RP/British English, Narration - Giovanni's Room (James Baldwin)
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
British (England - East Anglia, Cambridge, Hertfordshire) British (General) British (Received Pronunciation - RP, BBC)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
For I am or I was one of those people who pride themselves on their willpower on their ability to make a decision and carry it through this virtue like most virtues is ambiguity itself. People who believe that they're strong willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists and self deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all. A real decision makes one humble one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named but elaborate systems of evasion of illusion designed to make themselves in the world appear to be what they in the world are not. This is certainly what my decision made so long ago in Joey's bed came to, I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me. I succeeded very well by not looking at the universe by not looking at myself by remaining in effect in constant motion, even constant motion, of course, does not prevent an occasional mysterious drag, a drop like an airplane hitting an air pocket. And there were a number of those all drunken, all sorted. One very frightening such drop while I was in the army which involved a fairy who was later court martialed out the panic his punishment caused in me was as close as I ever came to facing in myself. The terrors I sometimes saw clouding another man's eyes. What happened was that all unconscious of what this meant? I wearied of the motion wearied of the joyless seas of alcohol, wearied of the blunt bluff, hearty and totally meaningless friendships wearied of wandering through the forests of desperate women wearied of the work which fed me only in the most brutally literal sense. Perhaps as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says, but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home. But again, I think I knew at the very bottom of my heart. Exactly what I was doing when I took the boat for France.