Courage

Our identity is bound up in so many aspects of our persona: that face that looks back at us in the mirror; the way we wear our hair; how our voice sounds; and so much more. Growing facial hair – or not, wearing makeup, coloring our hair, cutting our hair, growing it out, these are all actions that we can take that are temporal to lesser and greater degrees. But we had our ears before we had mirrors, and our own voice is something that we know excruciatingly well.

We recognize voices from the beginning. As babies develop in the womb, they hear the voices of those around them. After birth they respond to their mother’s voice long before they recognize the face because of its familiarity. We detect social cues, emotional shifts, subtexts, from the tone, syntax, pitch, and color of peoples voices. We can detect illness in a person’s voice, whether we know them or not. When a child experiences hurt or heartbreak, nothing is more real or more comforting than the voice of their mother.

Our voices are as much a part of us as our thought processes. When one recognizes that they have run out of knowledge or instinct to continue to grow vocally, and think about taking voice lessons, it can be both liberating and terrifying. When one realizes that their voice is not performing as it should, that something is simply not right, there is a sense of loss and desperation to get back an essential part of themselves.

For those reasons and so many more, taking those steps into a voice teacher’s studio for the first time is a display of courage, for it is allowing someone else access to a vulnerable part of you. All criticisms and observations about the voice pierce the sense of self quite differently than they do about hairstyle or facial hair or the like; those things are temporal and can be changed or will change without our intervention. It is far easier to talk about those visual elements in the third person. Seeking and accepting attempts to alter vocal production are a deeply personal activity as they ply into the depths of self-identity at the direction of someone else.

Walking into that first voice lesson demonstrates courage on a fundamental level. You are courageous. Never forget that. I won’t. See you at your lesson!

More tomorrow…

Copyright © 2019 by Andrew Barrett, DMA