I write. I don’t talk.
The mime thing? Not a joke.
Recently, the good people at Medium paid me the courtesy of taking advantage of the fact that I put a huge amount of time and talent into writing something to show off how cool they think they are by doing a spoken version of something I wrote.
Which, don’t get me wrong, I kind of liked. It turned out well. I’ll provide a link to which story below, which because of their moderate capitalism will only mean that some people can actually listen to it. That’s the thing about clubs, and I’m not sure how happy I am about it.
But the thing is, it reminded me that, you know, I can speak English.
Or I could last time I checked. I don’t know for sure. I haven’t tried in a while, due to this whole paralyzing social anxiety thing that conveniently justifies my preference to navigate through almost all social interactions with a wink and a smile.
I have been known to broaden my vocabulary to include pointing and grunting, in situations that require extra finesse, like ordering at restaurants or discussing surgical procedures.
Sometimes I’ll even say “this” if the scenario seems particularly difficult.
That’s about as far as I usually want to go, though. I feel most comfortable communicating without bringing sound pollution into it any more than I have to. Sound pollution is a real thing. Al Gore said so. I’m doing my bit for the environment, as far as I’m concerned.
Or was he talking about air pollution?
Whatever. What I mean to say is that I write things down so that I don’t need to say them.
The last thing I would like to do is try to recite things I’ve written. That would invite all kinds of uncontrollable things. People might, you know, listen to me if I started to recite things I’ve written. I wouldn’t know what to do if that happened. I’m used to writing. But I haven’t said anything significant in, what? Fifteen years, probably. I’ve written it all down.
Yes.
So no reciting things.
Even though I have the equipment.
And the interest to practice.
And the opportunity.
None of that matters, because I simply will not do it.
Good. That’s settled.
…
But if I did, then I would need to rewrite everything a little bit.
That’s the main issue. Basically, I don’t speak. I write. And since I write, but I don’t speak, then the stuff that I write doesn’t always read very nicely, given how I would speak, hypothetically, if I could speak.
It would be every bit like reruns. Specifically, like those reruns of the original series of Star Trek with the updated graphics, which have half of us asking, “Huh?” and the other half of us shrugging and saying, “not too bad, really.”
Because what I would do would be to rewrite them so that I could read them, and release them again with the audio.
Which I’ve already established that I’m not going to do. I’d much prefer releasing videos of the interpretive dance version. I am a mime. I would enact the narrative sooner than say it out loud.
So don’t worry.
I won’t be reading my stories out loud.
I’m a mime. I don’t know how to speak.
The one that they did an audio version of. Turned out all right.
Let’s have an adventure.
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