Shouldn't…but Do

Dysphonia has me today, and yesterday, and maybe tomorrow.

Slightly less interesting to say, “oh, my voice sounds weird because I have laryngitis.”

Like every other loss, whether it is your voice or the pink lucky rabbit’s foot on a keychain you got at the Fair when you were ten, you don’t really feel for it until it is gone.

The human voice is actually pretty amazing, like teeth and fingerprints, it is one of those things that is uniquely you. No one else will ever sound like you because no one else, whether they are related or not, will ever be you – with your nose, spine, vocal organs or bones.

So when your voice is absent from the world, regardless of your vocal ability, it is a pretty big deal. It means the singular expression that is you, the entirety of the grand experience nature invested in you…is missing.

Once lost, voices are notoriously hard to find. No class, no three-day workshop, not even a GPS will help you then. Lives are scattered, lives are lost, along the path to “hell and back,” the “Hero’s (or Heroine’s) Journey” and “the road less traveled.” All can be considered quests for embodied voice. Success, at any level, is never guaranteed. Funny thing too, once you’ve lost your voice, by the time you do find it again, it always sounds different than it did before, which is usually not a bad thing.

And odder still is where your voice might turn up. Unconfined by vocal cords, voice can show up in a good (or bad) relationship, artwork, a favorite pursuit, your child’s eyes, sometimes even when you are all alone, with just some high clouds and a starry night for company.

Bogs…I mean..blogs, are an excellent place to look for voice, to consider other people’s voices and to find resonance with your own. Now, if I could just find that rabbit’s foot…