Losing my voice
Also: "Aesthosis" - I only like what I like
Odelia here with Percolations #79. Welcome!
My vocal cords have this bad habit of quitting their jobs for days after they’re sore for a bit.
It’s happened twice last year, and it’s hit me so hard this week I’ve had to cancel or reschedule engagement after engagement (that podcast interview, for one — doing that tonight at 9pm EST!). I wonder if it’s the specific type of cold, or my vocal cords being particularly sensitive, or if I just don’t take care of myself well enough.1
These intervals nudge me to learn different ways of communicating with those around me, to accept my own external silence and learn to make peace with my thoughts (“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts,” says Gibran), and live a slower pace of life than I would have otherwise.
These periods of time force me to think through — and accept — scenarios in which I lose one or more physical ability I usually take for granted. A painful exercise at times, but powerful and grounding.
These times of forced silence also make me wish I’d recorded more of my singing. It’s less of an egotistical thing and more of a way to capture moments of that particular joy and aliveness I feel whenever I sing. On days when I couldn’t even croak, I berate myself for not singing more when I could sing, for not having done more to develop, train, and nurture my voice, for not having done more with music and performance than I have up to this point.
But it’s also moments like this that hold me back from pouring more into singing. The voice is such a delicate instrument, so full of richness and potential and depth, and yet so easily damaged or held back by a sore throat, or something equally insignificant. Singers undergo a stricter diet of what to not eat and drink and enjoy particularly leading up to performances; there’s a lot of training besides just the singing, such as breathing, sight reading, and perfect pitch-ing (which I am not strong at) — it basically comes down to a greater level of discipline, honest acceptance, and effort in the face of risk than I could say I own right now.
In this interview, classical saxophonist Asya Fateyeva said, in response to a question on disappointment as a musician, that “in music, there is no loss.” She went on to explain how life’s ups and downs are all wrapped up in, and expressed through music that, within that world of sound, there is no black and white, no win or lose.
It’s almost nostalgic, this finding something that is more Life to you than life itself. There’s nothing quite like music that matches and reaches this level, though the other forms of art draw very close to it. In painting too, you learn that the painting itself matters less and is worth less than the change and growth you go through in creating it. The point of painting, as they say, is not the painting, but painting. As I heard Fateyeva express that thought, I wondered how rich and beautiful such a life must be, to own and enjoy and share such a wonderful thing as what music meant to her.
And maybe that’s one reason, somewhat ironically, that I try to master more than one thing in each domain. I practice multiple instruments because if I hurt my hand, I could sing; if I have a sore throat, I could play the piano; and so on. I write in different genres and create art through different mediums because each “dialect” expresses something in a way not quite captured by another, and I happen to need that specific nuance for this particular thought or emotion, or could only manage to create in this way and not that due to some other circumstance.
Ultimately, I guess this is what I’m trying to tell myself: Losing my voice — literally or figuratively — doesn’t decrease me as a person.
Might it reduce my “reach” or productivity? Sure. Would it lead to more people passing me by and overlooking what I could offer them? Probably. But does it mean that the value of what I still could create or offer to others and myself diminish as a result? No!
And if anything, the lack of distraction by my own externalized and audible thoughts may help build a greater intensity and depth into what I do end up building and becoming.
I’m glad my voice is coming back to me though. I’m back to participating in debates and giving impromptu mini-speeches around the dinner table again, and soon, I shall be singing.
Until next week!
Odelia
Quote for the week
Like the coldest winter will
Heaven beside you, hell within
And you know you have it still
Heaven inside youSo, there's problems in your life
That's f** up, but you're not blind
You're just see-through, faded
Overrated, and out of your mind— “Heaven Beside You,” Alice in Chains
This week’s word: “Aesthosis”
From The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig.
aesthosis
n. the state of feeling trapped inside your own subjective tastes—not knowing why you find certain things beautiful or ugly, only that you do —wishing you could remove the sociopsychological lenses from your eyes so you could see the beauty in anything and be moved to tears by the smell of burning garbage, the aria of a screaming toddler, or a neon Elvis painted on black velvet.
(From aesthetic, concerned with beauty or artistry + orthosis, a brace that artificially straightens a weak or injured part of the body. Pronounced “es-thoh-sis.”)
*** You couldn't quite argue Against taste, could you. We feel like we should Control them, or could; But try as you would, You either don't like, or do. ***
Snapshots of life
A rare moment (the cat was half-asleep, I think):
Give this a listen
I LOVE this podcast series so, so much. (Thanks again for the recommendation, Mom!). One of my favourites so far:
Bullet notes from my desk
“What does it take to be world-class at something?” This is a question I’ve been thrown into by a couple situations in my life. You know how life sometimes saunters by as you’re taking a walk just going about your day, and just slaps you upside the head and tells you to take everything to the next level? That happened to me yesterday, and I don’t feel ready for it. Time to put the bluff card to use again — doing the things and saying the things until I actually believe I can operate at that level.
“You think of yourself as a product.” My mom made this comment on the way I’ve been handling life lately, during a conversation earlier today. And it’s weird — I’m proud of how precisely and clearly I’m aware of why I’ve been thinking/acting in this way (as in what influenced me to do so and in what ways I’m projecting this into my life), but I’m also a bit disappointed in how much I’ve been living this out in areas I don’t believe it belongs to. A backfiring of the situation mentioned in the note just above? I’d have to unpack this later this year in an essay of sorts, I suppose…
I’ve been digging deeper into the nature and substance of sleeping-type dreams lately, but I still haven’t found out what it means to dream in different mediums. More research, I suppose. Or maybe that one dream was a glitch in my internal matrix…as were the multiple black/white ones. I also heard somewhere that very few people dream of doing math, while dreams regarding snakes and spiders, falling episodes, or erotic dreams score pretty high. Due to how my personal experience has nearly been a direct inverse of what appears to be the norm, plus the 3-4 weird unanswered questions, I have half-a-mind to actually drill down and figure this out. But I’m not that level of a scientist yet and I’m not keen on being a lab rat either. *sighs
And before you start pointing at vodka, I’ve been dry for over a month now.