Um...

Recently feeling distinctly homesick for England, and particularly for Bushy Wood, I watched one of my own, 'ad lib' video posts...

I was, quite frankly, horrified at how many times I said "um". I stopped counting at about 20 or so and thought, wow, and this is right out there for the US government and everyone else in the world to see?

At first I thought maybe I should go thru my videos and edit them.

On second thought, I realized if I was going to spend further time on that blog it should actually (another favorite word of mine) be spent posting the last 2 months worth of activities and photos..

No, instead, I thought I'd look it up and see just how bad it is to say 'Um' (repeatedly) in conversation.

Um (or Umm) is described in The Free Dictionary By Farlex as:
 1) Used to express doubt or uncertainty or to fill a pause when hesitating in speaking. 2) A representation of a common sound made when hesitating in speech.

That made me feel a little better. Thank you Free Dictionary!

But then, Wikipedia said it was  "A speech disfluency, also spelled speech dysfluency, any of various breaks, irregularities, or non-lexical vocables that occurs within the flow of otherwise fluent speech. These include false starts, i.e. words and sentences that are cut off mid-utterance, phrases that are restarted or repeated and repeated syllables, fillers i.e. grunts or non-lexical utterances such as "uh", "erm" and "well", and repaired utterances, i.e. instances of speakers correcting their own slips of the tongue or mispronunciations (before anyone else gets a chance to)."
Or a Filler. "Fillers are parts of speech which are not generally recognized as purposeful or containing formal meaning, usually expressed as pauses such as uh, like and er, but also extending to repairs ("He was wearing a black—uh, I mean a blue, a blue shirt"), and articulation problems such as stuttering. Use is normally frowned upon in mass media such as news reports or films, but they occur regularly in everyday conversation, sometimes representing upwards of 20% of "words" in conversation.^{[citation needed]} Fillers can also be used as a pause for thought ("I arrived at, um—3 o'clock")."

So then, I was a little bummed out again. At least we know I am on track with the rest of the population with the 'upwards of 20% usage'.

No wonder the Helen Day Art Center suggested that we write out our audio blurb and then practice, practice, practice before recording.

That's what I've been up to today. Practicing, over and over again, trying to get my 74 words squeezed into a 20 second time slot, without uttering the dreaded 'um' one single time.

Practice makes perfect.

Guess the only way you will see how successful I was is to come see the exhibit for yourself and take the 'Audio tour'!

Exposed 2013 takes place along the recreation path in beautiful Stowe, Vermont. It runs July 13 -October 15.

be well!
susie