you may now listen to this chapter here: go your own way
This then is not some instruction manual for how to do things, or how I did things, or what to do next.
How can I approach this topic without offense? Let’s see. Do I care if you read or listen to this book? I do not. However, the caveat is, this, I don’t think they are the same. There have been wars fought on Facebook about the “books I listened to are just as valid as books you read” debate. I beg to differ.
When you listen to this book, which, I am happy to oblige, there is a different connection, I think. One that changes the experience of the work. Let’s think about this logically. If you are listening, you are most likely hearing the sound of my voice, the author. Does it matter that I am the narrator as well? The voices I do? I’m not a professional VO talent. I’m also not AI, or some concoction of audio that is manufactured in the cloud. This is me.
The letters however, as they come out of my subconscious into finger motions, clicks and ticks, and letters crawling across the screen, are a different matter altogether. The voice of the book is supplied by you. The cognition in the reading will begin to synchronize our thoughts if there is a connection.
I type this. You interpret the marks on the screen. Your brain decodes my meanderings. After twenty minutes, if you’re still with me, you’re essentially in my mind with me. The process of writing is closely related to the process of reading. The process of listening, well, that’s where we’re going to go off on a tangent here.
Since I first saw moving boxes and letters on a computer, back in 1989, I was fresh out of college with a shiny English degree. No need to flaunt my academic deficiencies at this point. I was not an A student in college. Not even in English or Creative Writing. I pissed off a professor during a summer abroad at Oxford, and the next semester my father died. I dropped all but one class. Shakespeare. Never went to class. As I was pulling my life back together, the following semester I went to visit my wayward Bard scholar to ask for a redo. “No.” That F really did take a toll on my overall GPA, but the most disappointing part was I didn’t even make it with his daughter, she was just crushing on me and another student, Hunter. Whatever she told her dad, the disappointment stuck and so did my failing grade. And I love me some Shakespeare.
Listening is good. Thank you. And I appreciate that audiobooks provide a new market and additional revenue for writers. Well, at least until Spotify sucks all the money out of it. That’s happening. It’s a war. Art vs. Commerce. Art vs. AI. Audiobooks vs. text.
What I care about is the meaning. When I loop with another writer my reading mind is closely aligned with their creator mind. Don’t you think? I mean, I can’t be crazy like Kerouac under the bridge in Big Sur, but I can get the flavor of his madness through his letters and sentences. I suppose if Jack could read it to me, and give me some anecdotes as marginalia, things would be swell. But that’s not how audiobooks work. At least not for me.
Here’s the argument.
If I am listening to a Steven King novel, for example, while I’m folding laundry and picking up around the house (a rare occurrence) my mind, my thoughts and consciousness are split, even a little bit, from the language and images of the book. I get distracted and drop a sock behind the dryer. I miss entire paragraphs. If it’s Cujo I think the damage is minimal. If it’s Joyce or Whitman, however, my liminal states create a vacuum. If I’m listening to a novel and I miss a paragraph or two but get some laundry done, how can that be a bad thing? It’s not. But, if I’m listening to Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and I miss the humor of the condescending Steven Daedalus because I’m pairing socks, I think it’s a miss.
When I am reading a great book and I notice my mind is wandering I stop. I give my mind a chance to process its ephemera. Then I reread the paragraph. I’m guessing, if you’re listening to a novel while folding laundry, both tasks are taking a fraction of your attention, and if you miss a little of the story so what? Full stop!
So what?
Do I make myself clear?
Poetry, on the other hand, is where I think my point will be more obvious. If the creative writing is good, a poem can be crafted as a tonic, a joke, a flight of fancy. When I’m reading the text I may not be able to find the muse of alignment. When I am speaking the text, for example, when I am recording the audio of this chapter here (bingo!) a different level of communication is going on. Now, a poem, read by the author, if done well, should be thrilling. Each little bit, considered as a morsel of import and weight. When you can hear me (or any other poet) speaking the words a new part of the equation lights up.
Poetry is like a performance. I write as I hear it. I speak it as I wrote it. And if someone listens or reads and connects we have a win. But poetry is different than fiction. I guess we’re back to this literature definition thing. Let’s say you’re reading the latest John Grisham novel, hoping to get excused from jury duty. I s your full attention required? Even something as magnificent as Moby Dick, can you tune out a few of the descriptive run-ons? Sure. This is not that. Or, I hope it’s not. Crap, I’ve stepped in it again.
Listen if that makes you happy. Read if that makes me happy. And do whatever you want with your consumption of words and sentences and character development or rhyme scheme. It’s actually what makes you happy that I’m aiming at. So, I tell you what. I’ll provide the words in as many forms as I can think of.
Back in the day, as the crude objects and shapes were beginning to move around on my Macintosh screen, I was most interested in trying to discover, create, build, A POEM. An interactive poem.
It was my original idea. It’s taken me a lot of years to come back to the idea of combining words, voice, and images into something more immersive. I can’t read in bed to each of you. But I can snuggle up beside you, in your Airpods, on your iPad, or in good old thinly cut tree. I’m good. Whatever works. But let’s not pretend there is a lot going on in good writing that you don’t want to miss. If you’re blazing along to finish the last 30 pages before bed, perhaps attention and attentiveness to the writer’s cadence and word choice don’t matter much to you. To the writer, however, it is everything.
You can go your own way.
the one and the zero: > next | index
checkout the playlist for all audible chapters
