Note to Self: Don’t Listen to Me (including this note to self…?)

I’ve just been helping (more like hindering) a friend record the voices to characters in an animated short film. I’m voicing one of the characters… ruh roh!

Have you ever listened to your voice on a recording?

Forget all other types of blows to self esteem this one takes the cake or a big bite out of the cake that you are!

What kind of cake are you? What kind of cake am I? Hmmm…. not Mmmmm…

Whoever you thought you were, however you thought you sounded when you spoke, will fly out the window on an erratic airwave once your hear yourself outside of your head.

Do I really sound like that….!!?!??

It doesn’t help matters that I have a bizarre accent caused by years of growing up while living hither and thither and absorbing a weird mix of pronunciations and verbal quirks.

And it doesn’t help matters that I like to use different voices for different things. I spend a lot of time talking cat – as in giving voice to my cat’s thoughts in a cat voice. My cat thinks – Ma hoomin iz shtoopid. My cat is right, as usual. My cat wouldn’t talk the way that I pretend it talks if it could talk, but it can’t talk, not human talk anyway, so I have creative license…. and I abuse that license for the fun of it. Typical shtoopid hoomin shenaninnygans!

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I will sometimes announce that I’m using my ‘serious voice’ when I’m about to say something serious… problem with that is it’s funny – not the serious voice, but that too sometimes, just the fact that I’m announcing such a thing – who does that!?! Obviously not someone about to say something serious no matter what voice they’re using!

And I wonder why people don’t take me seriously! Perhaps I need to lobotomise the clown in me who just can’t help making a mockery of the serious. Grumble…

I tried to stick to the schtick of the script. Really, I did… then things spiraled from there. Most of the track which my friend recorded is uncanned laughter. I drowned in my own mirth and was unable to perform a rescue and resuscitation. My friend didn’t fair any better – laughter is indeed infectious, even for those who think they’re immune to it or who have had a temporary inoculation.

The more takes we took, the worse (and funnier) things got. Soon I was ad-libbing and the script might have well been one of those guidelines whose only purpose is to show where not to go.

With friends like me, who needs an enema… Boom! Boom! Cue canned laughter at an unfunny joke.

Seriously, I can be serious… just not where and when I am supposed to be. Perhaps because I am constantly seeking, usually unconsciously but also consciously, a happy place to deal with all those unhappy places. At the worst of times I figure – if I can laugh here (at this), then I can laugh anywhere (at anything). Mostly I laugh at myself… it helps to balance my crazy.

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Life, being human, etc, is crazy chaos to which we try to apply an order… it often rebels against our neat-freakery. When it does we either crumble under life laughing at us or we learn how to laugh with it, and perhaps it’ll stop laughing at us and laugh with us.

I’d share my voice-over experience with you via audio… if I was crazy enough to do that (I’m a loopy looney, but not a complete fool). Instead I’m going share a couple of somethings which I saw recently that gave me a chuckle and took me to a happy place.

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The Break Up Song by Rhett & Link (relationships summed up – sort of – in a funny song)

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and

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True Detective: The Oscar Parody / this one is really only funny if you’ve watched True Detective (and is funnier still if you, like me, related to that particular character – or at least think other people see you this way which explains why they behave that way around you – is it you or them? Hmmm…)

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Do you have a happy place, if so, care to share?