'Country roads,' the WCAI version
Voicing a Cape Cod Voice
The Cape and Islands’ fine public radio station WCAI airs a program called “A Cape Cod Notebook” every Tuesday morning and evening, “commentary on the unique people, wildlife, and environment of our coastal region.”
It’s a soulful series, so I’m flattered to be included.
Last week I voiced the column you received in written form on Friday. The exercise always raises the intriguing question:
How does the impact of words differ when spoken versus printed?
When print is the form, hard copy or screen, readers can stop, ponder, muse, leave and come back with a cup of coffee and laundry in the dryer, define participation and pace. Readers control time.
When words are spoken, listeners need to absorb meaning within a flow created by audio. There is no circling back, pausing, reconsidering. Speakers control time.
This creates a new responsibility for the author, to make sure words can be absorbed in real-time cadence. Dependent clauses and circular verbiage, fun and deep as they are, detour listeners who then lose the path, and fall behind. If you need to reconsider what was said— pausing, musing — then the moment is lost.
With that in mind, here’s a link to the CAI piece, the verbal version of what you received last week, meant for the ear not the eye.
This is an exercise I’ll do more as time passes along — knowing full well I don’t control that Einsteinian thing, though I sometimes pretend otherwise:
It is so lovely to hear your voice reading your beautiful words. Thank you, Seth!