Lily-Rose Depp's Unsharpened Voice
I bite my fingernails in private so when I emerge onto the streets of Greenwich Village I can appear shiny and bright and unconsumed like the open faces of the girls I think I look like until I’m passed over a disposable camera shot of me in someone’s apartment at 1 am where I look happy, but strange, like someone commissioned an artist to draw me from memory. I look at my gritty, muddy mouth and think about how I’ve never seen that angle of my face before but really there are only so many ways you can look at yourself. I hate when my hair stylist hands me a mirror and spins me in the buoyant chair like I’m a toddler being turned on a roundabout by her father, to come face to face with the back of my groomed head.
I used to be overly concerned with being pretty because of course I was and no one ever said it to my face until it was too late and it became a consolation prize for turning 18. Now I’m overly concerned with what my voice sounds like which isn’t actually something I can change. It’s troubling to have such worries. Difficult. Eerie, even, but it’s good to have things you can’t reconcile because you’ll always have something to think about even if your life takes a turn and becomes intolerably boring. This all happened because one time two men told me I sound seductive but another told me I sound unsharpened. I haven’t seen any of them in months because I didn’t want them to eventually catch a glance of the back of my groomed head which I never get to see myself; seems a bit unfair.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this video of Lily-Rose Depp. Do you understand now why this is all top of mind? The “this” being my tenor? Christ. But what are we to do but analyze these things? All there is to do is analyze and dissect and re-tell and readjust to be the most innovative, most snappy, most intricate person blowing raspberries in the room until eventually, you’re saying nothing but shit (something about how thrilling it is to be young but not in college anymore because now you know everything. You know not to be seeking infatuation or to be fooled by it because that isn’t real. Love. Baby. You’re clever now. You’re smarter now. You don’t attach significance where it doesn’t belong. Right? You get it. I know Lily-Rose Depp gets it, too.).
And there you are, wondering if they understand your multitudes (sorry) but they don’t because you’ve tried to be so subtle you’ve made exactly zero points and you are just a photocopier placing yourself back on the screen over and over again. It’s ok to agree with previously made points, you know (obviously I won’t, but that’s not important.). It’s okaaaay. I promise.
One of the main benefits of being famous is having enough multimedia to develop a near-clone picture of yourself due to the sheer quantity of photographs that exist of you. AI can aggregate them and form an image that is 100% accurate in every universe you are in. Then you can use it as a reference photo for your Madame Tussaud wax figure. Once that’s done, you can focus on the sound of your voice. And then when there’s enough video footage of you around you can shift to things like taking a ceramics class or wondering if you have a consistent personality.
I want to know what I look like and I want to know what I sound like. If I know these things, I think I could begin to focus on learning how to play poker.