The Intimacy of Being Read To
Audio Version:
The Intimacy of Being Read To
On a car trip in the 1980s, when I was in my thirties, one of us read to the others as we traveled. I have no memory of a parent reading to me at bedtime. So the way I leaned my head against the vinyl seat and almost slept, the way I felt cozy, safe, and cared about wasn't from some recollection of childhood tinted with the golden backlit glow of nostalgia. Perhaps it was because of the inherent gift of sharing. Perhaps it was the words themselves, but I don't remember what was being read. (Perhaps it was admiration for someone who could read in the car without throwing up.) But almost a half century later, I still remember.
These days I'm the reader. With each essay or chapter of The Sacrifice Zone on Substack, I make an audio version. I do this as a way, along with alt text on the images and using a sans serif font, to increase accessibility. But massive business models are based on the way we like to be read to. In soundproof studios, narrators with clean articulation, steady breathing, and what must be loads of stamina render the excitement or humor or sarcasm or poignancy of an author's work.
My recordings are not this. The FedEx woman tromps up the ramp and the dog barks as if warding off the apocalypse, the neighbor decides to blow their driveway, again, lightning interrupts the electronics, or my wife pops into the doorway to offer me another cup of coffee. And me, I slur occasional (meaning a lot of) words, I lose my place, I cough, and I decide to edit a sentence on the fly and then get lost in a maze of subordinate clauses and dangling participles. Also, you know how for many of us when we turn forty, maybe even on the day we turn forty, our near vision is just, poof, gone? It seems, at seventy, at least for me, my voice became gravel.
But I'm embracing my new sound. I get to imagine I’m something I’ve never been and have the sultry voice of an old rocker chick with deep wrinkles and a chronic hack from smoking since she was a preteen. So let me read The Sacrifice Zone to you. You're tucked in bed with a nightlight that twirls stars on the ceiling and a wannabe Grace Slick sits in a chair beside you. My cracked leather jacket creaks when I shift and you fall asleep to the faint, aged smell of cheap beer.
I also have great admiration for, and jealousy of, people who can read in the car without throwing up. Thank you for reading to me these last few weeks!