Content Generation: Interview Meme

Well, now at over a month late here are my answer's to silentq's Qs. :)

1. What's been the hardest thing about switching up your accent? The easiest?

Well technically the easiest thing is the switching itself now that it's switchable (more on that in the hardest bit). It takes barely any effort (I pretty much think the word, "right..." like "right then, here we go....") to move from my now standard Canadian accent to the Scots one and sometimes it takes negative effort. It's still very consistent that I'll naturally flip when drinking (but I think I've lost half my joke on saying it would come out when I was angry too. Then again, when I'm angry I'm not exactly focused on what the heck I sound like and don't expect the person on the receiving end to be thinking much of it either). The worst bit of effort I have to apply is to not fall into it when talking to someone else was a Glaswegian accent. That is usually a real concious struggle as I'll sometimes notice a slip and then concentrate to keep the Canadian as I don't want to give the other person the sense that I'm mocking them. The weirdest thing about that? My parent's accents don't prompt such "slips".

Both my sister and I can flip with complete ease and we'd both purposefully do it whenever we talked to our gran on the phone as she really struggled to understand us otherwise but my sister (who is 2 years younger) never slips -- if she goes Scots she only goes Scots on purpose.

I would merrily characterize myself as the "bi-accented" person of this blog post insofar as no Canadian ever doubts I am one and no Brit that I'm Scots (and I agree that Anderson sounds strange as heck in that "English" clip -- neither English nor American to my ears but some sort of unique oddness with Commonwealth edges). That said, I got a weird comment this year in England near the end of the trip that I had a mash-up accent over there. That just well could have been the person assuming I'd have such a thing and so "hearing" it but it also could have been a weird side-effect of pretty much being around 4 people with Scots accents in the bottom of England for 2 weeks with no "Canadian" counterbalance.

The hardest thing about it is the really quite severe angst it gives me around issues of identity and authenticity (especially the latter). Things were always going to be fraught there from the beginning 'cause the way I "got" my "Canadian" accent was to purposefully try and kill off the Scots one after finding myself seriously alienated by my peers (many of whom would dismissively note that they can't understand a damn word I say). This was a bit of a misapprehension of my part: yes part of the problem would have been my weird accent but it turned out that was not the most significant problem since I discovered once I had "their" accent that I was still alienated from them!

So through so-called middle school and high school I used The Canadian Accent since that had become the "expected accent" and I still had no wish to be any more weird by having anything else but dumped it again when I went to University feeling like I was wrong to murder it off in the first place.... but then as I did that I found I wasn't any more comfortable with that choice either! I started to feel like I chose the murder (even for bad reason) and so should just live with it. But, on the other I felt like living with that murder was intolerable (a la "no one should ever accept things done for Bad Reasons") as it showed up a weakness in myself. It undermined from within this image of myself I'd since adopted as someone who'd become disinterested in fitting, betrayed in this within themselves in their very voice. The problem here was that neither was "natural" (they were both closely internally observed and rarely allowed to "be") as both were choices. So then I thought, having since moved in with a Canadian and seeing it more frequently slip in that direction, that I'd just let it die a natural death and be at peace with it... but when you're this self-conscious about the whole thing there'd be no such thing as a natural and peaceful death.

It never helped how much encouragement I got about how "lovely" my Scots accent is and how I should "keep" it as that just as frequently as not stirred up my sort of natural perversity where if someone seems like they might want to fetishize something about me I'm inclined to remove it (but other times I agree with them and think the world is a more interesting place for glorious variety and who am I to make it less various? *angst angst angst*).

So I have some ridiculous slide-y accents now. Except it's less like slide-y and more like walking over a tripwire into one or the other. I call the Canadian one the default now 'cause that's what I speak around my parents (unlike quite a few people in that blog post I never used Scots at home and Canadian out the door since that would have been incompatible with the murder). ;P

And, of course, I can't win there either: my parents mocked the hell out of me as I adopted a Canadian accent and they mock the hell out of me if the tripwire gets triggered around them (speaking of self-consciousness!). :)

2. What drew you to the top hat vs say the bowler? What's your second favourite type of hat to wear?

In a nutshell it's all about the social formalism without the air of Business (I will forever associate bowlers with English banking culture... Laurel & Hardy and Charlie Chaplin be damned) and limited Femininity. For similar reasons I've spent years idly interested in fedora's but also feel that ship has passed: too many images in my mind's eye of "sultry" women in fedoras: I, personally, don't do "sultry" and find my hat intrinsically doesn't do it either which is a big part of why I think it suits me!

My second favourite type is a velvet bucket hat that also hits on some of the second tier things I like in my top hat: it's kinda ridiculous and that ridiculousness is tied to its mild playfulness. Once again it also sits on the non-sultry side of the scale. I wouldn't actually be opposed to a bowler by any means but find it so formal in my head I'd feel pretty compelled to drag it up with formal menswear (which wouldn't bother me as I'm generally drawn to that look... except for the part when we start to steer back toward similar territory as "accent fetish" and then I get squirmy. I'll just wear it in my house with my suit and skip alla that outside eye stuff). ;P

3. What's your favourite style of travel? Is there anywhere in the world where you think it wouldn't work?

Low key!! One backpack, cheap, easy-going. For years my "vacations" were just going to conferences with Matthew and this kept me totally content. Actually, more than content: happy (especially happy as I didn't have to come up with the motivation to go Some Where: the place to go just presented itself). I'd just walk the streets and colour in with pencil where I went and this was just what I wanted: no fancy dinners, only a few select "sights" (pretty much all museums) and no feeling like I'm part of some herd of people looking and doing. I like to just exist "normally" in different places -- so far I've never done a destination for the destination's sake.

About the only place I can imagine this not working would be a highly formalized locales where such behaviour would stick out as strange and suspicious and attract attention (exactly the opposite of what I want: I just want to "be" in places and not have attention drawn).

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I think there's a funny consistency in all 3 of these: stick-in/stick-out angst is one of the themes in each. :)

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And totally related insofar as it's both tied to #3 and a big part of the reason I've been so damn late with my responses (my work has been Bloody Nuts lately; I guess that happens when a river of people all quit within the one month who aren't you and your org throws A Major Event. Thanks to all of this I was also asked if I could defer my planned vacation for September to October which I agreed to knowing that if I didn't a whole other suite of people would be stuck with an even heavier load themselves) I'm trying to figure out Places To Go.

My original plan had involved Lots Of Sitting In Forests / On Islands but this doesn't seem as hot an idea for mid to late October as it did for early Sept so this means I am now soliciting ideas for "vacations". Things I have considered:

- Visit a fellow nerd in Providence RI (had considered popping by New York "on the way" ha ha)
- Rent a car and drive to Saskatchewan to look at sand (destination!)
- Do something on the west coast (the Seattle-ish area has always been a favourite but I've got an aunt in California that might help with the October thing)
- Only use a week of it and just stay home to save the other week for next year for Something Better
- Go south until I find warmer forests

It was always easier when the vacation came to me, but, well c'est la vie. :)