November 2010

Thoughts about Voice

Let me wander where ever I go
Ever I go singing, singing,
Always singing

Even when I pass by unnoticed
Thoughts of good fortune
Enter your mind

Oh my beautiful, soulful singing
Like praying to God
Like bringing good fortune

Latvian folksong

Dear Friends,

About two years ago, I lost my voice. After several months of not singing out loud, when a song suggested itself to me at a campfire and I tried to give it voice, all that came out of my mouth through my vocal chords was some strange croaking. I have not been able to sing since that time.

All throughout my childhood, I sang during many of my wakeful hours. Singing was a wonderful flow of expressive energy through me. I do not remember time before singing every evening before bed, standing around the piano with my father playing and singing with us children. I sang at every opportunity available to me, joined every choir possible. I sang while walking, driving, playing, and being by myself.

When I left my childhood family home, to find my own life, I learned to play guitar to accompany my singing and wrote my own songs. When I had babies, I soothed all their insatiable complaints by singing to them. As they grew, I sang all the popular children's songs with them.

When they no longer needed my singing, I sang for myself, learning to play the tunes on keyboard to accompany my voice. That is: until, after my divorce, I moved into an apartment with paper thin walls and could not sing out loud without disturbing the other tenants.

At the time I discovered that my voice was gone, there was so much that was different and unfamiliar in my life, some of it very wonderful, that I simply accepted not having a voice and did not try to sing.

I wondered about it periodically, mostly understanding that this was part of the process of the shifting, recreating energies of my life, and I considered the gift of voicelessness.

I listened more, and more profoundly. I let bird calls, (crow, raven, loon, owl, chickadee, robin, sparrow, hawk, pigeon, etc) resonate in my brain. What an amazing cure for bad mood or depression! (What an effective noise screen against city and other human motor generated noises.)

I listened to Wind, what a vocabulary of sound that is!

I listened to Water: of the rain and lakes and ocean waves swelling onto sand and rocks, of ice melting, dripping, streams gurgling.

I listened to Earth, to the snorting of deer and the “hmumumum” of porcupine as it nosed its way across the lawn in the middle of the night.

I listened to Fire crackling and singing as it released the energy of the sun from the wood, that had absorbed it for many years, into the warmth and light that flooded the night for our enjoyment.

And I listened to the profound silence of my own voicelessness.

Now: the challenge of the possibility of recreating my voice is just newly arrived for me. So, while it has given me some insights about “losing my voice”, I'm not yet sure about what it is that came to me out of the Void, what the recombobulation is all about.

It seems to me, that part of my instructions in the writing course I took contained advice to end chapters on a cliff-hanger. :)

So, there it is: will my voice come back? What is voice all about? Surely it's not only about making noise :) What is the essence of what I have to say?

Happy contemplations!

Blessings,

Rita.