I have developed a strong new fondness for being read to in languages I don't understand. The sound of Dutch is both utterly foreign and surprisingly familiar. Old fairy tales, some I know almost too (over-analytically) well, some that seem to come from nowhere, scrounged from the corners of the Internet. Maybe it's because my health has been pretty bad lately; hypochondria, malaise, stress, and actual medical issues mixing to make me feel like shit a lot of the time, and I want to curl up in bed under too many blankets and let funny combinations of letters wash over me. I saw SITI's company's production of Radio Macbeth at Court Theater twice this past week, and while it was remarkable in a variety of ways, the symphonic quality of speech in concert with all the other aspects of the very carefully constructed soundscape was almost overwhelming. Experiencing that show, and then hearing Ellen Lauren speak afterwards about her relationship with speech, has left me somewhat hyper-aware...