Good at wording
Yesterday I watched Anderson Cooper interview Amanda Gorman, the Youth Poet Laureate who blew everyone away at the inauguration. I was interested and impressed by what she was saying, and then suddenly I was some step beyond that, which I don’t know what to call but was about realizing that “Daaaaaamn this 22-year-old is doing what very few long-term adults can do who even is this” – and very soon after that Anderson Cooper ran out of cool and said more or less the same thing. (“You’re awesome!” were his exact words.)
The thing she was doing that suddenly struck me all of a heap was talk extemporaneously with barely a trace of fumble or filler words or backtracking or clumsiness or anything else that would differ from reading an elegant argumentative essay aloud. That is hard to do. She wasn’t just talking fluff, either.
She’s a stunner.
This (along with, strangely enough, Lady Gaga’s heartfelt performance of of “The Star Spangled Banner”) were my favourite parts of the Inauguration ceremony. Biden’s speach had some good moments too, but Gorman and Gaga really poured their hearts into what they did.
I’d never watched a Presidential Inauguration ceremony before. Chances are I’ve been at work, but with the current lockdown, I had a chance to see this one. It’s too bad that security considerations prevented the usual public participation, but it was still quite moving to see, even for this non-American. The rest of the world wishes the United States a speedy return to responsible, aware, adult governance. It was nice to see this first step as it happened.
The only one I’ve ever watched all the way through was Obama’s first. I was glued to that one, including the motorcade to the White House and their getting out to walk, despite the Secret Service’s nervousness. This one, nah. But selected high points yes. I also liked the clip of Kamala Harris back in the Senate reading out the paperwork for swearing in Warnock, Ossoff, and Pedilla, which ended with the fact that Pedilla was replacing Kamala D. Harris, which caused her to burst out laughing after she read it out with due VP solemnity.
Funny you mention that. Right now I’m editing a video for someone, it’s a one-on-one interview, and my job is to cut out all the ums and uhs and stutters and backtrackings. It’s incredible, when you’re in editor-mode and you have to pay close attention to every single syllable, just how much of that stuff there is in typical dialogue. With many people there are parts where I have to make multiple cuts per second. And then here comes Gorman: in real-time, she can corral a big batch of ideas, sort them, line them up and speak them out in one unbroken string of language, and she makes it all sound as easy as breathing. And she’s only 22? Amazing.
I didn’t watch any of the inauguration, so this is the first time I have heard her.
I have such emotions, my eyes are overflowing.
This was going to be the first one I could watch, because I am always teaching. I didn’t get to see Obama’s first. But then they started it early, and by the time I could watch, the swearing in was over. The rest of the stuff I didn’t get to see because of my schedule, though I was unfortunate enough to hear Amazing Grace (possibly my least favorite hymn, unless you consider Jesus Loves Me a hymn; I don’t).
Ever since I started close captioning my lectures, I become aware of the filler most people put in. Mine are pretty clean, so I guess I don’t do that a lot, either. I don’t have to change much to get them perfect, except for scientific words the computer messes up. My mentor in my MFA was astounded when I did my oral presentation away from the podium, with nothing written down, and strolled around interacting with those who were present. I never saw one like that the entire time I was there; everyone wrote it out and stood at the podium with their eyes glued to the paper. The moment I write my speech down is the moment I cannot deliver it properly. I may write notes to keep on track, but I tend to be more extemporaneous. I didn’t realize it was so rare, because my whole family can do it…but once I got out into the world, I found out most people can’t.
Arty – exactly. I’ve had to do some extemporaneous talking to an audience or for recording so I know how damn hard it is to keep the fillers out and still maintain a good flow. It’s HARD BRAIN WORK.
My favorite BBC Radio 4 program is Saturday Review, which is three clever interesting people talking to the host about cultural items, and it can be very amusing listening to them trigger each other into the filler words – one person will say “sort of” repeatedly and by the end of the hour they’re all doing it. One time the host, Tom Sutcliffe, actually told them there had been complaints about the rash of “sort ofs” last time, which made me laugh because I’d noticed them myself. It’s absurd but it’s also understandable because dang that’s hard work, being interesting and clever on live radio.
iknklast:
For very personal reasons, for the better part of thirty years I have had to force back tears whenever I’ve heard that hymn.
It can move me, when done well, but I thought Brooks’ phrasing of it was poor. Several times he broke up single words rather than singing through them. Had I not already known the lyrics, I would have had a hard time figuring out what exactly they were supposed to be. You can get away with it if your style and delivery are powerful and compelling, otherwise it comes off as pointless noodling. In contrast, (except for a bit of noodling with “o’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave,”‘) I thought Lady Gaga’s singing of the national anthem was very good. Her phrasing gave space to and clarified some of the lyrics in ways that most performances fail to. I remember as a kid I remember the joke surrounding someone hearing the first line as “Jose, can you see?” I also often wondered just what kind of light “donzerly” light was. Having once been a singer and a lyricist, these are things I notice, particularly when done poorly, and for no good reason.
Donzerly light. That should be the name of something.
Hm. This conversation reminded me – we haven’t seen Lady Mondegreen here for a fair while now.
The thing that impressed me most about her, aside from her work, is her immediate and unforced acknowledgement of and gratitude to her predecessors, teachers and supporters. I saw a tweet of hers responding to praise and the first thing she did was praise and thank the women who had come before her, to allow her to be where she was and do what she did. In this interview the first thing she expresses is gratitude for support, and the second thing she says is that she learned from previous poets. To me that seems unique–I can’t think of any other young successful person (or even older successful person) who focuses first on, and starts by sincerely giving credit, acknowledgement and honour to, those who helped her to succeed.
Holms@10:
She’s around–she left a comment on one of my facebook posts last night. Most likely she is just cycling through her usual blogs and sites and will be back here soon!