The first time I heard my voice on a tape recorder I thought to myself:
Oh my God, I sound like one of those guys!
Yeah, you know the ones.
I must have been about 11 or 12 and I can’t remember the circumstance. All I can remember is thinking:
You better lower your voice.
Forget about when I was in college and saw myself on videotape (Note: Yeah, videotape) for the first time and realized:
You’ve got to use your hands less!
Well, two decades of psychotherapy and several more decades later, here I am once again – just like I was back then – waving my hands all around, speaking in a nasally, sometimes humorously campy, pseudo intellectual tone for all the word to see. Exactly like I was back then. And they say life comes full circle.
Do I sound gay? Well, certainly.
Duh.
Self-acceptance can take decades, a lifetime or well, 12 lifetimes – meaning that if you don’t believe in God, reincarnation or _____ it will never happen. Of course, there are people with normal families who grow up very well-adjusted and seem to have always known and liked who they were. I met one once back in 1968. But perhaps that was more about the sixties.
There is a documentary at movie theatres, streaming and on demand called Do I Sound Gay? that examines the issue of boys who discover they are homosexual and almost simultaneously realize, often to their great shock the first time they really hear themselves speak, that their voices reveal them as such. Its filmmaker David Thorpe uses himself as the primary subject and does a fine job opening up his life and insecurities to us as a way to examine this particularly universal sociological issue. I mean, even if you are not gay, who among us loves how they sound or even sounds like who they think they really are?
Sounding gay in theatres now
Still, the question of do I sound gay sounds positively quaint these days. I mean, who really cares anymore? If one truly wants to reflect on who we are in the context of the times we live in, the real inquiry to make is:
Do I sound crazy?
Or rather, it should be –
Do they sound crazy?
Because chances are if you’re thinking you sound insane you are most probably as normal as the rest of us. Talk about damning with faint praise.
Of course, I write this when we’ve just gotten news that yet another person shot up another group of unsuspecting people in a movie theatre. (Note: Currently, it’s three dead with at least 7 more injured). Who knew people were that angry? I was going to say – older White people – in light of this latest movie theatre massacre but this had to be adjusted in light of the joker-haired younger white guy who was just found guilty of shooting up many more people three years ago at a multiplex in Colorado. Not to mention the other young white guy who killed elementary school kids in Connecticut. Which leaves out the Muslim shooters of late, who prefer military bases – but that sounds racist and unnecessarily profiling a whole race of people. Though truly, if I were Muslim and living in America I’d be angry, too. Though, like the gay kid I was in the seventies, I’d certainly be afraid to show it.
A caveat for Fox News Watchers: No one here is saying Muslims have the right to shoot up military bases. I can’t even…
“Don’t even get me startedddd!”
Donald Trump seems to be the public face of white rage these days. Which is ironic because what the hell does he have to be angry about? We have to listen to HIM. Not to mention, he’s got a job. Sort of. And he’s rich. So he says. Happily married. So it appears. And to a woman much more beautiful than himself. So it appears. On the surface. One supposes he must possess some sort of inner beauty we can’t see. Or, at the very least, is a master of disguises.
Well, we all know how to disguise ourselves when the need arises, don’t we? Sometimes it’s by force of habit – like when you sound gay and don’t want to – and on other occasions it’s when you’re running for president and want to be the one who gets the most votes. So you go into your shtick – whatever you decide that will be – and show the world who you are and how great that can be for them – especially if they choose you to lead.
Our latest cartoon character #2016
Chris Christie’s the plain-talking working class guy who doesn’t, ahem, mince words. The kind of person you could imagine eating a hot dog next to you at a football or baseball game (Note: No, I am not going for a wiener joke of any kind here). Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum sell themselves with down home, family values religion, Hillary Clinton as the smartest, most experienced woman in the world (Note: I’d have to combine Rachel Maddow and Angelina Jolie to come up with those two attributes in one person) and Bernie Sanders as the commie high school history teacher who you remember fondly as the one individual who told you it was okay to stick your finger into the face of the establishment – preferably the middle one.
There are more candidates and more images but you get the picture.
Trainwreck is one of the top comedies at the box-office at the moment and, among other things, it features the birth of our latest and most certainly and hilariously insurgent new movie star of the moment, Amy Schumer. Not only did Ms. Schumer write the perfect vehicle for herself –- as a slightly foul-mouthed girl who will gladly have sex with you and get you to enjoy it, or just enjoy watching her do it or you even if you don’t want to –- she did it while snidely inverting the cliché male/female tropes of romantic comedy. The guys in her world are all too sensitive and obsess about whether Amy likes them. This is just as Amy and her female friends spend their time bedding every possible male in sight they deem even barely sheet worthy providing they can have them out of their apartment (or leave theirs) by the time the sun comes up the next morning.
You heard right, Lebron!
It’s nice to hear a new female star speaking to us masses with a new voice – even if that voice is an old one for her. Or even if it is an exaggeration of who Ms. Schumer really is. Certainly, we will never know for sure unless we all get to sit down in a room with her….and even then…
Still, my favorite Trainwreck character had to be the essentially unrecognizable Tilda Swinton in a small supporting role where she plays the sleaziest magazine editor in N.Y. All spray-tanned, with a blonde-streaked wig, too much blue eye makeup and nail polish and so reed thin that she’d go appropriately unnoticed at even the hottest A-list, gossip-dripping party of the moment (Note: I never know where those are exactly) she is really the ONLY character that seems truly representative of where we are in July 2015. She’s dishonest, smart, crazy, gets to fire anyone she wants at will without suffering ill consequences and yet will surprise everyone when she shows up all in black at a funeral to mourn an employee’s dead relative. Is it all for show? Does it have nothing to do with who she really is? Who cares? She consistently speaks in double talk and gets rewarded for it and criticizes everyone else for sounding weak yet manages to run her own mini-empire without ever breaking a sweat. Not to mention, she doesn’t seem to ever need food. Even when she is munching down a sandwich at her desk right before you eyes in the middle of the day.
Who are you? Who, Who, Who, Who????
Incidentally, her name is Dianna and she speaks with an indeterminate foreign accent – which means that in some form she’s an immigrant. One wonders if she’s legal, is taking the job of some American and is sane enough to even carry a gun? Our minds would boggle if we got the real answers. The only thing we need to know is that she uses her voice to get everything she wants when she wants it. Whether it’s gay or vaguely authentic – well, that never even enters the picture.
notes from a chair 