I have no idea.

But as my mentor in the writing program at City College observed, I have never been a good reader of my own written words.  I render them as lifelessly as the prose itself is lively.  OK, fine, maybe not lively, but not as dead as they sound when I read them aloud.

As an experiment yesterday I read two paragraphs in a wavering caricature of a Transylvanian accent, based on a mixture of Bela Lugosi and Peter Lorre, born Lazlo Lowenstein, and not a Transylvanian at all.  To my surprise, and perhaps too much delight, I found that the reading was much, eh, livelier.   Wasting no time, I set it to music and added a few light sound effects on another track.  Then, upon hearing it back, I made like the mad narrator of Edgar Allan Poe’s great Telltale Heart, and I laughed.

For those who might fancy me a bit eccentric for telling this, let me reassure you.  The disease has only sharpened my senses.  You will laugh too, I tell you, when you hear how wisely, indeed how sanely, I then proceeded…