On voice registers and problems helping

As I was lifting weights the other day, (I should start every blog that way, it makes me sound very active) I, and several other people in the room noticed a blind man tapping his cane against the open door. He took a step back, moved along the wall, using the same tap until he came up against the metal scale. He then tapped his way back across the room, stepped again into the open door of the weight room before retreating. It was obvious to the four of us that were watching him that he was looking for something. He tapped his cane against the wall, again, stepped through the doorway before retreating.

Just then, a young man, (I love that I can say that about college students now) stepped up and asked if he needed anything. "I'm looking for the drinking fountain," the man said, and the young man guided him to it. Question? Why exactly did the four of us stare stupidly at this man who could have clearly used our help? It didn't arise (obviously) from any sort of desire to not help. In fact, I was conscious the entire time of wanting to go up and ask him if he needed help. And yet, I sat there, dumbly staring at weights while he tapped along the wall. Why is it that I was paralyzed in that moment? Why is it that I get embarrassed and allow that to prevent me from doing something that my mind is screaming at me to do? What is it about my fellow man that makes me so scared to help him?

I think it probably has something to do with this story, which I've posted before. Essentially, and sadly, I'm so self-involved, embarrassed for myself, that I don't reach through the third wall to help a person in need. It's a strange thing, and the sort of which it's rather easy to forgive ourselves, but I'd argue that the resonances are actually quite profound and problematic. This, self-involvement, pride of sorts. C.S. Lewis spent a bit of time on the subject

CONJUNCTIONS:28 Spring 1997
Two Stories
David Foster Wallace




YET ANOTHER INSTANCE OF THE POROUSNESS OF CERTAIN BORDERS (XXI)

AS IN THOSE OTHER DREAMS, I'm with somebody I know but don't know how I know them, and this person suddenly points out to me that I'm blind. Or else it's in the presence of this person that I suddenly realize I'm blind. What happens when I realize this is I get sad. It makes me incredibly sad that I'm blind. The person somehow knows how sad I am and warns me that crying will hurt my eyes somehow and make them even worse, but I can't help it--I sit down and start crying really hard. I wake up crying, and crying so hard in bed that I can't really see anything or make anything out or anything. This makes me cry even harder.

My girlfriend is concerned and wakes up and asks what's the matter and it's a minute or more before I can even get it together enough to realize that I'm awake and not blind and that I'm crying for no reason and to tell my girlfriend about the dream and get her input on it. All day at work then I'm super conscious of my eyesight and my eyes and how good it is to be able to see colors and people's faces and know just where I am, and of how fragile it all is, the human eye mechanism and the ability to see, how easily it could be lost, how I'm always seeing blind people with their canes and weird-looking faces and always thinking of them as just interesting to spend a couple of seconds looking at and never thinking they had anything to do with me or my eyes, and how it's really just an incredibly lucky coincidence that I can see instead of being one of those blind people I see on the subway.

And all day whenever this stuff strikes me I start tearing up again, getting ready to start crying, and only keeping myself from crying because of the cubicles' low partitions and how everybody can see me and would be concerned, and the whole day after the dream is like this, and it's tiring as hell, my girlfriend would say emotionally draining, and I sign out early and go home and I'm so sleepy I can barely keep my eyes open, and when I get home I go right in and crawl into bed at like 4:00 in the afternoon and more or less pass out.

I gave a reading at our church this morning as well. And, I spent the majority of the morning trying to come up with the appropriate reading voice to use during church. Should I use the extremely deep voice, designed to remind folks that God is almighty and powerful and most likely male? Or should I use a voice that carries deep inflections, landing heavily on words like the devil and sin, to remind people about things like the devil and sinning and how they are bad and how it's good to be reminded of that with some really solid vocals up front.

Bit of arcana, I read a random article that says that women like a flat monotone like George Clooney has. Apparently they find it irresistible.

Interpolation:

M: You know. I think I'm just going to read it without any inflection at all in my voice because women find that more attractive.

S: I think the point of this particular church reading is for women to find you attractive.

M:....

I managed to deliver the reading, which I was also nervous about, why am I so nervous to read and speak to other fellow humans? Walker Percy Lost in the Cosmos. And after a while, I eased up a little bit and actually enjoyed the process of reading.

Because it's a hell of a lot of fun to sing this song with a group of people you are rather fond of.