It’s a common cliché that people, on witnessing or hearing a recording of themselves, are surprised at how they look and sound, but when faced with incontrovertible evidence they must uncomfortably admit that the depiction is true. I was no exception when watching myself on holiday; my voice is monotonous, flat and devoid of inflection, while my frame is different to the one I believed I presented to the world.
The most disconcerting thing of all though was seeing that my head isn’t the shape I thought it was (it’s not the profile suggested by the face-on view afforded by the mirror each morning). The back of my head is not a part of my body I generally see, primarily for the reason it’s been positioned by nature in a place inaccessible to by forward-facing eyes. Luckily my wife was on hand to offer words of comfort:
“It’s not a normal-shaped head, but I wouldn’t worry.”“So you’re saying I’ve got an abnormal head?”
“Not abnormal, no. It just has… corners.”
I now have an image in my (strange angular) head of some kind of Rubik’s cube android or a Picasso portrait subject who can’t turn his head on the pillow when lying on his back.
Spare a thought however for the fabulously wealthy Hollywood elite who must suffer this feeling on an almost daily basis, witnessing themselves on giant screens in virtually every nation on the globe. It’s such a large cross to bear that they feel the urge to command huge amounts of money for the distress this causes.
Little Tom Cruise for example is worth every penny of the £42m he gets for a film these days. That’s around £10m per foot of height.
1 comment:
Whenever I see and hear myself on video I can't help thinking that I am a cheap immitation of Jabba the Hut on Helium. My nasal whine just irritates me beyond belief and I have to walk out of the room whenever I see myself. Talk about nails on a chalkboard! Especially when I thinj I have such manly baritone pipes!
Mr Griffles.
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