why hello. it's a wednesday evening, and i'm in an effervescent state ; revived, in the wake of a malaise. i've discovered edie: american girl and am so taken with it ~ i feel all lit up. i'm thinking of how enamored i am with human speech - this book, an oral history compiled by jean stein, has reminded me of that. i helped edit an oral history last year (the 8ball almanac), and i've always been drawn to the form. i've read working by studs terkel and gig, a working redux of the 21st c. compiled by the editors of word.com, and i've owned a few of studs' other books as well - i picked up division street: america at a used book store in chicago, where the book is set, and an ex-boyfriend gave me coming of age as a gift. i'd wanted to read west of eden, jean stein's final oral history, when i was studying los angeles' history when i lived there. i also may pick up at some point meet me in the bathroom, about the 2000s indie music scene in new york, which maggie rogers helped transcribe. & also ~ eve just got me talk for my birthday.
but i'd never heard of edie until last night, after reading in megan nolan's perfectly imperfect entry her recommendation of a book called nothing special, a fictionalized account of a typist who transcribed andy warhol's a. some clicking around led to edie, & it all sent me into a reverie, thinking about transcription & the voice & the act of expression ~ so physical, so gathering-up of all that a person is & all they have been. that's what edie is ~ a gathering-up ~ essentially a gathering-up of america. thru all these individual voices. e pluribus unum. speech is the transcription of thought. conversation & dancing & music & poetry are the transcription of vibes. & vibes & thoughts? come from God. channel, then transcribe.
when we speak we invent ; we can talk ourselves into new worlds, build new worlds thru speech. this is the language thing again. metaphors we live by & lori from kgb speaking of the phrase i do as alchemical. any phrase can be an alchemical phrase if you know how to talk. i've always loved speech, & art that comes from speech, because i think speech ~ angled to catch the light ~ is art ; transformative & shimmering, created, aesthetically just-right. it's why women speak softly & there's a musicality to our voices. it's why rhythm in speech is felt & matters. it's why when you create a new world thru speech & conversation & then transcribe it, thru a potent ‘life-art collab’ like autofiction, like the art that was coming from the factory, like an oral history ~ to me, that's a complete circle that starts & ends with God.
