Voice Work

Your blog is about to be recorded into an audiobook. If you could choose anyone — from your grandma to Samuel L. Jackson — to narrate your posts, who would it be?

I wonder how many people would like to think they'd have their work narrated by Morgan Freeman?  It's too, too easy...

It's not exactly been an inspiring day.  Working the desk is taking a creative toll, and not least the toll on the old voce of having to answer the phone all day.  Monday was a standout though, where I had to pick up in front of half of the 'Scholary Dwellers', to utter hilarity.  Switching volte face from my usual, rich and characterful vernacular to the super smooth professional telephone voice to end all telephone voices was the joke of the day as far as the lads were concerned.  Of course, I have to deal with my voice almost every second of my professional life, what with being a singer and all.  As I'll tell anyone who'll listen, I think countertenors are completely ridiculous... But then again, the whole act of singing is totally beyond imagining.  Look at Opera!  The spectacle.  The noise.  The sheer volume of both sound and timbre of the voices that fill vast auditoria without amplification! 

Anyway.  I don't half feel that working all day isn't exactly the most conducive environment to finding a kernel, some exciting premise.  Sometimes I feel like my vocabulary's shrinking, what with doing the same thing all day every day, seeing and speaking to the same people all day long... I'm just glad that Evensong's back on, that critical vent at the end of the day to ensure mental survival, so answering the phone and taking messages doesn't take over my entire mind, that all there's left for me to do is answer the phone... AHHHHHHH!

To the prompt though.  Just who would narrate, who would go down on record reading the assembled ouvre of old Captain Pebblez?  Obviously if such a thing were to happen, I'd have to have a lot of money to put behind the project.  Maybe I could pull a few favours through some old friends (although who truly is your friend in a position of power?), and get what I want.  Or what I think I want.  I'm very conscious that most of my writing is composed primarily of moaning.  My tears have been my meat, day and night, and there have been times in my writing life where I've been less than afraid of saying so as well.  However, there's always a silver lining somewhere along the line, and as I write, I'm enjoying an episode of Richard E. Grant trolling round the Hotels of Tokyo, and thinking that perhaps he would be the man for the job.

This man is a hero.  A personal hero.  He smells not only everything he eats, but also absolutely everything.  He wears two watches on his wrists.  He is an incredible man.  Mad beyond belief, genuinely engaging and entertaining in a way that is so seldom seen.  Famously, he was the eponymous Withnail, even though he's tee-total.  I love this guy.  He's the ultimate eccentric English gent, especially in a programme like this, the last vestige of an old and idealised Empire.

I want him to read it, all the moaning and all the all the shady vignettes, the last vestiges of academia and everything inbetween.  I'd imagine that we'd discuss the recording arrangement over a sumptuous dinner, licking the plate between every course.  Surrounded by odours of edom, perhaps some myrrh from the forest?  Anyway, his voice sounds far better than mine.