There are several experiences common to the human condition, and I believe one of them is to, at some point in your life, hear your voice on recording and think, “Do I really sound like that?”
We are the only important person in our life who has never heard our own voice clearly. In this way, the people close to us know us better than we know ourselves. I suggest that this applies to more than just the physical perception.
We don’t know ourselves as well as we think we do. Though most often applied to writers, there is a condemnation that is also used for teachers, public speakers and leaders. You have no voice. You need to find your voice. This phrase is meant to describe someone who has studied and applied all the technical knowledge of their field, yet is still lacking something undefined. Perhaps the most frustrating step in the learning process, this is a place where you stand just at the cusp of mastery, yet cannot attain it. For every step on the path to greatness, a lack of talent can be overcome through effort and diligence. But this final step is different. No one can teach you how to find your voice.
Take writing. For those that feel called to poetry or literature or prose, they study craft. You can learn diction and syntax; you can learn how to structure a paragraph and transition between ideas. And after you have applied every skill of craft, your result will be technically perfect…and forgotten within moments, if ever read at all. Studying all the knowledge of your field will only bring you to the current level, to raise that level you need something new. Writers who are accused of lacking a voice are either so bland as to be forgotten, or so closely imitative of the greats that they are frauds without an original thought. This is where so many give up on the path to creating something wonderful, stuck without a voice.
What does it even mean to find your voice? Am I not the one speaking? Am I mute, screaming inside my own head? You need to find your voice. What spectacularly unhelpful advice. I know something is missing, but no one can tell me what. You may think it hopeless to search for the undefinable. If you are reading this and feel the sinking realization that you have no distinct voice, take heart in knowing that no one else does either. We are all mute, but for those natural born geniuses that shake the foundations of the world with their thoughts. But those geniuses aren’t reading this article. As a young writer and a younger teacher, I am speaking to you as another child in search of a voice. If there is a method to finding it, at least for me, I think it lies in honesty and courage.
If I have all the technical skill in the world but lack something to say, I have only a frame without a picture. I need something important, something with meaning. I am not a genius with ideas bigger than my generation can comprehend; nor am I a pragmatist with sensitivity to the needs of a culture, who always knows how to give an audience what they want. I only know myself, and even that is shallow. If I want anything to reach anyone, it has to be honest. I have to look at the things in myself that make me want to turn away. I have to be honest. And once I have something to say, I have to say it. When I sit down to write, or stand up to teach, I have to speak my truth with courage. I must express myself with conviction. And hopefully, my conviction will lend me a voice.
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Bad Poem of the Week
Heart Unheard
Silence has weight.
You can feel it press down on you when you should be writing,
But the words won’t come,
Too timid to push aside the fat, snoring silence.
Silence has patience.
It waits in the rafters for its moment, and
When your joke falls flat it leaps down,
Falling with resounding thud.
Silence has presence.
When you look into her eyes and know
That this moment is the only moment that matters,
Silence stands between you,
It sticks its fingers down your throat, choking you,
Chuckling as you watch her walk away.
Silence has lungs.
It screams at you in the night when you’re alone,
No lovers or friends or tv or stereo to save you,
Just the wailing silence
Pulling you apart
From within.
We’re all born screaming.
The first refutation becomes refrain,
Infinite recourse in hiding
Not from the silence,
But what we suspect the silence means.
-by Matthew J Rees
-for no one, or everyone
