SPEAK "STRANGE" FOREVER!!!!
Sometimes I have some complicated thoughts about my thoughts and the way I speak and think. I often have what you call "disorganized speech" although mine is typically relatively mild in the sense that I can usually get my thoughts across eventually even if it takes a while. I don't think I had a stutter until I turned 15 or so and then I started and it gets bad and not so bad, but you know. Anyway, I put a lot of effort into making sure my thoughts come across "coherent". This is "easier" in text than with speech, so for a while I assumed that I jsut wrote better than I spoke, but I've realized relatively recently that actually I just put a lot of effort into writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting until eventually things are refined enough to be cohesive to other people. Usually everything I write gets rewritten a minimum of three times -- I often write in a notebook, and then write a second draft in typing up the handwritten draft, and then write a third draft in re-typing the second draft wherever I'm choosing to post it. Most things get rewritten even more times as I try to figure out how I can clean things up further, four or five or six or whatever -- however many it takes.
So I've wondered lately if maybe I'm doing myself something of a disservice to refine my thoughts so many times. Do I lose something in the refinement? Certainly some of my "voice" is lost because my thoughts-as-posted are not in the same "voice" that my thoughts-as-thoughts are. It's like I'm having to do translation work to get the text out of my head, except I'm translating through a couple of differnet languages. ASL to English to Spanish, you know? So am I losing something? Is it still "my voice"? I think it is still "my voice" but I do also think that something is lost.
As much as I would like to pretend otherwise, I do really put a lot of effort into masking my more overt strangeness. Or maybe it's not so much that I'm "pretending" but that I'm just not very good at it, so my "masked" self still doesn't really seem all that normal. But that doesn't change the fact that I do a lot of self-censoring. I've been afraid of psychiatric incarceration since I was a kid, so you know, that's a big part of it. But also it's just rough when people are always kind of questioning what you're doing and letting you know that you're makking them uncomfortable in ill-defined, esoteric ways. So I try to tone it down. I've been wondering lately whether it's worth it to keep doing that.
One of my favorite artists in the whole world is Sam Hensley. I found her artwork through Tumblr when I was in high school and have been a fan of her work ever since. I was lucky enough to be able to interview her once when I was in college, and also attending a lecture(? I don't remember if that's the kidn of thing it was. but you know, something similar at least) that she spoke at during the pandemic (via zoom, of course). I wouldn't speculate about the way she navigates the world, but I definitely know that I feel a lot of similarities between the way she presents herself as an artist / her work and the way I experience reality. I can't share it, since it is a zine I have access to via her patreon, but her zine "Fuzzy Things" is what has inspired this particular post today.
The text in the zine is notably disorganized. Misspellings and strikethrough text and clumsy, disjointed observations and sentences. And it resonates. It's written in a voice I recognize because it's so much like my own. So why am I so afraid of using my own? Who is the hypothetical audience I write for that doesn't want to read my writing as is and will only read it if I make it partially someone else's voice? someone more "normal"? The audience already doesn't know who I am, if they'd like my work then they'd like it, and if they wouldn't then they won't. Who benefits from me reorganizing my writing into something more palatable?
Not to say that I plan to never write coherent fiction again. Obviously, there's a point in writing a narrative that's easy to follow, and it wouldn't make sense to inject my somewhat disorganized speech where it doesn't belong (for instance, Augustus has her own voice, that isn't mine). But I have things to write that aren't just character fiction, like this for instance, and other such prose.
I don't really make a habit of apologizing for my speech when I speak out loud. Really, it's kind of just a further waste of time. We spent enough already trying to get the sentence out (I have a tendency to stutter over the beginning of words, and also the middle and sometimes the end, and also repeating words compulsively, and they come out in the wrong order sometimes, and sometimes there are extended pauses that I don't mean to leave between words and sentnces, and I accidentally replace words with the wrong ones sometimes, and sometimes wind up using non-sequitors or going on strange tangents, and so on and so forth), so apologizing just uses even more. It's just the more efficient option to have a "take it or leave it" attitude (although, I'll admit, sometimes I do a kind of pantomime of irritation when I get through a particularly bad patch. Like I'm trying to prove to whoever I'm speaking to that I am aware of the problem and they don't have to point it out to me or whatever.), so I wonder if it's worth it to try to bring the same attitude into my written speech as well.
After all, because of the whole "making an effort to mask, even if it doesn't work particularly well" thing, there are a lot of things that I don't talk about at all where other people can hear me. A lot of my more "unusual" habits, beliefs, thought patterns, etc. Like I have things to say, but I don't say them, because I don't want to overstay my welcome by being any stranger than I already can't help being, you know? So the internet is anonymity that lets you actually talk about the stuff you can't always say. At least in theory, right? So i'm wondering if maybe I should at least give it a shot. It never hurts to try, right? At least in theory.
So, hm, IDK! Maybe keep an eye out for an influx of articles on this site that are a little "rougher around the edges" than I have posted historically. I think there is something worth investigating in the notion that my voice has value even when it doesn't sound quote unquote "normal".
((ANYWAY!!! I made that little drawing at the top of the page just because I wanted to have a little image in here but also I've been thinking about her and I think she is a fully realized character and not just plain imagery. I think that she's the one who put the muzzle on herself, but she speaks through it anyway and also projects her thoughts at you Very Loudly but it's all static to she's hard to understand. but also she's got disorganized speech/thoughts of her own so it's harder for that too. I think she does this on purpose, to prove a point. She won't stop or take the muzzle off. She's proving a point and she succeeds at it and that's how she earned the patron saint title, because she has a point to prove and she makes it. Invoke her by saying almost anything you want as long as it comes out of your mouth sounding "strange" -- every sentence you accidentally fuck up incomprehensibly is a prayer and they slip through the bars of her muzzle and she drinks them up like a soup. Amen --.))