Real-time reporting

I can't type any more, because someone moved all the keys around. When I stand in the choir, my hands are doing the steno of the lyrics. I'm on lesson 26 of 32 in Phoenix theory before I begin speedbuilding in earnest -- going from somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 words per minute to 225 (205 real-time).

But tonight, I got a glimpse of what I wanted from this. I heard a story a long time ago about a court reporter who was taking a deposition at the airport (stop me if I've blogged this before). He liked planes, and he was looking out the window at the airplanes and transcribing the conversation, and suddenly he realized that the attorney was asking, "Reporter, would you please read back the last question?"

The reporter lifted his notes and found that he'd written several times, "Reporter, would you read back the last question?"

From the time I heard that story, there's been a tickle in my mind that I'd like to go there -- to the place where you're a witness, a transcriber, with a direct connection between ears and fingers and the mind engaged but disengaged in between.

At class this evening I got a glimpse of that. I know, I know, it was 30-40 words per minute, and I tangled my J's and Y's terribly and when I looked at what I'd written, it was laughable, but -- but -- I didn't skip any sentences (first time), and I could read what my notes should have said, and I began to find the silent spaces between the words where the transcription happens.

It sounds crazy, and I'm not sure I can say it so that it makes sense to anyone else. But I've done my best for someone whose keyboard keeps rearranging itself.