Voice

Sight was definitely easier since I spend all my waking time looking at things, even in thought mode I still feel I am looking at or into things. When I am ‘making’ I am certainly looking-or I ought to be. My language of self perceptions does not, as readily reference things heard, sounds or the world of the audio. But I did ask myself as I feel out the shape of this practice element, what do I want to hear. I had a clear inner response “ I don’t want to hear anything, not today”. Of course I am going out and I will be hearing quite a bit. But if I had my way I would stay in to avoid the sounds of the outside. Since that cannot be done the ipod acts as a buffer. I do not believe I am alone in using the ipod or any sound device thus.

The more I think about it, the more awkward I feel with hearing. Now have it under my focus, I am not sure I know what it is. I have a vague and taken for granted experience of the effect of it, but little I can authentically wrap my being around, except the voice.

This has to be my way in to my ‘heard’ and my understanding of the inner sense of hearing.

The first person whose voice I heard which startled me in my tracks was Toni Morrison. This was pre TSM, I must have been about 19 .Perhaps I was in another room and she came on to the TV or maybe I heard her on the radio either way my sense of ‘who is that was also intermingled with (I know now) ‘what is that’? If the ‘what’ seems to depersonalize her, I can assure you it does not. Even to write this now I sought an audio of her
http://wiredforbooks.org/tonimorrison/

Subsequently I have heard others, some who were and are excellent orators, (though this can be a learnt skill), and while I do appreciate a good speaker, it differs from the manner in which I hear the voice.

There is a physical component to the hearing of a person who is shaping love in words. Something is transmitted and recieved. Invisible things. Yet it feels like light. With sight there is leeway to the belief that no one sees the same blue. I don’t believe that anyone hears the same sound. Something is said to me and I feel it within my body. When things sound right, something in me is reacting to some resonance within what is being said.

Consistently the most appealing physical characteristic in a man or any person I have been drawn to is the textural truths in his voice and his or her translation of self into sound. There is a speed, intensity and frequency, a pitch of him or her carried as sound that I hear. To hear thus is to be touched by something. Perhaps I am saying that for me people are more real to me by how they feel when they touch me in how they sound, how they vibrate.


Naturally there is much more because I am, as hearer, part of what is heard so if I find him speaking, appassionato or brilliante or with wood, these are all my colourations, indicative of how I hear. The person who speaks con allegrezza, con fuoco, teneramente does so because I don’t just ‘hear’ I listen and there is a language and vocabulary of sounds non-word based but as articulate as the written word. I wonder now at the Cordellas that relate to sound, I haven’t come across that concept yet in the main body of TSM, but the deleted and early sessions throw up strange fish.