The Finding Voice Chronicles (Parte Deux)

by phil on Sunday Dec 28, 2003 11:58 AM
Progress Tracking

Okay, day twoish of trying to find my voice.

If you recall, this is my desire to find my natural voice, which involves accent, pitch, cadence, rhythm, etc.

I practiced last night reading out loud Baudrillard's Hystericizing the Millenium. This guy's on crack btw.

How do I achieve my "natural voice" ?

Well, the first part is simply trying and being motivated to speak how I feel most natural speaking, the most comfortable. Invoking words such as comfortable, natural, ease, pleasing, and personal imbue the mind with a motivation that carries itself into your voice.

Then, I try to read words out slowly, and try to "let myself go." To let my body, throat, stomach, chest, jaws and tounge feel relaxed. And then close my eyes and try to let out the word with the least amount of stress. To let my body speak in its own tongue without my interference.

So those two things carried me pretty well last night.

I found myself getting scared, actually, to speak in my previous voice.

My new voice, sounds a little british, is less rambunctious in its sound, is lower, more calmer sounding, and sounds deliberate and thoughtful.

My previous voice is higher and kind of piercing. It's a straight up San Diego acccent, which emphasizes a sort of "eeah" when you pronounce a's.

In the morning, I woke up, and recieved a phone call. I was thrown off guard since I hadn't practiced since the previous night, at first I said "hi" in my previous voice, but then I relaxed a little, and went on with my "british" self. The person didn't recognize me at first, but she was an old acquaintance so it wasn't too weird for her. But I was nervous. What could this person be thinking? Would she think I'm being fake?

I had my own doubts too, about whether I was faking a new voice just for its own sake. But then I realized that I'm really motivated to speak in my own natural way, and I wouldn't see it practical to just invent a voice for fun.

I also started to worry what people would think of me who knew me. Whether they'd ever get over the change and give me hell about it. But then I said screw it, this is more important to me.

To test whether my new voice was truly natural, I tried pronouncing in all sorts of different ways, seeing if there was a more comfortable equilibrium, and I haven't found it.

My security is that I'll often practice my "naturalism" techniques to reaquaint me with my true center.

So far, so well.