The Phrase You Remember Most That Was Whispered into Your Ear

 

I speak and understand and read four languages including my own [...] I suppose that's why I have a tendency (as does Luisa, who is also an interpreter) [...] to want to understand everything that people say and everything I hear, both at work and outside, even at a distance, even if it's one of the innumerable languages I don't know, even if it's in an indistinguishable murmur or an imperceptive whisper, even if it would be better that I didn't understand and what's said is not intended for my ears, or is said precisely so that I won't catch it.

                       - From A Heart So White by Javier Marías                                                          

Recently, I watched a film short about two interpreters and have been thinking about it. The two main characters are simultaneous interpreters, the kind in which people who need the spoken language access (in this case, Hungarian) are given earphones in which to hear the  interpretation while a speaker is presenting. 

I've been around this type of interpreting and these types of earpieces a number of times. I've sat next to people using them. I've been one of the people using them. The flimsy and ill-fitting plastic-and-sometimes-foam meant to offer access to information for the price of discomfort for a few hours. The most memorable time being around these earpieces was, long ago, being in a room with Baltasar Garzón lecturing in his tailored suit and slicked back silver and dark gray hair. I recall how he gripped the emblemed, fake-wood podium at times. I remember this movement accentuating his sophisticated, almost teasing tie wear as he spoke. 

More specifically this film short taught me the term chuchotage, which I have also been in a room with and been teased by. Chuchotage is another type of simultaneous interpretation, one in which the interpreter stands (or sits) close to a person and whispers the translation in real time. There is a connection to the French verb chuchoter in its origins which means "to whisper". It tends to only be functional when there are one to maybe four people needing access to a particular language. I've been in a lot of meetings where chuchotage is going on in the back or side of the room and, before realizing that's what was happening, I thought people were just whispering during a presentation, which peaked my interest. 

I wonder, from a spoken language interpreter's perspective on simultaneous interpretation, if most prefer being the disembodied voice in the ears of a percentage of the crowd, or if most prefer to sit close and whisper. 

From a physical and interpreting standpoint, I have thoughts. There are pros and cons to them both that I can see. From my own experience interpreting, I can say that sometimes chuchotage makes my own interpreting more challenging in that it becomes harder to hear what is being said by the speaker. But I don't fault anyone for that: Access is access and it's all equally vital. 

Putting all profession aside: I will forever be prone to romanticize any type of whispered access that is murmuring in the back of the room and tempting me for my attention.

 

 

Be well; be loved,

 

k.

Note: The aforementioned film short is by Barnabás Toth and is entitled Chuchotage (2018).

 

[photo credit: Kristina Flour]

Starry Configurations

While it is a myth that crickets rub their legs together in order to chirp, it is very much true that I enjoy the feeling of my shaved legs rubbing together on a bed as I type. Currently, I am casually watching the clock in order to know when to get dressed and ready to be out the door for reservations.  

I have been reading a lot lately in between everything else of life. Something beautiful and strange that I came across recently is the fact that the word disaster comes from roots (Italian and Latin) that end up translating into "bad star" (dis- meaning bad or against, aster or astrum meaning star). Poets later started interpreting disaster as "separated from the stars", implying more of a separation from the cosmos, nature, or from one another. 

Separation from one another. Disaster, indeed. 

 

 

My legs are smooth and the clock's hands are turning. 

May we all be connected to the stars within us and each other- tonight and as the cosmos continues to unfurl around us. 

 

be well; be loved,

 

k.  

(title taken from Jets to Brazil. It feels good in one's mouth to say out loud and because it fits, thematically.) 

The Shape of Braille Upon Your Lips

 

I.

This weekend we made dairy free ice cream by hand (Hands. Many of them. Perhaps more specifically: Fists.) This was a childlike first for me: I had never made any kind of ice cream by hand before. 

Nighttime and dinner and iced tea and breakfast and daylight and forests and wary legs.

So much good food made by loving hands.

(pause) 

Something I've been enjoying as of late is the feel of my body when there is no expectation to be anything other than what and who I am at any given moment. It is such a full-bodied relaxation. The space between my shoulder blades is pet by an invisible hand into a relaxed oblivion. 

I can't get enough of it. 

I used to hear people talk about "creating a feeling of abundance" and I never knew what the fuck they were talking about. 

I think that I am beginning (rather, continuing) to. 

 

II.

A conversation this weekend elicited the externalization of something I've thought of often for a number of years, now. An appreciation of a particular aspect of language and language acquisition. Something related to what I think of as linguistic ghosts:

In my observation and experience, I've noticed that our first languages can remain as ghosts in second and third (and on...) languages that we use as we learn them. And these ghosts can sometimes teach us many things. Like any ghosts, they can show us angles into life that we may not have otherwise seen.

Go with me, here.  

As an illustration of what a linguistic ghost might look like could include: When I was first starting to learn Spanish- and sometimes even still- if I'm aiming to express, let's say, that someone is two and a half years old, I may resort back to English structure and say Ella tiene dos y medio años (coming from the English description of age in the order of 'two and a half years') instead of Ella tiene dos años y medio. In this same vein, I'll often hear Spanish speakers learning English say She is two years and a half (instead of English's 'two and a half years') which fits with Spanish language structure. In both cases, while we may be using a language other than our first language, the ghost of our first language is pulling our new language into a familiar (and sometimes technically inaccurate) form. 

One of the linguistic ghosts that I have thought of often, and that came up this weekend, has to do with the English phrase of What's wrong? being asked with a concerned look upon the speaker's face to a person who seems upset. What I've noticed over the years is that many native Spanish speakers who are communicating in English may say What happened? (something that fits more with Spanish language structure) with a concerned look on their face in the context of someone seeming upset. 

I've thought about this particular linguistic ghost so many times over the years because I think it's fucking brilliant: Direct and genius and generous in its inquiry. So much so that I'd like to see What's wrong? replaced with What happened?, frankly. 

The question of What's wrong? pushes an assumptive framing that can create so many sites of breakdown in communication. A person can be upset or have emotions without something being wrong, afterall. What I've noticed within myself is that when I am upset, a person asking me What's wrong? causes a break in communication, somehow: A mental stutter. My mind tries to figure out if something is decidedly wrong. Is something wrong, or am I simply just feeling? Instead of expressing what I am experiencing, I feel the need to respond to some unasked for, external framework asserting that something is wrong and, in the process of that, communication can start to crumple up and shut down. 

In contrast, when I am upset and someone asks me What happened? a true, uninhibited and pure response is elicited from me. Easily and almost automatically. 

So, YES.  

What happened? 

A friend of mine looks sad? : What happened?  

A loved one looks angry? : What happened? 

A stranger looks wistful and has tears in their eyes? : What happened?

 

I love this question 

and 

I love the linguistic ghosts that glide from one language to another and back again to teach me something more 

about myself 

and the world at large.

 

 

 

be well; be loved,

 

k.  

[image: Johannes Plenio]

Sometimes the Simplest Move is Right

Come to me

with all your glamour and cruelty 

 

There was a one and only time I went back home for a family wedding. I wore a slim dress and wet-looking and pointed dark red stilettos. It was my little faggot wink to serving Dorothy; post-tornado. It was all so fitting.

I've been thinking a lot about the audacity of being oneself. How angry people can get about it. [Why are you wearing that tie? Where are your children? Are you a boy or a girl? Why don't you hate your job? Who do you think you are telling me no? Why don't you react to the mean things I say to try and bait you? Wah, wah, wah. Don't these people know that the spanking they crave isn't free?] 

It may be the one thing in common with all of the friends I have had for multiple decades, now. Whether it's brazenness, confidence, neurodiversity, or some wild combination of all of it, the thread that runs through them all is their uniqueness and unwillingness (inability?) to give a fuck enough to hide who they are or give you what you want unless (the brilliant unless)... 

wait for it...

...they want it, too.  

be well; be loved,

k. 

[Italicized words and title credit: From Art Pop by Lady Gaga] 

[image credit: porcelaine Tumblr]

What the Handle of a Garter Belt Dagger Touches

 

Lately, I have been in summertime mode. My annual craving for iced teas laced with berries or citrus, traveling to places that will slow me down but will not leave me sunburned, and enjoying the contrast of the cool of sheets mixed with the hot of skin a bit more than usual at night. 

Currently, I have been reading Lair: Radical Homes and Hideouts of Movie Villains (2019). Gorgeous photographs, drawings, explanations and commentary. Villains, who always have the more impressive color palette (such a seductive bruise they all are). Villains who, as it turns out, also dwell in the most incredible homes and hideouts (a purple and blue pearl hidden within an angular and perfect black widow made of pure obsidian). 

 

 

be well; be loved,

 

k. 

(Image: Aesthetic Academia via Tumblr) 

Slow Dancing in Our Living Room

 

I. 

This week I've had an unhealthy relationship with the Pomodoro Technique. Yes, I have been wildly productive. However, something has shifted where I feel like my life is existing in 15 minute intervals*. It reminds me of when I was a child and some adult would have an old-school slide projector and would be showing images of photos they had taken, or perhaps works of art. There would be a heavy clunk-shift sound, then an image projected onto a screen. Just ask you started to lose yourself in the image: Another clunk-shift. A new image, pulling you out of the world you had just started to immerse yourself in. 

II.

I never really understood souvenirs until I experienced them through you. You told me that you liked to get things to commemorate particular experiences. Capturing a memory before it became a memory. Slowly, you started getting me little (as in tiny, my favorite) mugs here and there on our adventures. 

Over the years, it continues. I love it. 

My favorite so far is what may be the softest shirt I've ever had on my body that you picked up from a Midwest doughnut shop. You took me there to show me why they may be the best donuts around in that sun-faded, somehow familiar hometown. 

 

be well; be loved,

k. 

 

 

*= (I have been doing 15 minute increments, not the traditional 25). 

 

[image from Ifoundshelterhere tumblr] 

Car Culture and the Lines of a Tailored Suit: Passenger Princes and the Bratty Boy Behind the Wheel

The rain on my car is a baptism.

                                 -- From that one movie. You know the one. 

These past few days have had a calm within me. Externally, there have been storms for some around me. Asks for emergency Zoom calls; texts for last minute tarot reads. This kind of thing doesn't happen often but, when it does, it just feels good to be able to have and offer the capacity to hold and take on some of the weight of it. The timing feels serendipitous and for that, I am grateful. It has been sunny for several days now, but it has been raining hard in other realms.

This weekend will be a housewarming party: The house filled with family and love and laughter-  with or without a functioning barbecue. 

* 

Lastly, because I don't know the order in which to put it, I learned earlier this week that a loved one's sibling died by suicide. 

[This loved one is of so many years. Years of letter-writing, romance, friendship, clues. The first blueprint of something true. Their father helped me figure out how to buy my first new-for-me vehicle. Their sister the first child aside from my niece I had bought a present for back then.] 

So I am here: Showered and quiet, contemplating the complexity of these kinds of deaths. They churn the stomach, the mind and the heart in a way that is distinct from other kinds of deaths. In their immediate shadow, there are never exact words to say and, perhaps, it is better that way. 

Memorial Day, indeed.  

 

be well; be loved,

 

k.  

[image: Jing Wen for Vogue UK, March 2018  Mert & Marcus]

Sunset Through a Keyhole

Such endless-summer-with-your-friends feel tonight. One of those endless hang outs that could easily go on for a few more hours. Sunset, ice cream, the waterfront, great conversations, and me finally witnessing (and thus dispelling) the mysteries of electric car charging stations. 

* 

Last night was the sound performance. Fifty of us in an auditorium with 1800+ seats, all sitting in the center of the first seven rows (for the best experience of the three dimensional sound). All in the dark. Seventy minutes. Brief, haunting human  vocals, but mostly field recordings of the most gorgeous and vast sounds spilling from front to back to left to right. Train wheels into violins; birds into fear into the power of the ocean. Underwater and above the atmosphere in the span of the hands on the clock.

Leaving the auditorium was disorienting for a thousand beautiful reasons. 

be well; be loved,

k.  

The report, once delivered, included:

Excerpt from a letter dated [redacted] years ago:

 

I'm so relieved you told me about the [redacted]. I've been wanting to tell you: She keeps coming up to my cafe. When she first came in, she introduced herself and reminded me that she had met me through you once. I know she doesn't live anywhere close to there.

[redacted] 

She 'liked' every photograph I was in on my workplace's Instagram page. Nothing else. Maybe she didn't think the people at my work would notice. They did. (We are an imperfect but caring work family). She sent a request to follow my personal account. I left it pending. If she asks me about it, I will tell her that I don't mix my work life with my personal life.

 

 

[Image credit: Artem Nadyozhin via thephotoregistry Tumblr]

Sound Vibrating Your Hipbones While Lying on the Floor

A book that I am reading at present proposes that asking the meaning of life is akin to asking a chess master what "the best chess move is". Which is to say that the question makes no sense. There is no singular answer and, what is more, each individual's answer is so specific to the alignment of the multiple contexts in which he finds himself. 

Am I searching for the meaning of life? No. 

Am I reading Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl because I was on the waitlist for months and it was, at last, my turn? Yes.  

Not quite the beach read material that the season whispers, but fascinating nonetheless. 

[In case one is unfamiliar, Frankl was a psychiatrist, philosopher, survivor of the concentration camps of the Shoah, and founder of Logotherapy. (If Freud was "will to pleasure", Logotherapy is "will to meaning". Existential/humanistic at root.)]

Something I'm thinking about is this tactic/idea he talks about in the book known as Paradoxical Intention, where a person is able to overcome a behavior they would like to change by aiming to desire the very thing they wrestle with or fear.  So, for example, in the book he describes a person who sweats a ton when they are nervous. Instead of "trying not to sweat", he instructs the person when faced with a situation that may make them nervous to, instead, think along the lines of "Normally I sweat a quart of perspiration. I'm going to try and sweat three quarts of perspiration tonight!" Evidently, it somehow overrides something and the person no longer sweats. He offers examples of this being effective with OCD handwashing, fear of sleeplessness that ends up causing sleeplessness...all sorts of things.

It's a bit of a mind-bend to imagine. Simultaneously, it makes me curious to attempt.  I'll have to think on what I could use it for. 

What would you use it for? 

Let's do it and report back.

**

In other news, this week I'll be in art fag high heaven.  There is an event for sound nerds that will take place within a room set up with high-fidelity multi-channel system that are constructed for immersive, spatial audio experiences and I can't wait.  I will report back but, some of the concepts behind the pieces are so nerdilicious that I may look into the option of just living out the rest of my life in the room with the performances on repeat. 

 

be well; be loved,

 

k.  

 

P.S. For the past two weeks, if I hit any level of low motivation, I have had Diljit Dosanjh's most recent album on repeat and all motivation skyrockets. (Yes, the song Morni in particular, as I'm sure is obvious.) If you're feeling low inspiration, check it out.  

[image credit: André Kertész]