Category: Words

I still haven´t got over it even now.
I want to spend huge amounds of time in my room.
And I´m not coming out until I feel ready,
Not running out while my heart´s unsteady,
And I´m not really in your head.
–Everything But The Girl/Roller Coaster

There’s a world where I can go
And tell my secrets to
In my room
–Beach Boys/In My Room

When I was a little girl, my mother always had a hell of a time getting me out of my room. I was always someone who liked to be inside. Everything I loved to do was more easily done indoors: drawing, reading, writing. Being outside? With other people? That was boring. Or scary if I didn’t know the people.

Like most children of our generation, my brother and I were required to be outside at all times. I think we were supposed to come home from school, have a snack, not burn the house down, watch Sesame Street or the Electric Company, and then go outside and play until we were called in for dinner.

The older I got, the less inclined I was to be either outside or with other kids. The way my Ma tells it, when I was a teenager she asked me if I wanted something while we were at the dinner table and in response I screamed “why can’t everyone just leave me alone!” and then locked myself in my room forever. I don’t remember the episode but cannot deny that I did lock myself in my room for a few decades. I’m exaggerating slightly. Well..actually…it’s probably accurate if I consider it as a cumulative total rather than consecutive years. Anyway, it sounds like something I would have done at fifteen or so, and there is no denying that I did lock myself in my room for a long time.

I’m guessing that I probably also slammed the door and burst into tears. Not necessarily in that order.

What did I gain from it? I started to say “peace” but that’s wrong. Quiet. Solitude. A lack of interaction with anyone but books, notebooks and a sketch pad. I was left alone. I learned to think. Exactly what I wanted.

What I lost was also interaction with anyone but books, notebooks and a sketch pad. I was left alone. I didn’t learn how to act like a human being. Not what i wanted at all. Interesting how that works.

I wonder if I was in my room for as long as Brian Wilson was? It probably doesn’t really count since I always came out for school. In college, I mostly was out of my room. I went back in during the 90’s, and I’ve been out again now for a long time. Did I grow out of it? Did I get better? Maybe. Or maybe I will end up back in there again. It’s not so bad. I have music to listen to and books to read. Words to write. If I got bored, I could knit, weave or carve lino and make prints. There are a lot of things to do in my room.

Sometimes I really want to stay in, but I don’t. Maybe that’s the only difference–just deciding not to.

If I go back in, I’ll let you know.
I could set up a mailing list.

One of the things that makes it worth learning a foreign language well is that it opens a whole new world of movie viewing. No, I am not talking about watching foreign films, although that’s also great. I am referring to watching movies dubbed into a foreign language.

It’s not just watching a movie, it’s a whole analytical audiovisual experience.

When I saw “An American Werewolf in London” I was with a date who was from Venezuela. When the CCR song “Bad Moon Rising” came on, everyone laughed. Except Jesus. His English was pretty good, but not very colloquial, and he’d never heard the song before. I explained, and he got it, but nothing kills funny like an explanation.

The first American movie I remember seeing when I lived in France was “Ghostbusters.” The voices didn’t fit the characters, none of the jokes or gags worked in French and I’d only been in France a few weeks so I was missing a lot of the dialogue. It was terrifically bad. Rick Moranis in French is just a wrong thing. I laughed my ass off, but I didn’t actually hear any of the jokes in English until the 90’s. At one point, Bill Murray turns to Dan Ackyroyd just when Sigourney Weaver turns into a giant hell hound and says “so she’s a dog.” I wondered if they’d said dog or bitch, because the French word for a female dog means both, then I wondered if calling someone a dog in French had the same connotation of ugliness that it does in English and I totally missed the next round of gags.

There are several problems with a movie that is dubbed. The first is the actual voices of the actors. Imagine John Wayne. Very distinctive, drawling voice. In France, he was dubbed by an actor with a suave voice who also voiced many other male stars of the era. Charlton Heston, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, Burt Lancaster, John Wayne. All the same. At times there would actually be movies where it sounded like all of the roles were being played by the same person. You have to be able to ignore that the actors all sound wrong to survive watching a dubbed film.

I watched a John Travolta movie once, and I would swear that it was dubbed by Gerard Depardieu. I was so busy trying to figure out if it was really Depardieu doing Travolta that I couldn’t keep track of the plot. I have no idea what the movie even was.

When a movie is dubbed, I can’t approach it like a movie I want to watch and enjoy as the director intended. It can still be entertaining, but it’s more like watching a parody of the actual movie. I pick apart the voices, i wonder who else I’ve heard them as, i wonder if a joke was as bad in the original version as it was in the dubbed one. To really watch a movie, it has to be in its original language with subtitles.

Subtitles still have translation issues. That’s a whole other thing.

When I was writing about music as meditation the other day, I kept mis-spelling the word meditation. Every time I wrote it, the word came out as medication. I did it every single time I tried to write meditation. Meditation? Medication.

I did it just now, too. More than once.

Finally, I decided that it was a clue that I should use it as part of the post, and I did.

Freudian slip or just a common typo?

Both.

Ideas come in strange ways. They sneak up on you and sometimes they don’t wait long for you to notice them. You have to be paying attention. You have to be willing to get up at night and write them down. You have to be willing to recite them to yourself in the car over and over until you can stop and write them down. (Note to self: turn Siri back on and learn to use it.) You have to look at things a little sideways and kind of squinty. You have to have a tolerant workplace who doesn’t mind a little idea scribbling during work hours in small doses. Friends and family who don’t mind when you get out your phone and start writing yourself a note while you’re out for drinks.

It’s fun, mostly.
And it drives me a little crazy.

Ultimately, it’s good for me on many levels. Since I have convinced myself that I have to do this everyday, it forces me to pay attention because I have to feed the blog.

Granted, that’s a crutch, but it spills over into other areas. Paying attention might become habitual. Don’t hold your breath. Oh, right–breathing goes along with paying attention.

If only I could pay attention to making sure the kitchen is clean. Too bad. Can’t. Have to think of something to write in the blog tomorrow.