Read or Listen?
Are you a lover of books read aloud — on tape, CD, iPod, etc.?
Mostly I'm not. Of all the lifelong pursuits, reading has to be the most universal for those whose sight will permit it. I have too many friends and acquaintances who no longer have the choice of reading for themselves, and I believe I feel worse for their loss than for any of the others our flesh is heir to.
I'd hate the isolation of deafness, but I can imagine managing if someone could teach me to lip-read or even to sign. Somehow, some of the sounds that make life so often enjoyable might reverberate in memory, and maybe old friends would have the patience to continue being friends.
There isn't a sense I'd willingly give up, and maybe that consigns me to the ranks of the materialists. Where I am in my life both geographically and temporally means that I can observe losses of all five of these treasures. I get to see the people who no longer have them, some more than two. It's painful and guilt inducing.
One friend was legally blind. She was a teacher, a writer, a born leader. Into her late 80's she retained the most extraordinary ability to organize and memorize. She could no longer write or read, so that was how she managed. Watching her taught me how people can endure. It also taught me humility. I can't imagine settling for what she had to when she wanted to read.
That's not to disrespect the government tapes for the blind, nor the entire industry of audio books and periodicals. It's just a fact that I would find one of the real hurdles to get over would be the necessity of listening to another voice than my inner one. Especially for reading and poetry. So-called creative nonfiction might be less problematic if the author were reading it. Have you ever noticed, though, how few poets read well?
There's no question that there are talented readers and those who can merely relay the words from the page to make comprehensible sounds. Regardless of the ability of the reader to translate the written words to audibility, what makes me reject being read to is that I'm robbed of the opportunity to make the interpretation for myself.
A common example of what I mean is the fashion of recent years for placing emphases on small words in sentences that demand something so much more obvious and essential. Reading from the classic language of the Book of Common Prayer, the congregant hears "…he gave it to them and said…." Surely it's the giving that's important. Almost daily some TV preview will inform the listener that so-and-so is the character the actor is portraying. What’s important are the names.
Our childhoods, if we were lucky, were full of reading aloud. Now I wonder how many of the stories whose words mesmerized me would have the same appeal and as lasting an impact if they had been read by someone other than my grandmother or my mother, whose intentions may or may not have been to put the emphasis on this or that part of a sentence or phrase, and both of whom read as if they were interested in the story too. In any case, at an early age, I had no problem with being read to. The problem developed as my reading skill improved. Yet, like most pupils, I looked forward to the weekly period when our teacher read to us. I probably would never have embarked on Around the World in Eighty Days on my own in the sixth grade, and doubtless would have made less then half the journey.
Later I came to realize that I have a visual rather than an auditory memory. I don't have much of either nowadays, but once I could be pretty sure to recall whatever I needed to if I read it, or better yet, if I had written it down. Frequently something someone told me would slip my mind. Maybe I have a subconscious distrust of the spoken word — or maybe that might be explained by too many decades of listening to political speeches.
Like many overly critical and finicky people, I'm convinced that I can read aloud. I like to do it. There are two things that stop me, however. First, I can't find anyone who wants to listen to what I'd like to read, and second, I'm beginning to think I'll never find the perfect vehicle for my dream talent so that I can hold an audience rapt.
Thus, I'm best satisfied with what my inner ear can supply, assisted by memories of voices of actors who could probably make a page from the local phone book sound like an epic poem. It has occurred to me that the good thing about this is that I know every other literate grown-up can do the same thing.
©2010 Joan L. Cannon for SeniorWomen.com
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