Saturday, April 26, 2014

Scoop my eyeballs out

Shirley Manson taught me how to mimic a Scottish brogue. And it was as a result of her use of the phrase, "Scoop your eyeballs out."

The trick (I believe at least) to learning an accent is to focus on and then practice a phrase or several words that contain enough vowels to get the vibe of the sounds of the language (learning an Irish accent is as easy as mastering two words "Jesus," that is "JAY-sus," and "potato," that is "puh-TAY-toe," some sense of the proper inflection also required).

I was watching an episode of Behind the Music years ago about Garbage. I had never been able to pull off a Scottish accent, then Shirley uttered the above phrase, which I was just taken with as some sort of beautifully violent poetic statement (have no idea what the full context was). I began repeating it regularly, and soon enough, I finally could do the accent.

Bend me. Break me.

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