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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_rarebit |
My accent, like my looks, speaks strongly to my unique ethnic references, marginalized and ignored as they are, or (just as often) mocked behind my back. It's not exactly straight-up New York like an ignorant uneducated "guido", nor falsely pompous like a pseudo-Brit, or posh like a wanna-be WASP. It's Acadian, and it's Métis, and it's the Northeastern United States and the Maritime Provinces of Canada all wrapped up into one. It pre-dates other localized accents, like the land of Acadia did before the divides that bind us, as they currently exist.
Weirder still, it may be your exact kind of "suthin'" accent, Cajun, and that freaks out the down-home black folks even more: yo speakin' my accent, boy, and I mean that in the nicest way possible, because you are my heritage and ancestry, you just didn't know it, yet. Well, today you do. You mine, kid. In fact, all you Joneses and McNulty's are kin, too, whateva flava or color, because this mama don't care 'bout none of that, ya hear? You're alive to me. That's it. That's what counts.
But it's confusing, because it can't be easily mocked on a .t.v show by some bitch of an actress who "steals" from authentic people artistically, and that's a nice way to put it. It can't be deconstructed obsessively to pour into some flat-rate Hollywood starlet, either. They just ain't old enough as a culture to have it down right. You gots to be me! It changes on you, just when you think you have it down pat, because if you ain't me and my peeps, then you definitely don't have it. Sometimes it's New Brit, or Balmoral, or Brooklyn, or deep in da bayou...because that's all the flavor put in there just so.
It didn't really click together for me as a solid linguistic history told in words, stories, music, and cadence until I put my Scottish-British boyfriend back together with his native born folk and then BAM! His "mam" spoke of "movin' the cahr", just like they do is Bah-stin (that's Boston, in local-speak). Oh! Right! I'm from a place called "New Scotland". I would find that pleasant. My folk were easier to place, because my Brooklyn-born grandfather spoke like a character right out of "The Bowery Boys"*, an old entertainment bit done first on Vaudeville, and then in "the talkies". It fit. My mutha and her sistas speak with a dreadfully sharp and very unpleasant Bronx accent that's about as sexy as listening to a power drill whine loudly. Ugh.
The last piece of the puzzle came sharply into focus for me when I finally heard Welsh actor Christian Bale speak in his normal accent on a press junket for his fight movie, which must have knocked it right outta him. Aha! It was tough, street, and kinda foreign at the same time. Yeah! Like that! That's what we got: hard, rough, real lives told in an accent that puts us in the same company that can keep up.
Out west, folks didn't quite know what to make of me, just like my voice. I was well-educated, but not forced about it. I was hip, but not some ghetto-ass "wigga". I was strong, but not full of arrogant bravado. I was lyrical, without being a pretend la-la land Disney character. I was deep, without being one drama class or Shakespeare reading away from a total drama queen doing Off-Broadway poorly. I was like Christian Bale in this here New World: an ethnic minority that spawned generations over time, space, and vast distances. Yeah, that's it. I'm real. Like a punch to the face. Deal with it. I know do.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bowery_Boys
