20. The Voice

Joans Bungalow

20. The Voice

I miss my voice. It’s a world class voice. An unmistakable voice. A voice that cuts through the crap and heads to the deep stuff, drawing out hidden tears, demanding absolute presence from me, and hopefully the listener. My identity and career as a singer have got me through all aspects of life and I hoped it would bring money – a lot more money. I sang for my supper, for fun, and survival, just like mum n dad did. They were both skint unhappy addicts with too many losses. Unseen neuro-complex starbursts can find and lose themselves in music. The grief I have for my judgement of them because of all the things I didn’t know, is spilling out. Forgive them for they knew not what they were?

The concept of the voice contains such a vast universe of angles, metaphor and contexts. Working with my actual voice throughout my life has been a way for me to connect with, contact, integrate, heal and synthesise numerous aspects of myself. In a passionate Tango with my ego, I learned to be entirely present when singing. In performance I finely tune in, open a channel to the cosmos, and invite you onto a superhighway to the centre of things. A place where everything collapses and expands at the same time. When I’m concerned with the essence of harmony, beauty, authenticity and the heart of it, I bring the moment to the moment. Taking me and the listener out of self-obsessed viewing points and into a collective dream. When I’m concerned with what I’m going to get from it – the magic disintegrates.

The wordless vibration of this magic holds a bounty worth all the effort and courage it takes to access it, regardless of money. It is in itself a real treasure trove where creativity as catharsis brings sanity and sovereignty. Where authenticity begets agency and empowerment spreads collective enrichment. Healing with playfulness enlightens us and release spreads soft joy. The courage to make some fucking noise transforms lives, especially for women and creates sparks of connection rippling through family and community. These are just a few of my favourite things we can experience from singing and learning to access the full potential of our voice. Not to mention the countless health benefits of consciously using the breath and all those delicious hormones that feel so good as they flood the nervous system. I believe singing saved my life. While the pursuit of fame nearly killed me. This dissonance has killed so many wonderful artists unable to handle the crashing come downs and crushing let downs. It is too easy to get lost in a complex web of ego, magic, vulnerability, control and judgement.

As a coach and teacher, I’ve helped countless people light a spark of courage within themselves. In the absence of an actual voice, my own spark is dimmed. I’m grieving while reconciling. In the silence past stories haunt me. I can’t scream. Feelings bouncing around internal echo chambers become cacophonous. Reverberating like Ezan, the call to prayer. I’m voiceless in the dead centre of processing. It’s messy and surprising. Crushing and expanding. Quietly aware I’m unconsciously shutting down some of my own emotions. Perhaps they’ll appear dressed in a poem or a song. I’m wary of letting swampy feelings stagnate.

But as my voice shuts down, my storehouse of love glimmers on. I will find a way. My speech therapist reminded me to engage in silent breathing to encourage my throat to be as open as possible. An interesting contradiction – being as open as possible - in a silent way, (my favourite Miles Davis album). I’ve made an awful lot of noise in my life and now is a time for enforced prolonged silence. Waiting is not my forte. Music is the space between the sounds, but what to do when we can’t make a sound? Hang out in wild open space - bound with no bounds. Without noise to hang my life on I could just fall into the abyss of silence - or choose to fly in the abyss of silence. Flying not falling. Waving not drowning. In the ebb and flow I breathe in hope. Exhaling across the vast flood plain of my silent breath. Conscious breathing is an embodiment - a meditation.

Song writing has always been my catharsis, and I haven’t written a song for the longest time. Telling myself the same old stories, I perpetuate the self-limiting beliefs that strangle my potential. Meanwhile, in the silence, memories surface like dead fish. Revealing all the ways I’ve been betrayed, unseen, unloved and uncared for. I’m mostly alone, crying rivers in this silence. Hoping my tears are here to water the cramped seeds so desperate to burst forth with new growth.

Letting go of the attachment to my voice is an act of courage. It’s been my identity my whole life and perhaps it’s now time to let it go. To be willing to let it go holds a potent feeling. To let go of attachment to this part of my identity feels strangely exciting. What else could I be? Singing gave me the wings I needed to fly. It’s like being in a time travelling spaceship as singing recalls emotional memory, taking us back to the time the song was heard before. While retrieving moments from childhood it lights up the whole brain. A beautiful anatomical, scientific, spiritual, biological wholistic mysterious practice. Singing literally vibrates us back to life. Ancient yogis used nada yoga, the yoga of sound, to reconnect to the cosmos within. Lighting up our inner space. Sparks of vitality from the centre of the whole self, bring us from a fractured place back to a harmonic whole. And then there’s the business of music, which crucified me and spat me out. But still I chased that dream. Like a narcissistic abuser - it had me in its grip for decades. To lose my actual voice to cancer at the tail end of a mammoth journey through menopause - what may I make that mean?

I learned to read voices from an early age. Stuck in a crocodile infested swamp of childhood, my divergent brain lit up like a firework at the sense of danger. Hypervigilance kept me comparatively safe but didn’t do my nervous system any long-term favours. I suffered some abuse; it could’ve been much worse. I would tune into the tone and colour of silence and to the cadence in voices. I developed a prescience, that has stayed with me and continue to transform tragedy and trauma into art. The salvage from the pain. I sense tonal restrictions in the vibration of the sound and feel where an emotion is stuck – where fear is choking expression - where confidence has failed and courage is needed. Most people I meet can’t reach my depth or capacity to really listen. Probably because they’ve never been truly heard.

I looked forward to seeing the lovely Speech and Language Therapist at the hospital. An awesome service I should be making full use of – but I’ve been avoiding it, which forced me to enquire why? She respects my knowledge but she has much more anatomical and physiological insight. She gave me exercises that I already know to do – but hadn’t been doing! Then she said, “your voice sounds fine”. It’s anything but fine! It’s tight and limited. My tone is croaky and dull. My range is small and projection is impossible. She wasn’t seeing me as a whole person and the last thing I need are people pleasing platitudes. I didn’t cry in her company. And I needed to cry. I needed a witness. Someone to hold my hand in a safe warm space and allow me to let go. I wanted her to be brave, to reach out and touch the terror and pain of this journey.

But that’s not her job. Her job is to give me exercises to make the muscles work better – to ease the swelling and improve connectivity. I want more from her. I want her to give me what I give to others - a way to reach my innermost through my voice. A way to release. I guess she’s sharpening my tools so I can get back to doing the deeper job for myself and others later. But I don’t know what I want to use my voice for anymore – metaphorically and other wise. But while in the middle of processing, I don’t need to know.

When my cancer was first diagnosed, I asked my oncologist if my voice would be changed. She slowly nodded with a heavy sigh. I stoically said, “ah well I have other voices”. She replied, “you have a good attitude. You’re gonna need it”. How right she was. I’m tip toeing out of the other side of this and the weight of what my voice is, has been, and isn’t, is on me like a lead blanket. Some days I’m overwhelmed with what I’m gonna do with my life if my voice is fucked - confused as to what the new direction is for me.

Over the last decade, writing became a safe spacious space for me to pour myself into. A space to see a reflection of my innermost. It reveals what I don’t see. Courage meets fear and opens creaky doors to access my vulnerability. It alerts me to when I’m trawling over my ego rather than exploring the unknown or trying too hard to be big n clever. A fine balance between wise and whimsical - honest and sheer. All things are valid. Getting comfortable in this hideous discomfort has been one of the biggest challenges of my life.

Waves of grief come. They could easily wipe me out. I visualise the breadth of a flood plain. As the waves dissipate into a shallow body of water spreading before me, the fear, grief and sadness feel more manageable. From this softer place I dare to sense new possibilities. I’m acutely aware that things can always get better - and worse. I feel a shiver of excitement from time to time.

Scrolling Instagram from my sick bed, zoning in on the world on fire. Riots all over the globe. A collective voice swirling people’s courage into power? Let’s hope so. Fear in the guise of power and control, wants to silence our voice in so many ways. We do it to ourselves – we do. Same as it ever was. There’s a balance to be found between optimism and realism, and I believe there’s post traumatic growth awaiting me and the world. I don’t know what it is yet. Dissonance and harmony spiral together.

Like spring seeds I’m desperate to step out of this darkness, wanting warmth and light and something new to behold. Impatiently curious. Frustrated and bored. Belligerently pushing through the heavy weight of the soil, banging on the door of the future. The hospital psychotherapist helps me remember to hang back when I want to kick that door in. She reminds me that surrender isn’t passive, and neither is it a collapse. In acceptance of the rawness, I can tread the sore edge lightly.

a seed peeking through

I don’t know who I am yet

which way I will lean across

a flood plain awash with feeling

skimming perfect oval pebbles

across a watery blanket

slippery.

Slowing down, slowing down,

trying to keep my balance.

Slowing down to meet what is

Not hankering for this to be over and life to be got on with – is bloody hard. We live the life we’ve got – and this is the life I’ve got - for now. Human being, not human doing, isn’t role modelled these days. We’re not taught how to do less. We need to go more slowly to catch up with ourselves and land in the middle of our dreams. Actively rest. Let it all go and get stuck into the wonder of the world. To be here at all is a bonkers miracle.

I’m talking to my dead dad in the dark.

He’s lying in a single bed with his back to me.

I remember the magic in his fingers

flying over fag ash covered piano keys,

inspiring me to fly

to far-flung edges of imposed limitations

and…

Oh, the possibilities.

The only way to catch him was in a harmony.

To chase him down

to the middle of a song –

buzzing atoms

drifting moods

anchored by meandering melodies.

He never once came to the park with me.

But we played.

This cancer is life changing. I don’t know what the change is. I’m looking forward to meeting other unseen parts of myself. What could the post traumatic growth reveal without the past or future snapping at my heels? From the centre of silence. I’m listening.