CLUES WITHIN THE WORDS
Whenever I sit for transcribing the words from the speakers the other side, I have half an ear open listening for clues about them as a person. I know I shouldn’t but I can’t help it.
In today’s penultimate session written in Lanzarote, the speaker is straight into the conversation at the beginning by declaring he or she had never visited Lanzarote when they were this side of life. But continues by declaring they had visited the popular island of Gran Canaria.
Does this suggest that the speaker is someone that passed in more modern times perhaps? The ever present issue with this writing is how much of my own mind intercepts the speaker’s words and rephrases them to suit my own vocabulary. It happens, and cannot be avoided at this level of trance work.
But that rephrasing can take away some of the personality of the original speaker. Characteristics in their speech, their phrasing, their use of the language could be degraded during the writing process.
As I said to a fellow student recently, we have to avoid being hung up on whom it is working and talking to us from the other side, me included. It is the message that is important. While we’re using our mind for trivial identification purposes we are inadvertently weakening the strength of their message.
Since doing this public inspired writing, I have apparently been privileged to have Colin Fry, Alec Harris, Glyn Edwards, and the great Gordon Higginson share words with me. Can I prove it? Nope. Does it matter? Nope again. It’s their words they want us to hear that matter. That said, I can’t help being curious at times!