Day 16
voice
Yesterday I heard my recorded voice on a podcast, and it was uncomfortable. Do I really say “like” so often? Is my voice nasally and why do I talk so fast? It was like seeing a photo of myself from some moment in which I was all too aware of the camera, unable to settle into a natural state. I think this is what actors must have to master: the ability to settle into postures, gestures, dialects and patterns of speech so completely that we cannot imagine them in any other way. I am no actor.
I know that I have a number of different voices. There is more authentic, unconscious voice I use with those closest to me, and the voice I hear when speaking to my grown children; a voice that is never entirely relaxed, that is always just slightly taut with concern, a voice that is always asking the question ‘are you okay?’ I have a voice for my husband, which affects a childlike intimacy—my family teases us about the way we talk to each other—like two kids pretending to be adults. We also have voices of tense frustration; curt, dismissive voices that we use to push each other away when we are hurt. That is my least favorite voice of them all.
Then, most fascinating of all, is the voice that only I hear. The inner voice that sometimes whines for more attention, is often critical of me and others; a voice of unspoken envy, frustration, fear, but also the voice of my most personal joys and pleasures.
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There is one other voice. This one comes to me through my intuition, my imagination; I hear it as if through a thick mist that clears now and then. I don’t think this is the voice of any particular being. Sometimes it feels like it is the voice of the trees and the sky, sometimes I think it is the voice of characters wanting to take shape in a story; often I think it is the unspoken, subconscious voice that we do not even know we are using, but that I “hear” when I watch myself and others, when I listen to what is beyond the veil of what we want each other to know. This is the voice I often write with. A voice that is collective, sometimes narrowing, as a chord narrows to a single note and then expands again to chorus. This voice is mine to use, but I cannot claim it as my own. It is our voice, a voice that all of us use when we let go of our own words, our own solitary expression, and open ourselves up to what we are all trying to say and express.
This is the voice that John Lennon used when he sang Imagine. It is the voice of our most celebrated poets, musicians, painters, stand-up comics, screen writers, novelists; it is the voice the prophets and teachers of all holy scriptures when they speak of the great mysteries of our experience. It resonates with us, even if we reject it. Ironically, I find that I can only use this voice when the rest are silent. When my solitude is nearly complete, broken only by the sound of my fingers on this keyboard, or of a pen, moving across a page like a dervish spinning across the floor.
