Something's been missing and I didn't even realize it had gone missing. The person maybe most kin to me in all the world called today after many many months unanticipated and unorchestrated [an accidental] silence, and the timbre of my friend's voice awakened a part of me I hadn't even noticed had fallen so silent. Has it ever happened to you?
Tragedy can befall slowly without our ever noticing. Stay vigilant to each other, friends.
5 comments:
Yes, this has happened to me. After a very long silence their voice may even have changed, but it still awakens something.
On the other hand, i'm thankful not to constantly have in mind all that is missing, or perhaps a better way to put it is, all that is in reserve.
Something like that. I didn't sing - hardly ever - until my early twenties, when I took vocal lessons to learn how to talk. After years of hearing friends and relatives say, "What? Stop mumbling," I shouted across an empty warehouse (while we built a new ceiling) and a virtual stranger told me, "You have a great voice." Soon after that, I started to practice scales, articulation exercises, and learned how to harmonize. After that, family told me, "Wow, you were such an asshole before, but now you seem much happier."
Don't know if the cause brought the effect, but how often do our voices make it easier to listen?
this same friend reminded me that nothing could ever be missing. that must be reserve.
that changed voice--oh! i was just interrupted by an arriving email! my amazon order has shipped! i was naughty! i bought a lot of books! metaPolitics!
metaEthicS!
metaBeing!
metaSentence!
metaIcantaffordit!
if it's a very long time, the changed voice meets a changed body, but still stirs up the exact exchange. is that correct?
i think is often.
thank you for writing.
your voice IS a great voice.
have we met?
it's funny - eric was just saying last night (via rob, via david), at the Non-Site translation panel, that the Korean language makes a distinction that the English language does not: it has a different word for the voice that people hear and the voice that resides within a body, or rather the impression that a person's words make and the vocalization that speech requires.
that nuance may be correct, and yet there's still something to be said about the pleasures of moving between the two, or tracing the line that unites them...especially as when we start talking about how voices change as bodies change; some relations remain the same, while other, more superficial encounters may lend a new inflection. how do we learn to choose which changes to retain? and what a joy to come back to what we thought we'd forgotten?
BTW, i don't know if it was an intentional slip, but metaL doesn't need to afford anything, because metaL doesn't pay - metaL just takes.
so yay new books.
what will you get?
we may have spoken briefly once or twice. nothing remarkable. brandon knows me better, and brent, jocelyn, judith g., kate and maggie, etc etc etc.
reservedly,
judy
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