We’re walking, we’re walking.

Okay, I know normally I'm all "the neighbor kid came over" and "I wondered who was going to finish my closet," but Friday, I did something different. I narrated the voiceover for a short video. I spent almost five hours in a recording studio, reading over and over into a big mic lines like this: "By the eighteen thirties, explorers, awed by the shape and shade of the Cambrian sandstone cliffs, called this two-hundred foot wall Pictured Rocks."

When I talked to the video guy who was given my name (he was looking for someone with an "upbeat voice"), I was pretty up front that this wasn't something I was sure I could be good at. I mean, I can read, and I talk, and it sounded fun, but if it required any level of acting, I worried I'd be too self-conscious. But honestly, I didn't know just how bad I would be at it for the first couple of hours. Honestly, it's harder than you think. Just getting the words out correctly and clearly is hard enough, but that wasn't even so much my problem. It was trying to sound natural, and friendly, without lapsing into some caricature of a tour guide that stumped me. "Just pretend you're talking to your daughter," he kept saying. And I'm all, "Why would I say this to my daughter: 'Seclusion…'?"

Because those were the hard parts, the dot-dot-dot phrases just hung there over some picture I'm sure was beautiful but I couldn't see. Actual sentences were okay ("Store food in your vehicle or on food poles in the backcountry."), but the mood-words, or whatever ("Stone and sand… forests and wildlife…)... yikes, I was awkward. I have total sympathy for all those Top Models doing their Cover Girl ads.

But I totally got into it. It was kind of a rush, to tell you all the truth, getting past the hard part and relaxing into it. For a while, I just kept thinking, why did I say yes to this, and wondering if there was a back door, and hearing my voice, it still didn't sound like I think I sound. But I walked out feeling all proud of myself for doing something so completely outside my comfort zone (which really only encompasses watching The Bachelorette and heating up soup).

It'll be playing on a continuous loop at the Munising Welcome Center in the near future, if anybody wants to go see it.

Comments

[Poodle]

The coolness of this is so beyond cool that I can't describe how cool I think this is. You ROCK.

[Peter]

Next gig. "The white zone is for unloading and loading only.... there is no parking in the white zone".

[Betty]

holy crap, I can't wait to hear your voiceover, I want to have it on my ipod, so I can listen to it while driving across the bridge to come "up north"