Learning New Accents, Learning New Places
I've been thinking a lot about when I moved to Scotland as a kid.
Hello you! I know it really hasn’t been very long since you heard from us, and I should really be holding this back until Thursday when we actually have a pattern relaunch and businessy things to tell you, but you know how I am, the muse has struck and I can never do delayed gratification!
Please do pardon me if I send a little supplementary something on Thursday additional to this, I hope it’s ok!
This one isn’t a long read, it’s mostly about me- but if you’re lovely and make it to the end, you get a little treat (hearing me speak in my rusty old Scottish accent.) The first bit is more of a context thing and the second is a short essay- I really hope you like them.
Last week I visited The Pyramid at Anderston for a showing of Poor Things, hosted by The Alisdair Gray Archive who I have been following closely since becoming newly obsessed. To be honest it was a sort of euphoric experience to me rewatching Poor Things with an audience of people who went in ready to enjoy it, hearing everyone laugh at the jokes and the sex and the fun of it all.
At the start there was a Q&A with the Custodian, Sorcha Dallas. Some of the things that were said hit home so much for me about why I’ve ben finding Gray’s work so exciting lately. It felt so amazing to be in a room filled with people who are passionate about Scottish art and hopeful politics and weird creativity. On top of all that the experience sort of drew out in me this growing impulse I’ve had towards writing about place and Glasgow in particular where I’ve now spent the majority of my life.
I’d been reading Lanark that day and this quote had really hit me, and hit doubly strong during the Q&A:
"Glasgow is a magnificent city” said McAlpin. "Why do we hardly ever notice that?" "Because nobody imagines living here," said Thaw. McAlpin lit a cigarette and said, "If you want to explain that I'll certainly listen.
"Then think of Florence, Paris, London, New York. Nobody visiting them for the first time is a stranger because he's already visited them in paintings, novels, history books and films. But if a city hasn't been used by an artist not even the inhabitants live there imaginatively. What is Glasgow to most of us? A house, the place we work, a football park or golf course, some pubs and connecting streets. That's all. No, I'm wrong, there’s also the cinema and library. And when our imagination needs exercise we use these to visit London, Paris, Rome under the Caesars, the American West at the turn of the century, anywhere but here and now. Imaginatively Glasgow exists as a music-hall song and a few bad novels. That's all we've given to the word outside. I's all we've given to ourselves.”
-An excerpt from Lanark by Alisdair Gray
While in that room, I felt a sort of massive wash of unexpected sadness sweeping over me about my accent, hearing so many audibly Scottish people talking so passionately. Going through the art school and the subsequent years existing in a heavily English and international arts scene here, I haven’t been as conscious of my lack of regional accent except as something to explain away ‘oh haha yea I know I don’t sound Scottish, I grew up here but I eventually had to choose one accent.’
I moved to Scotland with my family at age 6. As a kid, I developed an East Dunbartonshire accent with relative ease and used it when speaking to anyone from the UK. In my late teens, when moving to a new school, I made the calculated decision to commit to just one accent and stuck to it. I always say my American accent feels most natural to me and I think that’s true, but I don’t feel American. It’s incredible to see how, since the 80s when Lanark was published, Glasgow has become much more of a space in people’s imaginations, but I feel difficulty in claiming myself as a part of that line of Scottish Creatives.
It’s interesting existing as an immigrant experiencing an incredible amount of privilege within my immigrant experience. As an American, I didn’t experience even near the same amount of prejudice and othering as people who have immigrated from other countries, so I thought of the impact on my life as minimal. In adulthood, however, I’ve started to recognise the massive amounts of trauma and confusion that such a huge change can have on a tiny mind, I see the instability I still have today both in my internal identity and my immigration status.
A while ago when we were in town, I was trying to remind my friend that Glasgow is an incredibly beautiful city. I got so caught up in it and excited, big hand gestures up and over the wild, mouldy beauty of this city that is home, I felt like there was more than I could ever describe. I remembered summer club at the Kelvin Hall, daily walks along the tow path into the city, the new Gurdwara next to the new Gaelic School next to the endless old churches, the beauty of the subsiding tenements and crumbling halls, and I felt like the luckiest person in the entire world.
Yesterday was Gray Day, a new celebration of the life and work of Alisdair Gray, run by his Archive staff. I wasn’t able to attend the actual celebrations at the Oran Mor, but it was a day where I felt that to be a Scottish Creative working in Glasgow is the best thing I could possibly be, and I want to claim it despite the mixed muddle of my past! SO I wrote this little essay about the time when I moved here and how I got my Scottish Accent.
My life began in Scotland as adventure. Sleeping on the stage in an old church, all five of us got hives from old bedding stored for too long. There I learned about new flavours of crisps like salt and vinegar and cheese and onion- smokey bacon were my favourite. My feet grew from size 13 to size 1 which was vaguely disappointing. I learned that you can eat buttered pasta most days and that it’s a lot of work to find affordable housing.
Next, a flat in Kelvindale where a wild neighbour girl showed me how to lift my shirt over my head and run through the closes, hunting frogs and toads who had wandered in from the canal. My siblings and I dug holes every day in the tiny shared garden next to the defunct coal storage box. I kissed a girl with red hair- my first kiss- and my friend’s dad taught us that ‘wee man’ was Glasgow slang for a penis.
Life was the train from Anniesland to Central Station, the train from Central Station to Motherwell, the train from Motherwell back to Central, and the train back home once more, via Spar if we were lucky. Sometimes we would get banana chips, sometimes mum would challenge us to see who could find the best family breakfast for 50p. My friend Connor from down the road taught me how to dance to Hey! Baby!, I hadn’t really heard pop music before.
At Kelvindale Primary School I had dyed red hair and stripey socks and an American accent. A boy taught me what 'fancying someone’ means so he could tell me how he felt about me. I learned about flats and terraced housing and bungalows and the difference between detached and semi detached. I learned about the Glasgow Coat Of Arms. I learned about Ramadan. I’d never been to school before. I turned 7 that autumn, and it was the first year I felt older.
When we moved to Bishopbriggs we sometimes had a car- a carousel of old, unreliable vehicles passed on from friends and supporters. My favourite breakdown was the one where we left pools of rainbow oil leaking slick down the street behind us like a trail of breadcrumbs. I took a bus to school with the kids from the Gaelic unit, my brother had a blue mohawk and an American accent.
At the Glasgow Islay Junior Gaelic Choir I learned that I was an alto, and that I was too loud for everyone. At my new school I learned that if I read all my books upside down or in a computer voice I wouldn’t get so bored. My neighbour Isobel taught me how to knit the way she had learned in school. I learned about World War Two and wrote letters to an imagined husband on the front that made me cry. I made business cards with my full name, address, and phone number on them. I learned how to speak in a Scottish accent. They stopped letting me wear stripey socks.
There’s a joke that Scottish people use the word ‘fuck’ as punctuation. In high school I learned to swear. My classmates made me say ‘tuna’, ‘jaffa cakes’, and ‘pasta’ in my American accent and they didn’t believe it was real. My English teacher let me read extra books from the cupboards, I made friends, I spent my time drawing in the Bishopbriggs library. I spoke differently at home.
Here is a silly little recording of my two accents, transcript below.
“[In American Accent] Okay for context, I thought I should probably share what my two accents sound like, just so you get a little context for the story and maybe believe me a little more. I don’t know, I haven’t used the Scottish one in a long time, so maybe it’s not believable. Anyway I’ll read the same thing twice.
Last week I visited the Pyramid at Anderston for a showing of Poor Things, hosted by the Alisdair Gray Archive, who I’ve been following closely since becoming newly obsessed.
Now Scottish: [In Scottish Accent] lLast week I visited the Pyramid at Anderston for a showing of Poor Things, hosted by the Alisdair Gray Archive, who I’ve been following closely since becoming newly obsessed.
[In American Accent] Again, I’m not very used to using that voice anymore so maybe you don’t think it’s believable if you’re from Scotland, but it kind of gets you an idea.”
Love
From
Lydia
I'm so late to this post but <3 <3 <3 <3 <3