On Voice
Today I really don’t feel like writing.
Every word written feels like a period cramp. My creative womb contracts in order for me to bleed but the sentences come out coagulated.
It’s not easy to write when you feel like shit. But this exercise is purely for me to re-learn my own voice.
In between catching early morning tubes, paying rent, washing dishes, meeting work deadlines, getting my heart broken, breaking my own heart, reciting Psalms 91, finding my heart, listening to friends’ Whatsapp voicenotes, train delays due to engineering works, forgetting how to pray to Jesus, opening up pay slips to see that ⅓ of my wages have gone to HMRC, my voice has been at a constant low volume.
It’s scary when your voice becomes diluted with other people’s demands.
To still have 100% equity in your own voice is becoming more and more of a sought-after commodity. When you’ve brokered the shares to entities that you feel beholden to because either they maintain your lifestyle, have familial ties to or seem to know what they are talking about; it’s easy to see how one doesn’t feel like they are not majority shareholders in their voice.
And what about when you do try to speak yet feel like your voice does not hold any weight? No conviction. There’s no power. The engine has been shut off. What then? Because no one will stop to pay attention.
Like do I actually believe in the things I’m writing about? Do they mean something to me? To my soul? Does it connect and how does it connect to the person I’m trying to reach?
But what about when you feel like your brain is in rush hour traffic and even though the words find a diversion and travel down your throat, they end up just parking on your tongue. There’s no road block but they can’t see their way out.
With age, my voice has become the thing I have been more in tune with to silence. And now I’m almost tone deaf to it.
And that’s why I have been trying to desperately put words on paper daily. It’s hard as fuck.
Today happens to be one of those days when I’m really coming up short but want to push through the noise and the chorus in my brain telling me to stop. Honestly if I do stop, I don’t know what else I have.
I’m trying to tap in. What is my voice telling me? What is the Holy Spirit telling me? Removing the distortion and readjusting the airwaves to the frequency of my voice is what has always helped me.
But as an artist when your heart is in the trenches of emotional warfare and your mind is a mangled mess of to-do lists, you end up just wanting to do things to help you come out of yourself. And to come out of yourself means breaking from the noise and stepping inside a realm that can elevate you to hear yourself clearly.
Such is life.