Why so complicated?

You know that saying about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes? Well, sorry to break it to you, but you can’t do that. It’s impossible.

You’ve already gotten a good description of what an Everyday Life Performance (ELP) is, and maybe you thought “Wow, that sounds tough,” or “Ha, seems easy enough.” Either way, you’re wrong. It’s not just tough, it’s the furthest thing from possible you can make an attempt at. I volunteered to perform a segment from my interview first. When we first received this assignment, it came with the helpful advice, “You’re going to fail.” And I did just that.

I’ll describe my preparation process briefly: First I transcribed about 45 second of my interview, one entire story my subject told me. Then, I read the transcribed words while playing the recording and used an orange pen to write in every “um,” “uh,” or “mmmm.” Then I continued reading, speaking and listening to the story in unison until I’d memorized the gist of the story and the placement of the vocal filler. Then I watched the video and used a green pen to mark every time she made a physical gesture (this was a mistake, I realize now, which I’ll explain later). Now, I practiced the whole story with the video, speaking and moving along with her as best I could, over and over again until I was consistent. Then I closed my laptop and kept practicing without the video.

Now here’s the problem: My interview subject (in fact, all people) are so much more complicated that the few aspects I studied! For example, the physical actions that I marked were only ones that involved her hands or were very noticeable head movements.

One of the first notes that I received was that my subject uses her eyebrows and shoulders a lot when she speaks. I honestly hadn’t even looked at them during the dozens of times I watched that video clip. I was too focused on the big things that the refined details went right past me, and it was noticeable.

After my presentation, I pulled up the clip and searched for other things I’d missed. I noticed instances where she furrowed her eyebrows. And several times she showed these little fleeting smirks that vanished after half a second. Even simple things, like how much of her teeth she showed when she laughed.

I started feeling a little creepy watching her over and over again, but it was fascinating how much I’d gotten wrong.

That got me thinking… I wonder how hard it would be to do an ELP of myself. Not immediately after of course, but what if I recorded myself telling a story, then stored that recording without looking at it for 6 weeks, then went back and tried to mimic myself? Honestly, I think it’d be just as hard. Trying to get every inflection, every twitch and shift and sigh exactly right… It seems just as impossible as trying to do it for someone else. It’s interesting to think how my movements might still seem fake, even if they were my own.

So, I can’t even walk a mile in my own shoes and get it right?