Voice Overs and Nature

8pm Saturday March 1, 2013

At my corner.

This time I am prepared for night writing: extra writing utensils (although, tonight, no ink will freeze) and a small flashlight (that too will prove unnecessary, as I’ve aligned my sitting to the light of a helpful tangerine street lamp). I have a small square of cardboard to sit on too.

I open my notebook and stare at the white blank page. Last week my eyes rolled from the white pages of my notebook into more whiteness of the snow as if no line of sight had been broken. Tonight, without having looked up and out and into my surroundings yet, I know there will be a contrasting story to tell.

I concentrate on the blank page, make my eyes blur at the white in front of me. Gradually my ears take over. When one sense is down or shrouded in un-stimulancy, other senses kick into gear, make up for it.

I hear a train in the distance. As I concentrate on it, its faint whistle becomes more distinct, closer even. I imagaine the specific body of the train, the body which carries that distant voice. It’s a tired train and an old parts train. A slow train, but a sturdy, knows what its doing train. A wise train.

 I usually hear the trains at night in bed. In the eerie world between sleep and awake, I hear their sluggish moans. Eventually the sound will become incorporated into a dream until the next train comes along, knocking me out of my REM'ing.

I hear the acceleration of buses running their lines through the peculiar bus high way that cuts through East Pittsburgh. When I first moved here, I thought it was a highway under construction, a highway closed like the tunnels that seemed to shut down at the drop of a dime. After never seeing cars on this highway, and eventually, seeing only buses, I realized it was not only not shut down, but designated for buses only. I equate this highway to Pittsburgh's version of a subway or EL.

This busway is actually the Martin Luther King Jr. East

 Busway. Originally it was a railroad line, yet upon purchase,

 the Port Authority of Allegheny County converted/added a

busway in 1983. It ran between Downtown Pittsburgh 

and Edgewood, a length of 6.8 miles. Today, it extends into

 Swissvale another 2.3 miles. Currently, it is undergoing 

negotiations as an alternative car route for the congested 

Squirrel Hill tunnel during its closings. (wikipedia)

I hear a bus approaching and look out into the world beyond my notebook. The 61A North Braddock/Downtown approaches and stops at the dumpster in front of me. Someone gets out from the back door. “61 A North Braddock,” a woman announces. I think about her voice. Is she somewhere, a real woman, paid for her voice over? Or is she computer generated?

 I think about voices like these, down the Shore (and this is how you must say it when referring to going to the Jersey Shore), there is the woman bleating behind you, “watch the tram car, please.”

That please is interesting, a speck of recorded kindness and /or manners. I also suspect this “please” aids in fending off being possibly cursed out, not that it (the voice) would care if it was. But for the driver of the tram, it affords a small mental protection.

There is the “Now, that was easy,” button you can buy at Staples. This phrase, much like the “that’s what she said” fad, can easily be attached to many situations. If you could be summed up as a recorded phrase what would yours be/say? I suspect you wouldn't want to be, oh fellow creative writer. “Now that was easy.”

These audible false voices are a good example of what Jack Turner was referring to when he wrote about  “imitations” of the wild. Instead of present time conversation, these voices are used to inform/imitate dialogue without requiring a human to human interaction. It, and you, stand alone in passivity.  No matter how many times you shake that doll, unhappy with her answer, she will only ever have one (or 30) disconnected and uncreative premeditations.

This is sad, our children’s toys teach them the one sided conversation at an early age, the call without a natural or caring response.

 Turner said that “these abstractions never work, they never achieve a sense of power and fulfillment. They correct neither the cause nor the effect. We end up feeling helpless, and since it is human nature to want to avoid feeling helpless, we become disassociated, cynical and depressed.”

“These abstractions never achieve a sense of power and fulfillment,” Turner says, yet it is power these toys (its makers) seem to be after. The power/desire to limit the imagination, to suggest the limits of the toys capabilities, the ends, no need for further possibility: this doll poops, pees and talks--the end. The need to control the outcome of the dolls functions is a desire to control the child’s imagination. 

Remember when we imagined our doll’s voices, their personality, how they spent the day? That simple freedom is boxed and sold now.

The bus passes and I consider the cool night air. I love it’s (weather) sneakiness, how it allows me contentment in this small space, only to mischievously whisk out a snow storm in the coming hours. 

I love how it makes its own rules, I love its freedom to imagine, to not be confined by outside forces, to just be itself, to makes its mark on the world as it sees right at that moment.

In many ways, weather is boxed and sold. Think of Caribbean cruises, or, this weekend I watched a program about an artist who created indoor clouds and photographed 
them (which was pretty bomb). But there is some consolation in knowing that the capital letter Weather, will and can never be boxed and sold. No no matter how much the paparazzi (weather men/women) chase it, they'll never get that million dollar shot. Never.