The more I stare at this video, the more I come to realise that it's not my voice I hate. I can live with hearing recordings of my voice. No, what I really don't like is the way my mouth moves when I'm talking. I mean, I can get my nose fixed through the miracles of modern surgery. But that mouth is just plain evil.
I'm not convinced adding video is such a good idea. I've recorded 4 of the buggers. I think I could just upload them to youtube then connect them up to my website and ignore the whole thing. I mean, I don't have to watch myself reading poetry - only the strange people who get a kick out of watching people read poetry need to suffer that.
I've recoded my website pages to show video alongside the poems (for those poems with video) - here's the link to the Judgement poem. Uploading the video to youtube.com takes ages - they convvert the video into shockwave format at their end, so even if I wanted to I doubt I'd be able to video more than half a dozen poems each weekend.
Fuck! I wish I could act.
"I was washing outside in the yard..." : poem by Osip Mandelstam (1921)
-
A poem by Osip Mandelstam, written in 1921. Russian original, recited (*ochin,
ochin* amateurishly) by me.
2 days ago
Rik,
ReplyDeleteI don't mean to discourage you but I sat here smiling at your pains. The funniest parts of course are you composing yourself to talk in the first few seconds, and the runner-up is the obligatory bending forward to turn off the thing. But the whole thing is surreal - the toilet-like tiles and half curtain, your worried expression, the British accent which belongs by right only to aristocrats and stage-actors...
Still there is a large measure of courage that the act itself conveys and which I have to admire, and then the voice itself is well-done, clear, rhythmical, and without the visual distraction would have commanded my attention.
I hope I've not allowed myself too much indiscretion.
Larry