My New Goal

Prompt: 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?

The two voices I would choose to read any of my work aloud are those of Cate Blanchett and Mary Chapin Carpenter. As Chandler might say, “Could they be any different?”

Yeah, they could. I could have said Pee Wee Herman and Patrick Stewart. Or Minnie Mouse and Mahalia Jackson.

But Cate Blanchett’s voice: Luxurious and silky, commanding while still soft, magically flexible to almost any accent, disciplined, vulnerable, somehow detached.

Mary Chapin Carpenter: Earthy and effortless, powerful, insightful, inviting, strong, emotional, melodic, instinctual.

None of us are easily categorized. We are complicated and difficult, and made up of opposite impulses. Sometimes the voices of my Cate and Mary are joined by others. My friend Anne. My mother, when she felt most free. The secret voice I tell no one about.

For now, I would be more than thrilled to write anything worthy of one or both of the two current favourite voices. My new goal!