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[CCBC-Net] Sound files in the mind
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From: Maia Cheli-Colando <maiacheli>
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:25:06 -0700
Merri,
I find that I want to be extraordinarily careful about what audio books I listen to. Because I remember tones and emphasis so clearly
(the danger of a misspent theatrical youth?), once I hear someone else read a book, I will never hear it the same way in my own head again.
My children have a number of the Scholastic videos - essentially audio tapes with morphing pictures - and I have noticed how each member of our family is altered by an external audio reading. We lose our own sound, and our experience and sensibility is mapped over by someone else's.
I am more willing to listen to an author's own reading, especially in those cases -- works by Arnold Lobel or Jane Yolen, for instance -- where the recording matches the interpretation in my head so clearly that there is not much lost, and it makes for an enjoyable experience.
But in general, our family listens more to storytellers telling their own stories than to audiobooks.
It's not that I don't care for read-aloud, but rather that I care so much, it hurts to lose the people I already have in my head. When someone else reads a work that has taken shape in my mental space, it shifts away that reality from me... and it steals a certain intimacy with the created story-space.
And too, when I hear a nonfiction work read by an actor rather than an author, I lose the sense of the author's perspective, which is replaced by the actor-reader's notions and perceptions. This tends to make me feel jittery and physically queasy... hearing two people at once and never being able to settle.
This is different than hearing someone I know interpret someone else's work -- think the priest reading from the gospels on Sunday! -- where you can hear the interpretation, the interaction they are having with the work. It's when I can't discern the interaction between reader and writer that I get nauseated. (Physically, not morally or indignantly.) Perhaps that is another reason I can tolerate writer-read works - I can relax. :)
In comparison, I can be substantially impacted by a change in illustration, but there is rarely that same sense of tremendous loss/risk. Pictures don't seem to "stick" the way sound and pacing do in my mind and subconscious, and though image dis/re-placement may be jarring, it is as often positively stimulating or at least curious-making rather than uncomfortable. (Unless the illustrations are uncomfortable! <g>)
Cheryl Klein asked a question on childlit today about reader's relationships with their characters... and I guess a great deal of my response is related to that: my relationship with those characters. I don't want someone else -- some actor whose outlook I don't know, and whose interpretation of any given moment is undoubtedly going to be different than my own -- to superimpose on top of a character, who having been read, is now free to run around the fields of my brain. It feels almost like a desecration. I know the author by their work, and their work has earned an intimacy in my mind. But who is this actor? :)
I've been pondering all of this in the back corners of my consciousness, since reading the first section of Perry Nodelman's The Hidden Adult, and thinking about shadow meanings and shadow sounds. I am very curious as to whether I am alone in this reluctance/passion/protectiveness about the interpretation of characters and moments embedded, and thus heard? :)
All the best, Maia
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:25:06 -0700
Merri,
I find that I want to be extraordinarily careful about what audio books I listen to. Because I remember tones and emphasis so clearly
(the danger of a misspent theatrical youth?), once I hear someone else read a book, I will never hear it the same way in my own head again.
My children have a number of the Scholastic videos - essentially audio tapes with morphing pictures - and I have noticed how each member of our family is altered by an external audio reading. We lose our own sound, and our experience and sensibility is mapped over by someone else's.
I am more willing to listen to an author's own reading, especially in those cases -- works by Arnold Lobel or Jane Yolen, for instance -- where the recording matches the interpretation in my head so clearly that there is not much lost, and it makes for an enjoyable experience.
But in general, our family listens more to storytellers telling their own stories than to audiobooks.
It's not that I don't care for read-aloud, but rather that I care so much, it hurts to lose the people I already have in my head. When someone else reads a work that has taken shape in my mental space, it shifts away that reality from me... and it steals a certain intimacy with the created story-space.
And too, when I hear a nonfiction work read by an actor rather than an author, I lose the sense of the author's perspective, which is replaced by the actor-reader's notions and perceptions. This tends to make me feel jittery and physically queasy... hearing two people at once and never being able to settle.
This is different than hearing someone I know interpret someone else's work -- think the priest reading from the gospels on Sunday! -- where you can hear the interpretation, the interaction they are having with the work. It's when I can't discern the interaction between reader and writer that I get nauseated. (Physically, not morally or indignantly.) Perhaps that is another reason I can tolerate writer-read works - I can relax. :)
In comparison, I can be substantially impacted by a change in illustration, but there is rarely that same sense of tremendous loss/risk. Pictures don't seem to "stick" the way sound and pacing do in my mind and subconscious, and though image dis/re-placement may be jarring, it is as often positively stimulating or at least curious-making rather than uncomfortable. (Unless the illustrations are uncomfortable! <g>)
Cheryl Klein asked a question on childlit today about reader's relationships with their characters... and I guess a great deal of my response is related to that: my relationship with those characters. I don't want someone else -- some actor whose outlook I don't know, and whose interpretation of any given moment is undoubtedly going to be different than my own -- to superimpose on top of a character, who having been read, is now free to run around the fields of my brain. It feels almost like a desecration. I know the author by their work, and their work has earned an intimacy in my mind. But who is this actor? :)
I've been pondering all of this in the back corners of my consciousness, since reading the first section of Perry Nodelman's The Hidden Adult, and thinking about shadow meanings and shadow sounds. I am very curious as to whether I am alone in this reluctance/passion/protectiveness about the interpretation of characters and moments embedded, and thus heard? :)
All the best, Maia
-- Maia Cheli-Colando Arcata, Humboldt Bay, California -- blogging at http://www.littlefolktales.org/wordpress -- -- or drop in on Facebook! --Received on Tue 14 Apr 2009 01:25:06 AM CDT
