigger, picture. Subtlety was never my strong suit.
It’s not as if my director, Paul, was cutting me down to size. That is so not his style. He is a very nice man and very knowledgeable and talented in his profession as a director of audiobooks. The first thing I had to do is put aside my ego. I don’t know about you but if my ego is in play in most situations, I am not open to hearing no less translating what someone is trying to tell me. I was the new/old kid on the block with a lot to learn and I had to keep a check that my ego was not going to get in the way. I don’t think I’m giving away trade secrets but an actor without his or her ego is like Paddington Bear without his marmalade sandwich.
I started to read the Prologue from my manuscript.
Paul, as gently as he could, stopped me more than a few times. Never with line readings but always with a “suggestion” that I take the energy level down. He assured me, I had a big voice and the microphone could pick up a whisper so I didn’t need to hit the back of the house. My training happened before microphones supplanted vocal projection. I was trained to project not protect my vocal chords.
Next Paul tried to assure me that I did not have to be seen in order to signal emotion. Whatsademattawityouse?!? How is anyone to know if I am sad or happy or anxious or puzzled if they didn’t see me. It was my job to make you see what I read. Translation: I was an over actor. If I had been born in 1923 instead of 1933, I would have been a brilliant silent movie star. How could you know what to feel if I didn’t tell you what to feel? Paul, sympathetically explained that it was a matter of trusting the story. God, how I hate that word…trust. I was terrible at it. I had, only recently, began to trust myself to trust myself. Trusting others was not something I did easily. I wanted to trust what I wrote to be enough. I wasn’t sure I could. I was being asked by someone I didn’t really know to trust that he knew what worked and what didn’t work. In order to do that I had to do something I very rarely did…surrender. Not like waving a white flag during a battle. I had to trust Paul understood my story and to trust he would guide me to make it understood by others. If I wanted to practice this new technique, I had to surrender my will and my ego. It ain’t easy. And if anyone says that it is, I’ll take a moment and watch while your nose gets longer.
After whining and moaning for the first week of the recording sessions, something in my brainball clicked. A miracle was a-happening. This old dog was learning a new trick. Just when I thought the learning thingie was wrapped up and stored away with all those memories that went into completing the book… son of a gun… would you look at that, I learned something new. I wasn’t too old or too set in my ways to exercise my brainball.
As time went by, Paul interrupted me less and less. Initially, I thought he became so bored with me and my verbal assaults on my book that he just left the room. Towards the end of the first week I discovered he wasn’t interrupting me because he didn’t need to. I GOT IT!
Oh, my friends, it's the hardest work I’ve ever done.
No matter. I am so damn grateful there is some puzzle left in my sandbox that challenges me on a daily basis. When I can I will try to surrender the ego and my will and I shall try to trust myself and my fellow beings… but my mission and I choose to accept it… is to never give up the pursuit of life, liberty, learning a new skill and the pursuit of happiness… and I mean never give up…
Love, Sally-Jane