English subtitles for clip: File:Bookbits - 2011-07-14 Tessa McWatt-VItal Signs.vorb.oga

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Interviewer: You mix media within this book, because there are um,

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I was going to say pictures, but they are more iconography

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Tessa: Yeah, they're signs, they're international signs basically, so-

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Interviewer: The kind of stuff you'd see at a side of a road like men biking and upside down umbrella kind of thing?

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Tessa: Exactly, yeah. There's a graphic language, um, that was developed by graphic designers

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around the time of the olympics, the boxer, the highjumper, those kinds of signs that got standardized

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back, sort of around the time of the Montreal olympics, and it became what everybody understands as the international sign language.

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No, not sign language, no, international-

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Interviewer: Language of signs!
Tessa: Language of signs, exactly.

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And so I wanted to play around with that idea, and to see if there could be an internation language of signs of human emotions, rather than just activities.

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Interviewer: Let's talk about the married couple at the heart of this, how long have they been together?

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Tessa: They've been together for around 30 years, or over

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Interviewer: And it's Mike and-
Tessa: Mike and Anna

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Interviewer: We met them at a big crisis point.
Tessa: Yes, Anna has a brain aneurysm, that's causing pressure on the language section of her brain, and causing confabulation. Which basically means that she has false memories. 

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And she has aphasia which means that her sentences are jumbled and her syntax is incorrect.

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Interviewer: Can you give an example? Because when you see it on a page, you instantly understand it, but I think to describe it without that is kind of critical.

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Tessa: Yeah, so she will say things like "cat streaming through the wood", that kind of thing, nouns and verbs kind of don't neccessarily fall into the right place.

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Interviewer: It could mean "Please pass the butter"
Tessa: It could mean that, yeah, Mike doesn't what what they mean, and that's essentially for him is that he's trying to communicate with her and he's worried about losing her

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And he's looking for a way to talk to her and therefore he invents this language of signs for his emotions.
Interviewer: There's a great line about that, I think it's on page eight, where it says "I thought it was nonsense at the time, more and more everyday I find myself drawn into the puzzle of her speech and to determine to unravel the meaning in each sentence

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because now I'm sure it's there if I only listen to her in a way I have failed to listen in 30 years.
Tessa: Yeah, (laughter), Ouch!

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Interviewer: It's like him and every other man on the planet was honest
Tessa: Apparently

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Interviewer: It hits very close to home, you know? That taking people for granted, especially the people closest to us. 
Tessa: Exactly, I think what I was looking at in the terms of a long term relationship is that, it can happen quite easily. And certainly when children get involved. Mike and Anna are certainly in something that functions as a functions as a family unit, but is not neccessary functioning as a couple.

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Interviewer: Not too far into the book we find out that there was a short blonde in his life, atleast one woman that he has had an affair with. With hints that there were others. And he's not particularly with his mistress either.

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Tessa: Yeah, no he doesn't, I think one of the things he realizes particularly when he goes back and examines the trip to egypt and the fact that the man who guides them in Egypt, you know he has several wifes, and one of the things about the system is that each wife must be provided for equally in order for that to function.

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And he comes to see that he didn't give himself to either person, and it adds that to the moment of his crisis and understanding about who he is.

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Interviewer: And it's not like he's given to his children either, because they have great difficulty with that.
Tessa: Yeah, I think he gives to his children in a very functional way, and maybe didn't give enough of himself emotionally and I think that's another point of regret for him.

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Interviewer: Well I'm happy for Mike because at the end of it the boxes, I don't want to give away what it is, but it's completely open. And I was like "Oh, that's so...", and when watching that border erode there's one where, I don't know if it's a self portrait, but it's a fat middle aged man kind of hunched in the corner naked and his foot has shoved the corner of the box out.

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Did you do little sketches when you headed out to Alexandra?
Tessa: No, not at all, I spent many hours on Skype describing I said things like oh, this international sign here is the international sign of awe, or this is the international sign for forgiveness, or how someone would feel in a moment of being frightened about death. 

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And then we would talk about where it fit in the idea of the frames and the box and the frames coming off, and where it fit in the idea of the narrative for Mike and the communication he was trying to have with his wife. So it was alot of talking, because I have no talent in terms of drawing or art, so it was very much up for him as to what it looked like.

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Interviewer: the book is Vital signs, I've been speaking with the author Tessa McWatt and Vital signs published by Random House Canada