Can you hear the voices?

I have voices in my head.  No not the kind that tell you to do things.  No, these voices are the ones I hear when I read.  And lately, I've been paying a touch more attention to them than in the past, and it's all due to Readercon.

You see, at Readercon, I got to meet Richard Parks, and hear him read from his soon to be released novel, The Long Look.   I noticed something very, very strange after that meeting.  The voice of the story changed.  Not the voice of the writing, that didn't change.  But the voice I hear in my head, the "narrator" for all intents and purposes of the tale suddenly took on his actual voice.  Most of what Parks read at that reading is the opening chapters, which it just so happens appeared in the short story "A Time for Heroes" and was included in his second collection Worshipping Small Gods--which I read.  It originally appeared in the anthology: The Shimmering Door, which, it just so happens that I own, and read back in the late 90's when it came out.  Which explains why that particular story felt so familiar when I'd read it last year in his collection.   So, I read this story twice, long before I'd ever met in person the author and heard him read.   What I noticed, however, after this reading is this: reading this story again, the voice in my head, telling me the tale, was now Park's own voice. 

I have never had this happen to me before.  Partly, I suspect, because I haven't been to very many readings.  Mostly when I see authors, it's in a Q&A type environment where they discuss the processes of writing, with perhaps a very brief snippet of their text.  And for the vast majority of the authors I've read, I've never met them in person, so the odds of their voice, that is, the actual speaking voice of the author, just hasn't come into play when reading their work.  Perhaps I'm the only person who hears a story in his head, as if someone were reading the text aloud.  (It's been suggested this is part of my problem with my poor reading speed, that if I can shut it off, I'll read much faster.)  The person reading the text isn't, however, me.  Rather, I seem to have a collection of voices, that will jump in and take over the storytelling.  I don't know where I managed to pick up this cast from.  I don't even know how my brain assigns the roles to each story or author.  I can say this: its not always the same voice.  I suspect that the story itself helps inform the choice.  A male main character will most likely bring out a male voice.  A female main character, often a female voice, though not always.  Sometimes, if the story isn't first person, the "narrator" may default to a generic male voice, even if the story is mainly about a woman. 

The speaking roles, however, will tend to be filled in with voice casting appropriate to the gender of the character.  That is, when I read dialogue I hear voices there too, and those voices loosely correspond to the characters.  I have noticed, sometimes in the past that when I see TV or movie versions of a story, that the actors voice and image sometimes encroach upon my own self-made casting of the part.  Notable recent observances of it were during the short lived Dresden Files show, where the actors for Harry and Bob tended to drift in, and influence the characters going forward for some time after.  Overall, though, those voices drifted out, especially as more time has passed.   On the other hand, Mark Hamil is still the voice of Luke Skywalker in my head, and Harrison Ford, Han Solo, no matter how many stories with those characters I've read.  I suspect that means that the first identifiable voice associated with a character sticks.  But the difference there, is that in general (with the exception of voice over narration) movies and TV don't typically have that extra character, the one telling the tale.  But stories always do.  And so even if the character voices have been influenced in the past by actor portrayals, the whole voice of a story has never before been affected for me in quite the same way.  And that is why it has struck me as a strange experience.

To make matters more weird, I've noticed this: the change of voice is localized.  When I first noticed it, the influence was so strong, that I began to wonder if everything I ever read by Parks would be changed.  But no.  I pulled out a different story, with a rather different character (one of his Lord Yamada tales) and that story remained in what I assume is the original voice.  I remained baffled.  I wasn't bothered by the voice itself; it was smooth, a bit more tenor than I perhaps expected, and the accent while different from my own, has a melodious enough character that it's not a distraction.  It just wasn't the voice I'd heard previously. 

Over the past month or so, the voice has somewhat faded.  Not completely, it's still there, but I suspect now it is the mere memory of voice, and may no longer accurately represent the actual speaking voice of the author.  Perhaps, in another month, it will go away.  Or perhaps from now on, every time I read a story in Tymon the Black's world, I'll hear the voice again.  I wonder if, as I attend more readings, this will happen more often.  Or, was it perhaps due to the fact that I started reading the same work right away that caused it.  Would leaving more time between the reading and when I picked up the book have made a difference.  I don't know.

So I wonder, has this ever happened to any of you?

Do you hear the story told in your head as I describe?  Or is your experience quite different?   I"d be curious to know.

Can you hear the voices?

I have voices in my head.  No not the kind that tell you to do things.  No, these voices are the ones I hear when I read.  And lately, I've been paying a touch more attention to them than in the past, and it's all due to Readercon.

You see, at Readercon, I got to meet Richard Parks, and hear him read from his soon to be released novel, The Long Look.   I noticed something very, very strange after that meeting.  The voice of the story changed.  Not the voice of the writing, that didn't change.  But the voice I hear in my head, the "narrator" for all intents and purposes of the tale suddenly took on his actual voice.  Most of what Parks read at that reading is the opening chapters, which it just so happens appeared in the short story "A Time for Heroes" and was included in his second collection Worshipping Small Gods--which I read.  It originally appeared in the anthology: The Shimmering Door, which, it just so happens that I own, and read back in the late 90's when it came out.  Which explains why that particular story felt so familiar when I'd read it last year in his collection.   So, I read this story twice, long before I'd ever met in person the author and heard him read.   What I noticed, however, after this reading is this: reading this story again, the voice in my head, telling me the tale, was now Park's own voice. 

I have never had this happen to me before.  Partly, I suspect, because I haven't been to very many readings.  Mostly when I see authors, it's in a Q&A type environment where they discuss the processes of writing, with perhaps a very brief snippet of their text.  And for the vast majority of the authors I've read, I've never met them in person, so the odds of their voice, that is, the actual speaking voice of the author, just hasn't come into play when reading their work.  Perhaps I'm the only person who hears a story in his head, as if someone were reading the text aloud.  (It's been suggested this is part of my problem with my poor reading speed, that if I can shut it off, I'll read much faster.)  The person reading the text isn't, however, me.  Rather, I seem to have a collection of voices, that will jump in and take over the storytelling.  I don't know where I managed to pick up this cast from.  I don't even know how my brain assigns the roles to each story or author.  I can say this: its not always the same voice.  I suspect that the story itself helps inform the choice.  A male main character will most likely bring out a male voice.  A female main character, often a female voice, though not always.  Sometimes, if the story isn't first person, the "narrator" may default to a generic male voice, even if the story is mainly about a woman. 

The speaking roles, however, will tend to be filled in with voice casting appropriate to the gender of the character.  That is, when I read dialogue I hear voices there too, and those voices loosely correspond to the characters.  I have noticed, sometimes in the past that when I see TV or movie versions of a story, that the actors voice and image sometimes encroach upon my own self-made casting of the part.  Notable recent observances of it were during the short lived Dresden Files show, where the actors for Harry and Bob tended to drift in, and influence the characters going forward for some time after.  Overall, though, those voices drifted out, especially as more time has passed.   On the other hand, Mark Hamil is still the voice of Luke Skywalker in my head, and Harrison Ford, Han Solo, no matter how many stories with those characters I've read.  I suspect that means that the first identifiable voice associated with a character sticks.  But the difference there, is that in general (with the exception of voice over narration) movies and TV don't typically have that extra character, the one telling the tale.  But stories always do.  And so even if the character voices have been influenced in the past by actor portrayals, the whole voice of a story has never before been affected for me in quite the same way.  And that is why it has struck me as a strange experience.

To make matters more weird, I've noticed this: the change of voice is localized.  When I first noticed it, the influence was so strong, that I began to wonder if everything I ever read by Parks would be changed.  But no.  I pulled out a different story, with a rather different character (one of his Lord Yamada tales) and that story remained in what I assume is the original voice.  I remained baffled.  I wasn't bothered by the voice itself; it was smooth, a bit more tenor than I perhaps expected, and the accent while different from my own, has a melodious enough character that it's not a distraction.  It just wasn't the voice I'd heard previously. 

Over the past month or so, the voice has somewhat faded.  Not completely, it's still there, but I suspect now it is the mere memory of voice, and may no longer accurately represent the actual speaking voice of the author.  Perhaps, in another month, it will go away.  Or perhaps from now on, every time I read a story in Tymon the Black's world, I'll hear the voice again.  I wonder if, as I attend more readings, this will happen more often.  Or, was it perhaps due to the fact that I started reading the same work right away that caused it.  Would leaving more time between the reading and when I picked up the book have made a difference.  I don't know.

So I wonder, has this ever happened to any of you?

Do you hear the story told in your head as I describe?  Or is your experience quite different?   I"d be curious to know.

That doesn't even register

I'm a techno-geek.  So, it might surprise you to hear me say, that technology can sometimes get in the way.  All these high-tech gizmos can have inherent flaws, and an over reliance on them can be troublesome.  The danger, however, isn't that things can go wrong.  Things always go wrong, at some point.  No, the danger is in relying so much on the advanced technology that you don't keep prepared for situations where technology doesn't function.   Like making sure you've got both flashlights, and candles ready for when the power goes out.  Because even if you have your flashlights on hand, if your batteries are dead, then all you've got is a rather heavy stick in your hand.

Which is why having old school methods, like candles, is important.  It's why once I've finished working on a story draft, I'll print out a copy, and store it in my file cabinet, even as I back it up to memory stick, and external disks.  It might seem preposterous.  But it's a habit I picked up in high school.  And I still have access to many of the things I wrote back on my TRS80, C64, or Amiga.  It doesn't matter if I had the orignal media or not, none of those are compatible with modern computers.  Nor were they highly compatible with each other, and so as I went from one system to the next, I learned to retype in that work that I cared enough about to continue working on.  Who knows at what point in the future my current files become obsolete.  One truth I know, is technology changes faster than you anticipate, and in ways that are hard to anticipate.  But a printed page can always be retyped into a new system.

And that brings me to the observation that kicked this off.  I was in a local chain eatery, had ordered my food, and stepped up to the register.  The young woman punched in the order on her little screen, and then got a worried look on her face.  Then she started tapping the screen repeatedly.  The look turned into a frustrated frown.  The register had frozen.  The screen she scowled at and kept jabbing with her forefinger was for all intents and purposes a paper weight.  Out from a door, came another young woman, who came over to help.  She stepped in front of the register, and poked, and prodded, and jabbed the screen in nearly the same manner.  It reminded me of that old saying, that craziness is doing the same thing over, and over again expecting different results.  We all get a little crazy I think from time to time, in these situations.  I wondered out loud if they could reboot it.  Or just power it off and back on.  A third employee stepped out, and tried to log in to the other register.  But by the quick, rapid jabbing of that screen, I could tell that the problem wasn't localized. 

And it hit me as I watched them: an old fashioned mechanical cash register wouldn't run into this problem.  Then I wondered, to whose advantage was it that registers are all complex computers these days?  I guess it makes the training easier.  Just punch the button with the item name or picture.  Easier for the employee; no prices to learn and memorize.  Yet even in working order, they aren't flawless.  A few weeks back, I'd stopped in at the local Friendly's to buy a sundae to share with my wife.  After ordering the sundae, the waitress spent a good ten minutes poking away at the register trying to get my order in, before finally getting the manager to help.  It was a far cry from the days of my first girlfriend (who's first job was as a waitress at a Friendly's) who could knock out five orders in the time it took me to make up my mind what flavor I wanted.  It's not that my ex was uber competent, and this young woman wasn't.  I'm sure this young woman was every bit as skilled as my ex, I got the impression that the systems were now so complex they had the potential to bog things down.  And for what?  So that corporate HQ can know exactly how many scoops of each flavor was ordered on any given day?  Supply chain management?  If it makes me wait more than a minute for the cashier to punch it in, I think there's a problem. 

Back to the salad, and it took more than five minutes, and three employees trying the same ineffective CPR method on the two registers, before they finally gave up and calculated by pen and paper my order.  This was a special salad, not on the regular menu, which meant they had to figure out the price through some arcane means.  (There wasn't a sign to be found with the price on the counter.)   They had to manually figure out the tax.  While they could open the cash drawer with a key, they had to ask me if the change was correct.  Which it wasn't.  And that's another problem with an over reliance on the machines to tell us all what to do.  The transaction wasn't beyond their capabilities.  But their ability to interact with small amounts of money had atrophied through lack of use.  Many registers these days automatically spit out the coins, so a cashier only handles the bills.  And I know, that for the most part, these are jobs that are filled by high school, and college kids, and that this is neither their career path, nor dream job.  So I understand why the corporations make the registers the way they do.  That layer of control, that machine with buttons that say "Burger" "Fries" "Soda" "Ginormasize it" are there to make the life of the managers, and trainers easier.  Because kids come and go by the month at these jobs.  But the training, and the system, fail when they don't prepare the employees for the moments when that technology isn't functional.  In both the above cases, they were lucky.  I was by myself, no child hanging on to get antsy or throw a fit.  No lines backing up while they tried to sort things out.  I've worked in fast food service, so I don't give them a hard time.  But I still sigh, and wonder just how much we fail ourselves, and our future, by failing to prepare them better in those first, early jobs of their lives.

That doesn't even register

I'm a techno-geek.  So, it might surprise you to hear me say, that technology can sometimes get in the way.  All these high-tech gizmos can have inherent flaws, and an over reliance on them can be troublesome.  The danger, however, isn't that things can go wrong.  Things always go wrong, at some point.  No, the danger is in relying so much on the advanced technology that you don't keep prepared for situations where technology doesn't function.   Like making sure you've got both flashlights, and candles ready for when the power goes out.  Because even if you have your flashlights on hand, if your batteries are dead, then all you've got is a rather heavy stick in your hand.

Which is why having old school methods, like candles, is important.  It's why once I've finished working on a story draft, I'll print out a copy, and store it in my file cabinet, even as I back it up to memory stick, and external disks.  It might seem preposterous.  But it's a habit I picked up in high school.  And I still have access to many of the things I wrote back on my TRS80, C64, or Amiga.  It doesn't matter if I had the orignal media or not, none of those are compatible with modern computers.  Nor were they highly compatible with each other, and so as I went from one system to the next, I learned to retype in that work that I cared enough about to continue working on.  Who knows at what point in the future my current files become obsolete.  One truth I know, is technology changes faster than you anticipate, and in ways that are hard to anticipate.  But a printed page can always be retyped into a new system.

And that brings me to the observation that kicked this off.  I was in a local chain eatery, had ordered my food, and stepped up to the register.  The young woman punched in the order on her little screen, and then got a worried look on her face.  Then she started tapping the screen repeatedly.  The look turned into a frustrated frown.  The register had frozen.  The screen she scowled at and kept jabbing with her forefinger was for all intents and purposes a paper weight.  Out from a door, came another young woman, who came over to help.  She stepped in front of the register, and poked, and prodded, and jabbed the screen in nearly the same manner.  It reminded me of that old saying, that craziness is doing the same thing over, and over again expecting different results.  We all get a little crazy I think from time to time, in these situations.  I wondered out loud if they could reboot it.  Or just power it off and back on.  A third employee stepped out, and tried to log in to the other register.  But by the quick, rapid jabbing of that screen, I could tell that the problem wasn't localized. 

And it hit me as I watched them: an old fashioned mechanical cash register wouldn't run into this problem.  Then I wondered, to whose advantage was it that registers are all complex computers these days?  I guess it makes the training easier.  Just punch the button with the item name or picture.  Easier for the employee; no prices to learn and memorize.  Yet even in working order, they aren't flawless.  A few weeks back, I'd stopped in at the local Friendly's to buy a sundae to share with my wife.  After ordering the sundae, the waitress spent a good ten minutes poking away at the register trying to get my order in, before finally getting the manager to help.  It was a far cry from the days of my first girlfriend (who's first job was as a waitress at a Friendly's) who could knock out five orders in the time it took me to make up my mind what flavor I wanted.  It's not that my ex was uber competent, and this young woman wasn't.  I'm sure this young woman was every bit as skilled as my ex, I got the impression that the systems were now so complex they had the potential to bog things down.  And for what?  So that corporate HQ can know exactly how many scoops of each flavor was ordered on any given day?  Supply chain management?  If it makes me wait more than a minute for the cashier to punch it in, I think there's a problem. 

Back to the salad, and it took more than five minutes, and three employees trying the same ineffective CPR method on the two registers, before they finally gave up and calculated by pen and paper my order.  This was a special salad, not on the regular menu, which meant they had to figure out the price through some arcane means.  (There wasn't a sign to be found with the price on the counter.)   They had to manually figure out the tax.  While they could open the cash drawer with a key, they had to ask me if the change was correct.  Which it wasn't.  And that's another problem with an over reliance on the machines to tell us all what to do.  The transaction wasn't beyond their capabilities.  But their ability to interact with small amounts of money had atrophied through lack of use.  Many registers these days automatically spit out the coins, so a cashier only handles the bills.  And I know, that for the most part, these are jobs that are filled by high school, and college kids, and that this is neither their career path, nor dream job.  So I understand why the corporations make the registers the way they do.  That layer of control, that machine with buttons that say "Burger" "Fries" "Soda" "Ginormasize it" are there to make the life of the managers, and trainers easier.  Because kids come and go by the month at these jobs.  But the training, and the system, fail when they don't prepare the employees for the moments when that technology isn't functional.  In both the above cases, they were lucky.  I was by myself, no child hanging on to get antsy or throw a fit.  No lines backing up while they tried to sort things out.  I've worked in fast food service, so I don't give them a hard time.  But I still sigh, and wonder just how much we fail ourselves, and our future, by failing to prepare them better in those first, early jobs of their lives.