OT - thinking in voices
nmstevens
When you thinks in spoken words -- that is, as opposed to thinking in
images or in written words -- do you think in your own voice?
Now, the immediate response might be that you don't think in any
voice. It's a thought, and voices are sounds. But clearly, if I were
to say, "think of a particular line as said by Orson Welles, or James
Stewart, or Bugs Bunny, or Marilyn Monroe, you would think of that
line *with* those particular voices attached. So we clearly can attach
voices to the words that we think.
The question is -- when we don't consciously attach a voice to the
words that we think -- who's "voice" is it? Do we automatically attach
our own voice -- or at least our own sense of our own voice -- to
words that we think?
Clearly, if we are male, and we think words, the words we think don't
have a female voice. If we have a particular accent, we certainly
don't "think" words in a different accent. So if one is a Southern
male, one's internal voice is, I assume, the voice of a southern male.
But is it the voice of that one particular southern male -- you.
And if it is -- does it change as one grows up? I honestly don't
recall the thoughts of my childhood as being in a "child's" voice. Nor
do I have any sense of my "internal" voice as having grown deeper in
timber as I've grown older.
If one learns a foreign language fluently, one begins to think in that
language. But a foreign speaker may speak with a very heavy accent.
When they think in the learned language they are speaking, do they
think in that accent? When Arnold Schwarzenneger thinks something in
English, does the thought have the same intonation as when he speaks?
And if not -- in what accent would he "think" those words?
And if one mastered the intonation of a learned language, so that your
accent was essentially cleaned up -- would you then think in the new
cleaned-up accent?
I raised this subject with my twelve-year old son. He told me to stop
talking about it because it was annoying him to think about it. I
asked him what voice he was thinking in when he thought about it. He
wasn't amused.
Anyway -- that's what I've been thinking about lately.
NMS
trajan
>
> Okay -- this is the sort of thing I waste my time thinking about.
>
> When you thinks in spoken words -- that is, as opposed to thinking in
> images or in written words -- do you think in your own voice?
All too often, yes. I have to mentally stop myself and "re-cast"
my voice. It's easiest to use identifiable voices (for me), like
Welles, Monroe, Stewart, Bogey, etc.
I try to forget it's me saying those words, and see if I can
channel that voice so it becomes my character.
Not sayin' it works all that well, though...
Regards,
Trajan
>
>
Chris
anytime. Don't ask me why.
So fuck if it's OT. :-) Nice to meet someone who thinks about such odd
things, as I do.
I spent about an hour and a half tonight thinking about how we perceive
scale, and how if people were half the size they are, the world would
effectively be twice as big.
Oh, and to add my two cents worth, The Matrix mentions something called
"Residual Self-Image". I'm not sure whether they got that from somewhere, or
whether it's just some crap they made up, but it makes sense.
Over time, you kind of build an image of yourself in your head. If you're
dreaming, you will look and sound the way you perceive yourself to be. It's
probably with this voice that you "think in".
"nmstevens" <nmst...@msn.com> wrote in message
news:a8f80314.02011...@posting.google.com...
WmB
news:g%O%7.6$_x4....@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com...
> This has to be the single most brilliant posting I've ever read anywhere,
> anytime. Don't ask me why.
>
> things, as I do.
>
> I spent about an hour and a half tonight thinking about how we perceive
> scale, and how if people were half the size they are, the world would
> effectively be twice as big.
BZZZZT... I don't think that's right.
If you mean height when you say size, the scale factoring works out a bit different. For
something 1/2 scale, area is reduced by the scale factor squared (2*2) and volume is reduced by
the scale factor cubed (2*2*2). I don't know if that means you could say that the world would
appear 8 times as large to someone half as tall, but then again give me a few more beers and it
just might be right.
WmB
Black Ops
>
> When you thinks in spoken words -- that is, as opposed to thinking in
> images or in written words -- do you think in your own voice?
>
You're trying to give us all headaches, right?
Stan Pierce
then attach words to them...I think.
Even a concept like ...' I think, therefore I am,' involves the image
of the book I read it in, probably because of the shock effect of
seeing the words for the first time, and experiencing a feeling of
elation...which is an emotional experience...which produces imaginative
possibilities...which is in words.
Perhaps there is no way of telling if we are all responding to
stimulation in the same way. It starts from chemicals in the brain
causing an electric charge that we register as a piece of memory data.
So it should be the same for all of us. But I wonder what happens with
a word like ' Truth' to somehow get distorted into the hybrid forms we
hear.
The thinking words are somehow infested with an emotion when they are
being thought about. So a Muslim reads words that means something
different to a Christian...as an example.
Great post. Keep thinking.
Stan Pierce.
nmstevens wrote in message ...
Adam Fulford
>
> When you thinks in spoken words -- that is, as opposed to thinking in
> images or in written words -- do you think in your own voice?
>
Yes, but if it may in conjunction of recalling other people's words. I'm
not quite sure what voice I think in when recalling the words of books I've
read -- maybe my imagined voice of the author.
> Now, the immediate response might be that you don't think in any
> voice. It's a thought, and voices are sounds. But clearly, if I were
> to say, "think of a particular line as said by Orson Welles, or James
> Stewart, or Bugs Bunny, or Marilyn Monroe, you would think of that
> line *with* those particular voices attached. So we clearly can attach
> voices to the words that we think.
If I'm imagining another character's words or thoughts, to some extent, I'll
do in my mangled version of their voice, I think.
>
> The question is -- when we don't consciously attach a voice to the
> words that we think -- who's "voice" is it? Do we automatically attach
> our own voice -- or at least our own sense of our own voice -- to
> words that we think?
>
> Clearly, if we are male, and we think words, the words we think don't
> have a female voice. If we have a particular accent, we certainly
> don't "think" words in a different accent. So if one is a Southern
> male, one's internal voice is, I assume, the voice of a southern male.
> But is it the voice of that one particular southern male -- you.
Commonly one does not hear one's own accent, only that of others. I guess
sort of hear my accent because living various countries around the world has
mongrelized my accent to the point that everybody thinks I'm a foreigner no
matter where I am, even here in Canada.
>
> And if it is -- does it change as one grows up? I honestly don't
> recall the thoughts of my childhood as being in a "child's" voice. Nor
> do I have any sense of my "internal" voice as having grown deeper in
> timber as I've grown older.
I recall, as a child, daydreaming a hell of a lot, and constantly being
punished for it by teachers, and so on. I guess it was a combination of
words and images (and whatever constitutes resentment of adults and
authority).
>
> If one learns a foreign language fluently, one begins to think in that
> language. But a foreign speaker may speak with a very heavy accent.
> When they think in the learned language they are speaking, do they
> think in that accent?
When I speak in Mandarin or another dialect or language, I tend to refer
more directly to that flash of thought before it is converted to language.
If I'm recalling a past event, say, in Beijing, or thinking of what I should
have said to whoever over there, I do so in Mandarin.
ªWrenº
'entirity' of who we are. there's no male or female to it for me... it
just is.
nmstevens
> anytime. Don't ask me why.
>
> So fuck if it's OT. :-) Nice to meet someone who thinks about such odd
> things, as I do.
>
> I spent about an hour and a half tonight thinking about how we perceive
> scale, and how if people were half the size they are, the world would
> effectively be twice as big.
That raises another interesting question (well, maybe not all that
interesting).
When you remember events involving you, do you remember them as you
saw them from your own POV -- that is, do you remember the specific
images that your eyes captured? When I recall events, especially
events from my childhood, I rarely see them as I saw them when they
happened, by always from a kind of odd god-like POV, as if hanging in
the air above and to the side of myself and whoever else happens to be
involved, so that my memories, clearly, are largely constructive,
essentially inferred from what I saw and reconfigured to include an
image of myself in the proceedings. I have no idea if others remember
things this way.
I always thought that the surfeit of giants in mythology and religion
(there were giants in the earth in those days) reflects a kind of
half-forgotten memory of the days when we first came to awareness of
the world as very young children -- a world that was, in fact,
populated by giants (from our youthful perspective), some of whom were
benign, others terrifying, and who, in either case, seemed to engage
in activities that were often incomprehensible and held sway over our
pleasure and pain.
>
> Oh, and to add my two cents worth, The Matrix mentions something called
> "Residual Self-Image". I'm not sure whether they got that from somewhere, or
> whether it's just some crap they made up, but it makes sense.
>
> Over time, you kind of build an image of yourself in your head. If you're
> dreaming, you will look and sound the way you perceive yourself to be. It's
> probably with this voice that you "think in".
Well, clearly, we do have an image of ourselves, a sensory
"homunculus" that fills, in mental space, the shape that our bodies
fill. But I imagine that that's a fairly malleable space in some ways,
as we'll often extend it, even to the point of filling the shape of
the car that we're driving (thus we wince, when we bump our car,
almost as if we've bumped our own bodies). Contracting the image, of
course, is rather difficult, as, for instance, the mental space
occupying a missing arm continues to exist, often indefinitely, after
the arm has been amputated. There have even been cases of "false"
sight, where people who are literally, absolutely blind, continue to
"see" -- the "mental space" occupied by vision essentially insists
that it's still working fine. Except, of course, when they're asked to
pick up something that they see, or point to it, they point to what
they're seeing in their heads, not in the real world. And there's a
syndrome (James Thurber suffered from it) that occurs in people who
are gradually loosing areas of their vision, in which their minds
simply fill in the blank areas, often with weird hallucinatory images.
Here's another question. When you think of something -- say an image
of a flower -- does it occcupy a particular place? Where, physically,
is that image of the flower? Do you imagine in hanging out in space in
front of you? Or is it somehow encompassed within your head.
Habitually, when I imagine something, I imagine it hovering toward the
back of my head, almost behind me. And when you imagine your "self" --
your consciousness, where is that? Behind your eyes? I remember that
Richard Feynman was experimenting with that sense of self and found
that, with practice, he could move it around his body, so that his
"self" at various points, occupied his brain, his chest, his stomach.
Do we place our "sense of self" in our heads because we've learned
that the brain harbors this "self?" Did ancients, like the Egyptians,
who didn't think that the brain did much more than cool the blood,
imagine their "selves" as occupying a different part of their bodies?
As you can see, I'm between screenwriting projects for the next few
days.
NMS
Dena Jo
> images or in written words -- do you think in your own voice?
It's clearly mine own. And after watching a British film or Masterpiece
Theatre, for about three hours, it's clearly my own but with an English
accent. (Not a joke. That really happens to me. But I went to university
in England, and so I slip in and out of the accent quite easily, although
not by choice.)
--
Dena Jo
Paulo Joe Jingy
nmstevens wrote:
> Okay -- this is the sort of thing I waste my time thinking about.
>
> When you thinks in spoken words -- that is, as opposed to thinking in
> images or in written words -- do you think in your own voice?
Don't get me talking about the voices in my head again. The bad Jingy
might come back.
"No, no -- shut up! I won't kill -- not ever again!... Well, okay,
that's logical. Yeah, you're right, he deserves to die!"
Paulo Joe Jingy
nmstevens wrote:
> Okay -- this is the sort of thing I waste my time thinking about.
>
> When you thinks in spoken words -- that is, as opposed to thinking in
> images or in written words -- do you think in your own voice?
Seriously? The voices in my head always sound like Bert and Ernie from
Sesame Street.
It works for me, except when I write romance scenes. With Bert and Ernie,
those are... a little strange. I'm not really comfortable thinking about
that.
Seriously, seriously? Actually, I never think spoken words in my own
voice. I don't know whose voice it is, but it's never my own.
Tim C
> Well, clearly, we do have an image of ourselves, a sensory
> "homunculus" that fills, in mental space, the shape that our bodies
> fill. But I imagine that that's a fairly malleable space in some ways,
> as we'll often extend it, even to the point of filling the shape of
> the car that we're driving (thus we wince, when we bump our car,
> almost as if we've bumped our own bodies). Contracting the image, of
> course, is rather difficult, as, for instance, the mental space
> occupying a missing arm continues to exist, often indefinitely, after
> the arm has been amputated.
For the first 34 years of my life, I was "rather clumsy." Primarily, I
tended to take corners too tighly, and would bang against walls, desks,
chairs, cars, curbs, whatever happened to be there. Then about a year ago,
as I learned more about self images, I realized the problem was that my self
image didn't match reality. Having always been more of an observer than a
doer, my self image was dictated by my perceptions, primarily my sight. I
tended to think of myself as being no larger than my field of vision, which
tapers back to my head to a width of about 5 inches. I started making a
conscious effort to remember that I am, in fact, closer to 24 inches wide,
and have successfully trained myself to stop bumping into things.
SIAI
Z/C
Tim C
Tim C
> When you remember events involving you, do you remember them as you
> saw them from your own POV -- that is, do you remember the specific
> images that your eyes captured? When I recall events, especially
> events from my childhood, I rarely see them as I saw them when they
> happened, by always from a kind of odd god-like POV, as if hanging in
> the air above and to the side of myself and whoever else happens to be
> involved, so that my memories, clearly, are largely constructive,
> essentially inferred from what I saw and reconfigured to include an
> image of myself in the proceedings. I have no idea if others remember
> things this way.
You only live through an event once, but you can remembr it on many
occassions. Over time it becomes easier to remember the remembering of the
event than to remember the event directly. Eventually you have a memory of
a memory of a memory of a memory of a memory. This leads to changes like
the shift of POV. Anytime we remember something, our pattern recognition
skills automatically fill in gaps. (Like when we see three dots on a page,
we see a triangle, connecting the dots, as it were.) We may or not be
consciously thinking, "It must have happened this way." Next time, when we
are remembering this remembering, we think we are remembering it exactly how
it really happened, not realizing we invented most of it. That's why no two
people will ever describe the same event exactly the same, and why no one
person will ever describe the same event the same way twice.
SIAI
Z/C
Tim C
Tim C
> I always thought that the surfeit of giants in mythology and religion
> (there were giants in the earth in those days) reflects a kind of
> half-forgotten memory of the days when we first came to awareness of
> the world as very young children -- a world that was, in fact,
> populated by giants (from our youthful perspective), some of whom were
> benign, others terrifying, and who, in either case, seemed to engage
> in activities that were often incomprehensible and held sway over our
> pleasure and pain.
When I was 7 years old, I couldn't tell the difference between 6th graders
and adults.
SIAI
Z/C
Tim C
Rob Cottingham
> When I was 7 years old, I couldn't tell the difference between 6th graders
> and adults.
At my school, the 6th graders *were* adults.
new...@virtual.com
>When you thinks in spoken words -- that is, as opposed to thinking in
>images or in written words -- do you think in your own voice?
>Now, the immediate response might be that you don't think in any
>voice. It's a thought, and voices are sounds. But clearly, if I were
>to say, "think of a particular line as said by Orson Welles, or James
>Stewart, or Bugs Bunny, or Marilyn Monroe, you would think of that
>line *with* those particular voices attached. So we clearly can attach
>voices to the words that we think.
>
>The question is -- when we don't consciously attach a voice to the
>words that we think -- who's "voice" is it? Do we automatically attach
>our own voice -- or at least our own sense of our own voice -- to
>words that we think?
Voices from the slushpile? I don't know.
Maybe it's as simple as knowing that when we are born, we are born as
a (seemingly) singular consciousness, who from that point onward until
we die, gather, assimilate, quantify, filter and abstract EVERYTHING
we come in contact with, whether in the "objective world" or in our
thoughts.
Am I my perceptions? Or are my perceptions me? Or is it all one and
the same, indivisible? It hardly matters. (And what if it did? We
couldn't do anything about it anyway!)
Soooo. Anyway.
Thoughts are really only pictures or images transposed very quickly by
the brain. They are "representitives" from the collective common.
So, I can imagine a scene situation that has a line for Bruce Willis,
for example. And I'm auto-magically hearing Bruce Willis in my head
saying the line.
Now, say I don't have a line for Bruce Willis in the entire script. I
might have a "kind-of-like-Bruce-Willis-line" for a male lead who's
"somewhat-like-Bruce-Willis+Nick Nolte-like".
What does he sound like in my head?
I can't describe the sound of the character, but I CAN HEAR IT.
How is this possible? I don't know, but we, as screenwriters are
freakin' weird, man!
Anybody in the "real world" would automatically check themselves into
the brain farm. But do we? NOoooooo! We go: "Hmmm? Isn't that an
unusual occurance that just happened to me almost in preconsciousness?
I guess I was just lucky to catch that."
Ok. I'm starting to loose it.
My answer is, "I donno." I think in pictures, then go from there.
Hope this helps. It's done me a world of good.
Doug
"Life is a river. If you ain't gettin' your feet
wet, you ain't playin' hard enough."
Glenn Miller
> The question is -- when we don't consciously attach a voice to the
> words that we think -- who's "voice" is it? Do we automatically attach
> our own voice -- or at least our own sense of our own voice -- to
> words that we think?
>
> Clearly, if we are male, and we think words, the words we think don't
> have a female voice. If we have a particular accent, we certainly
> don't "think" words in a different accent. So if one is a Southern
> male, one's internal voice is, I assume, the voice of a southern male.
> But is it the voice of that one particular southern male -- you.
>
Always my own voice, but in a kind of continuous monotone. Can take on
different inflections depending on how fast I'm thinking--when reading
Hunter S. Thompson stuff I found myself thinking in his "voice" before
knowing what it sounds like. Rythym has a part in it, then. It's always an
impersonal monotone, though, never any squeals of joy or sadness.
I think that's a flaw in my character, sort of a detachment from the world
around me, which is given away by the lack of inflection in my voice. The
internal monologue may just be a heightened version of that, rather than the
nature of the internal voice. It's as if it's just streaming information,
like someone reading words off a long ticker tape.
There are some elements of an accent there, too. More in the words I've
picked up than the voice itself. "Kinda, goddamn, coupla words-n-phrases
and whatnot" that end up having an accent when spoken aloud. "Jalapenos"
doesn't have any accent until I stop and consciously sound it out. BUT, if
I spend time around someone with a strong accent, or see a movie with
certain actors, their voice will infect my mind. With specific people, it's
disturbing, actually begin to feel like I was being brainwashed into
_becoming_ Gene Hackman the other day, had to do some serious deprogramming.
Just a coupla weeks ago, someone was asking me why I like Japanese movies so
much, and I said it was because the way dialogue is spoken in Japanese is
similar to the way I think. Japanese dialogue, especially with badly
translated subtitles, seems really unnatural to most people, but the
delivery is very familiar to me. The way the language is spoken seems to
elevate everything to just one level above reality.
Actually, when I'm reading back over something I've written, it's like
watching it played out as a Japanese film. All the visual details are
there, but I can't really picture the people sounding and behaving like
normal Americans. They're all slanted somehow, residents of my internal
landscape. They're all characters from my own dreams in the end, speaking
my language.
> And if it is -- does it change as one grows up? I honestly don't
> recall the thoughts of my childhood as being in a "child's" voice. Nor
> do I have any sense of my "internal" voice as having grown deeper in
> timber as I've grown older.
>
Don't remember further back than this, but when I was around twelve I
definately had a similar internal voice to what it is now, because I
remember consciously trying to make my voice sound like the one in my head.
This a male adolescence example, but it makes me think that the internal
voice must be related to self-image. The feeling of my own identity being
threatened by someone else's voice getting stuck in my head, also.
It might be just as interesting to think about facial expressions. Most
people have no idea what their face is doing when they talk. That's why if
someone's being a bitch, they get defensive when you call them on it. All
they're aware of is the tone of voice they consciously worked on making
sound polite, when they're face is telling you something else. Was just
thinking, I remember my sister's high school boyfriend had this odd smile,
kind of a smirk, and I literally could not make my face move that way, but I
have the exact same smile today. We probably make changes like that all the
time without realizing.
> If one learns a foreign language fluently, one begins to think in that
> language. But a foreign speaker may speak with a very heavy accent.
> When they think in the learned language they are speaking, do they
> think in that accent? When Arnold Schwarzenneger thinks something in
> English, does the thought have the same intonation as when he speaks?
> And if not -- in what accent would he "think" those words?
>
> And if one mastered the intonation of a learned language, so that your
> accent was essentially cleaned up -- would you then think in the new
> cleaned-up accent?
>
I can't imagine thinking in another language. Have tried to learn six
different languages, and I just couldn't get anywhere with them. Is great
for web surfing, as I can skim just about any site I come across, and I can
identify languages, but I can't communicate in them. Come to think of it,
I'm not very good at communicating in English either. It's all just words,
and I constantly question what people really mean by any given word, usually
just relying on what I already know and their facial expressions.
One of the many ways my sister harrassed me was to claim that I had been
diagnosed as autistic. Used to worry that maybe I really was some kind of
idiot savante. She also said that I was born a hermaphrodite and our
parents just decided to make me a boy. That cruel, cruel bitch.
Peter Ketting
<snip>
> If one learns a foreign language fluently, one begins to think in that
> language. But a foreign speaker may speak with a very heavy accent.
> When they think in the learned language they are speaking, do they
> think in that accent? When Arnold Schwarzenneger thinks something in
> English, does the thought have the same intonation as when he speaks?
> And if not -- in what accent would he "think" those words?
I am originaly from Holland, Europe and I have only been living in the
United States for five years now. I already corresponded heavily with
people who spoke and wrote english before I moved, which really helped
out my english grammar. Also, I started reading english only about a year
before I moved. The consequence of all of this was that I actualy did
start to think in english, rather than my native language even before I
immigrated.
> And if one mastered the intonation of a learned language, so that your
> accent was essentially cleaned up -- would you then think in the new
> cleaned-up accent?
I do not think I have ever thought using an accent myself, but this might
be different for everyone. My thinking-voice is actualy fluent in english,
whereas I still have a slight accent, but not too many people pick up on
it.
Peter
(an observing screenwriter wannabe)
Gen'ral Stan
"Fargo"-style stereotypical accents (which all of my Minneapolis "big city"
friends insist is a giant lie--NOBODY in Minnesota speaks like
that...except, apparently, for the girl I'm friends with). All of us, with
our slight midwestern twang, thought the accent was hilarious and adorable.
She said she had no idea she even had an accent until she moved out of MN
(we were at school in Iowa at the time), but at the same rate, she never
noticed any of us had any kind of accent, either. I thought that was very
unusual. I've studied voice for a number of years, so I know *all about*
the midwestern accent, and I figured all of those things would stick out to
her, yet she always insists we don't have accents. Except, she says, when I
get mad I "talk like a gangster." Is that just a Chicago thing? :-P
~ Stan
"Adam Fulford" <ad...@blahyah.net> wrote in message
news:ODR%7.23367$e4.49...@news0.telusplanet.net...
>
<snip>
> Commonly one does not hear one's own accent, only that of others. I guess
> sort of hear my accent because living various countries around the world
has
> mongrelized my accent to the point that everybody thinks I'm a foreigner
no
> matter where I am, even here in Canada.
>
<snip again>
Gen'ral Stan
female parts--sound just like Rob Lowe. I can't even begin to explain that.
However, any other time I'm thinking something or writing something, it's my
own voice. Not the voice people hear, mind you, because my voice sounds
bafflingly different when I hear it on tape, but the voice I hear resonating
inside my head when I speak. This begs the question--when we hear "our own
voice," is it *our voice* that we hear, slightly distorted because it's
ringing through our entire skull as opposed to being sucked in through our
ears, or is it our mental voice? I'm explaining this really badly, but bear
with me--I think I accidentally just blew my own mind. I'll try to clarify
in a few hours, after I replace the fuses.
~ Stan
"nmstevens" <nmst...@msn.com> wrote in message
news:a8f80314.02011...@posting.google.com...
Stormy Henderson
> When you thinks in spoken words -- that is, as opposed to thinking in
> images or in written words -- do you think in your own voice?
If I am writing, I make up a voice for the role, or use the voice of the
actor that I have cast.
If I'm not writing, then I use my own voice....I think. I'll have to
analyze this further.
Be happy...
--
Stormy
trajan
>
> I am friends with a girl from rural Minnesota, and she has one of those
> get mad I "talk like a gangster." Is that just a Chicago thing? :-P
>
>
sure.
Trajan
Lykrah
Thank God I'm not the only one. I take on voices of other people or
from movies for a while and I hear them in my head until I return to
my own normal voice.
And speaking of which voice I think in, I think in my own voice but my
own voice feels *transparent* to me, whatever that may mean. If it
were a color, it'd be clear. And like someone else said, when I
actually hear my own voice on tape, it's shockingly different. I'm
horrified at how annoying it is and wonder why people even bother
talking to me.
I also speak another language fluently and although I usually think in
English, sometimes I find that English doesn't have the precise word
with the exact flavor that I want, so I insert a different word from
another language. And when I switch languages, I find that my whole
way of thinking changes and I feel like a different cultural entity
altogether.
-L.