Tranquillusionist: Person In Scene
A meaningless list of characters without names in movie credits, read over gentle music, to relax your brain, shut up your internal monologue for a bit, and send you to sleep.
This is the Tranquillusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, soothe your brain by saying a load of words that don’t really mean very much, to give you an emotional break by temporarily supplanting your interior monologue with something you can benignly ignore. Note: this is NOT a normal episode of the Allusionist, where you might learn something about language and your brain might be energised. The Tranquillusionist's purpose is to rest your brain and for you to learn nothing.
If you like it, there's a collection of Tranquillusionists at theallusionist.org/tranquillusionist, on themes including champion dogs, Australia's big things, gay animals, 282 salads, punchlines without setups, and more. Today: a list of the characters who don't have names in film credits. Find out more, and read the transcript, at theallusionist.org/person-in-scene.
Content note: this episode contains some terminology from the original film credits that I do not endorse, plus one Category B swear and four Category A swears (which I endorse just fine).
Enormous thanks to Jez Burrows for letting me use some 2,700 of these that he had collected for his book And Introducing. Find it and his other work - including his book Dictionary Stories, short stories composed of the example sentences from dictionaries - at jezburrows.com.
The music is by Martin Austwick. Hear his songs at palebirdmusic.com, and his podcasts Neutrino Watch and Song By Song in the usual podplaces.
