The audiobook of The Conditions of Love runs more than sixteen hours. I’m sure the recording took even longer. How many days does it take to record a book of this length? How can you sustain the same voice over that span of time?

I average about two hours of work for every one hour of recorded material. That includes my “brain breaks,” maybe a short lunch, a moment to take a phone call or use the restroom. I narrate about six hours a day, and that gets broken up by my other work — acting jobs, auditions, etc. I have to be very careful about how I use my voice during the time I am recording. I tend to avoid smoky areas and alcohol and get lots of rest. It’s not hard to blow out your voice when it’s being worked so constantly so I usually spend those days not talking to others very much!

I love how you do Mr. Tabachnick’s voice in your reading. Do you enjoy doing accents? Do you specialize in any one in particular?

Ha! Yes, I LOVE anything related to the Russian accent — Jewish, German, all those accents are in my wheelhouse. I love doing accents because the musicality is so universal to our untrained ears. I tend to have a decent ear for accents, but sometimes I have to do a little extra work to make sure I’m not drifting towards a different country!

Is there anything you especially liked about your reading of The Conditions of Love?

I think I may have liked finding Mern the best. Something about her voice spoke to me of how Eunice remembered her more than she may actually have sounded. I liked that idea. . . .That she became larger than life in retrospect.

You’re currently getting a lot of well-deserved attention for your role in the movie Selma playing Viola Liuzzo, the wife and mother of five children who left her family in Detroit, Michigan to join Martin Luther King in March, 1965 in registering black voters in Alabama and marching for Civil Rights. Shortly after arriving, Viola was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan. How did you get this amazing role?

As a fiction writer, I hear the voices of my characters, but they are imaginary people and I’m free to make them sound as I like. When you’re preparing for a role playing an historic person, do you try to sound like that person and replicate their tone and pitch? Or do you try to convey more of the emotional truth of that individual through his or her voice?

We had a dialect coach on set (Elisa Carlson) to help us properly match the voices that were recognizable, and to have the correct accents for anyone else. But there isn’t any audio recording of Viola, and sources say she had a southern accent from childhood, but that it was likely that was mostly fading from her time living in Detroit. And of course, I had very few lines anyway, so I simply stuck with my own voice and accent, as that would be the most believable. Beyond that, I prefer to approach a vocal choice from an internal place first.

Other than affecting an accent, most of the work needs to be grounded in my own voice or it’s an impression.  Which I also enjoy doing, but it disconnects you from the emotion then.

In your blog you describe visiting Viola’s grave during the filming of Selma. How has playing Viola changed your life?  

I really love your “Lucky Star” blog posts about Selma. Do you enjoy writing?

I really do love to write, when I have something to say. I’ve always had a mind for being a writer of some sort. I even took postgrad courses at UCLA in journalism, but the truth is I don’t have the day-to-day work ethic. I only write when inspired, and as I’m sure you know that means about three times a year.

What’s next for Tara Ochs?

The MILLION dollar question. I don’t necessarily see my career taking a radical course change because of Selma. But I AM going to be working more with Viola Liuzzo’s story and her family. That’s one story I hope to always be sharing.

All women — at least this time around.
Two poets. Three novelists. One primatologist/anthropologist. One Jungian archetypal psychologist.
One Greek. Two Brits. One Scot. One Kashmiri. One Swiss. One American.

It would take pages and pages to adequately praise the work of each of these brilliant women, but one thing they have in common is their uncommon courage as writers and thinkers. Each has changed the way I see and think about the world, each has astonishing stories to tell.

The fourteenth-century mystic poet Lalleshwari, also known as Lal Ded, lived at a time when Shaivism, Sufism, Buddhism, and Hinduism were alive and entwined in a rich amalgam of religions merging in Asia. I’m told that though she was ridiculed and taunted, Lalla, lit by divine inspiration, danced naked through the Kashmiri valley singing her ecstatic poems. Here is her voice, translated by Coleman Barks.

I didn’t trust it for a moment,
but I drank it anyway,
the wine of my own poetry.

It gave me the daring to take hold
of the darkness and tear it down
and cut it into little pieces.

Jane Goodall. I reach for one of her books when I need to remind myself to honor my instincts and rekindle my sense of wonder. When doubt (something I’m examining a lot these days) blunts my energy for taking a step forward, I reach for Jane — a role model for me of a writer who has documented the courage and passion necessary for her work.

Among other esteemed achievements, Jane Goodall is credited with changing how scientists study animals in their natural habitats. In 1960, without any formal training or advanced education, she left England to study wild chimpanzees at the Gombe project in Tanzania under the tutelage of the famous anthropologist, Louis Leakey. In her own words, she was then “a naïve young English girl,” but one who’d always held a fascination with wild life. Now, decades and many books later, she’s an international treasure. Here’s one of my favorite passages from her book Through a Window.

There are many windows through which we can look out into the world, searching for meaning. There are those opened up by science, their panes polished by a succession of brilliant, penetrating minds. Through these we can see ever further, ever more clearly, into areas that once lay beyond human knowledge. Gazing through such a window I have, over the years, learned much about chimpanzee behavior and their place in the nature of things. And this in turn, has helped us to understand a little better some aspects of human behavior, our own place in nature.

But there are other windows; windows that have been unshuttered by the logic of philosophers; windows through which the mystics seek their visions of truth; windows from which the leaders of the great religions have peered as they search for purpose not only in the wondrous beauty of the world, but also in its darkness and ugliness. Most of us, when we ponder on the mystery of our existence, peer through but one of these windows onto the world. And even that one is often misted over by the breath of our finite humanity. We clear a tiny peephole and stare through. No wonder we are confused by the tiny fraction of a whole that we see. It is, after all, like trying to comprehend the panorama of the desert or the sea through a rolled-up newspaper.

Marie-Louise von Franz is probably the least recognizable name on my list. Like her mentor and colleague, the depth psychologist Carl Jung, Ms. Von Franz can be credited with helping modern thinkers understand the psychological and symbolic dimension of fairy tales. At my imaginary dinner party, Marie-Louise turns first to Sappho and then to Toni Morrison and asks each their favorite fairy tale. Are you a Cinderella? Rapunzel? A bewitched crow? she might inquire. Can you imagine the lively conversation that would follow? Most of us are driven by the unconscious myths we carry about ourselves, and these motifs, these archetypes (the orphan, the seducer, the wise old man) with which we identify shape our lives. Think about it! What fairy tales haunt your mind?

Space prevents me from quoting more than two writers who’ve inspired me to speak the truth and given me faith in my own process. But to circle back to my specific choices, I see now that these invited guests share certain qualities that in turn reflect my own biases and interests. They are observers, rebels, pioneers, seekers, original thinkers, and I think also, each is in her own way, sassy and determined.

May you too find nourishment in their books, and may you too be awakened to new wonders. Here’s a place to start.

Sappho                                Sappho: a new translation Mary Barnard
Jane Goodall                        Through A Window
Virginia Woolf                       Moments of Being
Lalla                                    Naked Song, translated by Coleman Barks
Toni Morrison                       Beloved
Marie-Louis von Franz           Shadow and Evil in Fairytales
Muriel Spark                         The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie