I find it hard to reconcile the images of characters I have in my head when reading books with the actor’s portrayal of them onscreen. I tend to keep them separate in some ways, thinking of my own imagined view of them as “MY” characters, and the movie or TV version of them as “OURS”…since that version belongs to everyone who watches the film or the show. The character in my head that I see when I read a book is mine alone. Sometimes they are both “right”, but more often, it’s jarring to see a character I’ve brought to life from the page in my mind, played by someone real. An actor, who might also be someone I’ve seen play OTHER characters, thereby confusing the issue even more, since all the characters I’ve seen them play overlay them in anything I watch them performing in.
It happened with Dune (more than once, since I’ve seen two movie versions with different actors and read the books numerous times). It happened with Outlander, though MY visions remain fairly clear in my head since I’ve read the books so many times over. It’s happened with many, many books, actually, that I read first, and that later became films or television shows. I think maybe it’s different when you see the filmed version first…you don’t get a chance to create your own vision of the characters from a book. That happened with The Queen’s Gambit, and with The Martian, for example. I saw the mini-series and the movie first, before I even knew they were based on books, so my vision of the main character from the latter was pretty much Matt Damon (not necessarily a bad thing), and I couldn’t shake Anya Taylor-Joy from my head when I read the book after binging the show. It’s just that the visual is so powerful; it overwhelms any chance you have of compiling your own understanding of what someone looks like in your head.
I first read Station Eleven in October 2015, approximately a year after it was published. I’m not sure where or how I heard about the book, but it was in my top 10 list of books I read that year, the imagery and story so powerful that it stayed with me for a long time. But that was nearly six years ago, and the details had blurred and disintegrated in the interim, so that when I heard it had become a mini-series, I was both excited and disturbed. What if they changed it? (they did) What it wasn’t good? (it was) What if the powerful images that the book leaves behind were diminished or worse, removed? (they weren’t). Because it has been so long since I read the book, and because the characters were from a single novel, rather than a trilogy or series of books (where they get reinforced), I didn’t have a firm grasp on my previous picture of them in my mind. And the actors that filled the roles in the mini-series did such a fantastic job that they would be hard to replace, even with the impact of my imagination. The show was powerful and moving, and timely, above all, in a hundred scary and wonderful and weird ways.
But regardless, I’m re-reading the book now. I’ve only just started, I’m only six chapters in, and already there are myriad ways that the show didn’t follow exactly the details of the book, but I don’t think it will matter. I’m already enraptured, already captured, already enthralled by the writing, the scene-setting, the story. Whether or not the characters in my head while I’m reading will wear the faces of the actors who played them in show doesn’t really matter, when the writing is so powerful and fluid and the story so alive.
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It’s Saturday night and I’m all alone. That sounds pathetic but it’s not. It’s fine, not just because I’m fairly used to it, but because I don’t mind alone time. It’s been just me and Martin home all this week, as Karin and Anders have been away up north skiing. Anders comes home super late tonight, and Karin is visiting her girlfriend who is working at one of the ski resorts for a few more days before she follows. And Martin is working the later shift several days in a row so he doesn’t get done until around 11. I went and picked him up in Lund yesterday because it would actually have been closer to midnight before he would have been to the bus stop, and I was already getting tired. Same thing tonight, but hopefully he’ll make an earlier bus so I can have him home before too late. Since I didn’t have to get up early today or tomorrow, it makes no difference. Often, it’s Anders who both takes him in for his early shifts and picks him up after his late ones, because he is both up earlier than me and up later.
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Sweden is dropping most, if not all, of its pandemic restrictions this coming Wednesday, following in the footsteps of Denmark and the UK. I can understand the reasons, but since I have still managed to avoid getting COVID, I’m a little wary. I expect that means we will have to start going back to work in the office, for the second time, and I kind of don’t want to…again. I was glad when we got sent home full-time the second time around, and I’m not ready to give it up completely. And plus, EVERYONE is getting COVID, and even though they all say it’s like having a really bad cold/flu, I still don’t want it. I expect it’s inevitable, but still. I haven’t been sick in over 2 years…what a weird thing to realize. Two of my closest colleagues have had it the past week (both infected by their children), and they were pretty miserable. And so many of my friends and acquaintances have had it in the past two months that I feel like I’m the last man standing. I’m just glad that everyone I know who has had it, has been vaccinated. Still. Ugh.