To recapture the physicality of words

Verlyn Klinkenborg, NYT,  Some Thoughts on the Lost Art of Reading Aloud:

Reading aloud recaptures the physicality of words. To read with your lungs and diaphragm, with your tongue and lips, is very different than reading with your eyes alone. The language becomes a part of the body, which is why there is always a curious tenderness, almost an erotic quality, in those 18th- and 19th- century literary scenes where a book is being read aloud in mixed company. The words are not mere words. They are the breath and mind, perhaps even the soul, of the person who is reading.

Much more to think about in the article. I’m particularly interested because reading aloud is a regular, important part of my life. Each evening, in fact, I read aloud to my husband a book we’re enjoying together. This evolved out of wanting to discuss certain books with the other and not being willing to wait for the time for each of us to finish the work we wanted to talk about. Also, then, there wasn’t the spontaneity of talking in the moment about what struck us just as we’d read it, of course. Now, it’s hard to imagine not reading aloud. It’s just part of life — a good part.

Informally, as we are working on our writing, we’ll read parts aloud to one another to get the other’s take and to hear the thing aloud ourselves. We’ve always done this, can’t imagine not.

Additionally, we read, almost each week, from our ongoing work at a writers’ group we belong to in the city. It’s fascinating to hear others’ feedback on my work, and equally fascinating to hear myself read aloud to a group. Also, I’m learning to hear others’ work that they read aloud for feedback in a nuanced way that’s continuing to develop. The article talks about the related practice of the author’s experience with his students reading aloud.

The long sentence

I love a long sentence, written well. I love to hear a long, well-written sentence read aloud. The cadence, the music, the breath. I love to take a good breath and read a good long sentence aloud especially if that good long sentence is mine. I love to hear its sound, how it plays out.

The other night at a writers’ thing I read a piece I’ve recently written aloud. Someone reported afterward, as a criticism, he had counted 75 words to one of my sentences. My thought was: And?

How does that work?

I was reading a short story and, finished, went back to a phrase that stayed with me: a sliver of birthday cake, and next thing I knew I was writing a poem about a satin slipper.

How did that happen? I don’t really want to know. The best times are those with mystery.

Responsible for being understood

While we’re packing up to move out of here, we’re getting visits from family members who we haven’t seen for a while, who figure, I suppose, that it will be even longer before they come out to CA. (The latter is not necessarily a bad thing, really.) These visits have prompted, as they will, self-reflection, and reflection, in general. (Note the previous post.)

So, self-reflection. Losing my personal religion. Those beliefs that I’m not entirely aware of or consciously operating from. Such as?

The latest: I seem to believe that it is on me to make myself understood. To the extent that I will articulate things in a variety of ways, often re-articulate, substituting synonyms, creating metaphors. This is all well and good, fine for a teacher, which I have been, useful for a writer, which I am. I have been praised for being such a good communicator, no surprise. Yet, is it necessary to bring professional skills into (casual) conversation?

It came to me during my mother-in-law’s visit at one point as I realized that, once again, she did not get me, just did not understand, that I had put the onus on me to do my damnedest to have her understand, and that I had always taken that responsibility. And not just with her. I see that I have in the past walked away from communication breakdowns knowing better but feeling as if they were failures on my part.