calm_lake_dr_2.m4a |
Klara is almost human but not quite, and that is reflected in her speech. When reading her character, I was sure to dictate, not to the point of excess, but past the point of being colloquial, because while she can do things like reading words slightly out of order, she can’t quite nail what it means to talk like a person. When Josie talks, she pauses, drops letters like the “g” in “being”, and inflects like a person. She’s talking to communicate her feelings. The reading ends with Josie refusing to answer Klara’s question about Sunday because she’s communicating a certain feeling she gets from the waterfall that Klara can’t understand, and when Josie’s having a moment, all Klara is left to do is wonder. When reading Klara’s part, beyond just dictating, I chose to inflect like a person would who was consciously thinking about it. This is because Klara is undeniably human……ish, and as such she’s able to consciously sound like a person in her tone of voice, but it is not natural to her the way it is to Josie. Josie talks smoothly, without effort, because communication is such a habituated process that she’s not really even thinking about the words she’s saying, whereas Klara is forced to focus on communicating. It’s for that same reason that everything read as Klara could be described as sounding “intentional”, while Josie’s lines almost sound lazy: Josie doesn’t have to try to get her feelings across, and Klara has to try just to understand them, regardless of how accurately she may perceive them. The central theme of this reading is that your ease of perception isn’t what makes you human, it’s your ease of communication.