Anna Jolesdottir
Region: Midwest
I grew up in Iceland without the influence of mass media. I was twenty years old when I saw television for the first time. To feed my mind I read books, any book I could lay my hands on. There was one radio station. It was a good station. It had everything: novels, the world news, plays, poetry, Sunday sermons, music, concerts, all taken in by the ear. Reading books and listening to the radio got me into the habit of making up my own visuals. Every voice, every story, every place or sound I heard or read about had an image created in my head. Did that give me as distorted a view of the world as todays media does? It was distorted, for sure. I remember, for example, when in the theatre I saw an actor whom I had only heard on the radio, with this beautiful romantic voice, and to whom I had attached my own image, and had fallen in love with, it was a shock. He was NOT my Romeo. Just his voice was.