The Quiet Coach

This post is dedicated to Felix, the little bilingual boy (raised in England with French parents), who kept my imagination going on the mysteries of speech patterns by tirelessly repeating the same phrase on the train from Glasgow to London. "Repeating" is an understatement, really; he actually improvised on the phrase "going on a train" and came up with pretty fascinating variations. To be honest, I found his performance a little annoying at first, expecting a somewhat extraordinary silence in the so-called "Quiet Coach". However, soon enough, I was entranced by the rhythm and inner dynamics of the phrase and began to repeat Felix's ingenious utterances in my mind. Here's a sample of our mutual soundtrack, which Claudia Gorbman would probably call meta-diegetic (referring to inner or mental soundtracks of characters in films, as she explained in her plenary speech at the Screen Studies Conference in Glasgow):

(Think about Steve Reich's "Different Trains" album as you read this if you wish, adding sound effects, train whistles, and pastoral sounds from the Scottish landscape to the background)

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Going on a train
Going. Going.
Ing. Gooooh-ing. Ing. Going.
Going on a trraain.
Going on a track.
Come back.
Train on a track.
Trrain.
Dee doo dah, train.
Going.
Weeh! Going on a train...