No Idle Mind

Keeping busy during social isolation has not been so terribly hard on me. I am in more regular communication with friends near and far. A very dear friend from England just emailed me a newspaper clipping about the redoing of Alan Bennett’s iconic “Talking Heads” series of monologues. She thought I would be interested because of my own staging of several of his works. 

However, she had only kept the paper in which the article was found in anticipation of the arrival of her new puppy. I told her that her puppy could now pee on it. I do always hate to see a re-make of something great. But then I guess that is precisely what I did, isn't it?

Right now, I am struggling with putting together an audio version of my most recent play, written as a monologue and intended for the stage.  However, given the current state of affairs, I had to rethink that plan. 

Now, I am attempting to use the voices of other characters that the main character would only tell you about in a monologue. These voices have been recorded in individual homes on individual devices: laptops, ipads, smart phones. And the challenge for me is and has been figuring out how to insert them into the main recording with some degree of success.

My laptop voice recorder leaves a lot to be desired. So do my recording skills. And managing the keyboard while I try to do my lines - with some feeling - is daunting: Press play; speak my lines; press pause; try to simultaneously press play on two separate screens in order to add a voice clip at just the right spot, with just the right volume, and with some measure of accurate timing. This has proven to be almost impossible - for me at least.

I gave up on the several sound bytes that I had hoped to use: the sea and sea gulls, birds in a park, bar noises with music in the background, and so forth. This not only required a third screen on my small laptop monitor, but the reproduction left a great deal to be desired: The waves sounded more like a toilet being flushed repeatedly. The birds sounded like a steam kettle boiling. The bar sounded like a 1950 Morris Oxford trying to start up on a frosty morning at -10 Celsius. And a clip of a poorly played fiddle, intended to be so, sounded like a distant, whining chainsaw!

But at least all of this has helped to keep me busy with take after hopeless take. What I seem to be arriving at will be far from perfect. I accept this state of affairs, albeit reluctantly. But this will be my humble attempt to give something back to this wonderful province of Nova Scotia in these difficult times. It may also ruin my theatrical reputation. But one has to take risks.