Vocabulary
do words matter?
/waving and jumping up and down but not actually saying any words to greet all you lovely people silently reading this,
How important are words? I spend a lot of time reading cues other than language.
How much of communication is nonverbal? Do people have different scales or do all people communicate equally verbally and nonverbally (even if they suck at communication)
These days, half the time we are only a talking head. How much does the distance of Zoom muffle our true feelings/needs? We see each other’s faces, but being only on screen—isn’t that like having an intimate conversation with really loud music playing?
But let’s leave nonverbal aside and focus on verbal. When was the last time you learned a new word?
I learned a new word three days ago while reading a book aloud to my daughter. (Yes, we still do this and no it isn’t weird even though she’s a teen. Most of you read audiobooks. What do you think that is, other than having someone read the book aloud to you?)
Normalize reading aloud. It keeps you from skipping words you don’t know - like the word I learned, piceous, which is not misspelled despite autocorrect trying really hard to change it to one of six more common words that are not synonyms.
In Victorian novels, the family would gather around the fire and all read to each other. Not just one parent reading to one kid in bed. Not just one literate person reading to the illiterate. It was a shared experience.
I do this every month - my partner collects authors and we have them read a small bit of their work to us. It can be magical. Here’s a playback of the last one I did. Go ahead, listen.
On the show, we listen to the authors read. But why don’t authors trade readings with each other, wouldn’t that be fun? Like we do with music, when someone starts to sing a familiar song, and one by one, everyone just lets go and sings along. So many people listen to audiobooks and we already do this with movie lines!
(Random singalongs really do happen in real life - though rarely among adults. Why are adults so uptight?- the sad thing is that no matter the age, singalongs are usually caused by TV theme songs and/or old commercial jingles. We are such marketing targets.")
WRITING NEWS:
An absolutely stunning night at Catherine Texier’s Lower East Side loft. I took a ton of photos, you can see them on my Facebook page (feel free to “like” and follow the page while you’re at it)
I’m off to Rochester to a conference that is fully funded and fancy and I’m super grateful to be a part of it. My fingers are crossed that it will already be Fall colors up there. I’ll tell you all about it next week if I can remember anything about it (I’m returning right into my mother-in-law’s memorial—I’m looking forward to that too. My daughter’s choir is going to sing and then we’ll ask for memories and stories. We all need closure.)
Random Final Thought:
In going through the things in my mother in law’s house, I found this photo of me and my husband co-hosting a theater fundraiser in the 1990s as Sonny and Cher. We lip-synched “I Got You Babe” and emceed the whole talented show. It’s good to go back to gorgeous memories when you feel like your heart is being peeled by a cheese grater.
(Also RIP those abs.)
Yes! to reading aloud!! for all kinds of reasons- and great picture-