Music of the Soul

It’s the sound of my voice I am surprised at; I can’t bear to here it reflect back to me. I’ve been laughing at something with a family member because I’m afraid they will hear the secrets of my soul if I don’t. I can tell it’s not working. My laughter sounds hollow, frustrated, and a little angry. I swear that haughty, treacherous bastard betrays me all the damn time. I have less control over the inflections of my language maker than I have over my face, my hands, my body.

A face you can make-up to be cheery or seductive. Hands can be made to rest still or to flop about like an adolescent sea lion. A body can be pushed, tugged, dressed up, stripped down, remade into whatever fashion category or dis-category desired.

But a voice?

A voice, like the eyes, connects to the soul on a visceral level. A voice connects to that which remains barbarian in a man or woman. Our voice conducts the nightmares of our heart into passing comments, cryptic humor, cutting statements. Your voice connects to that which is unsettled and dissatisfied in a finite, terrestrial existence and reminds the soul, the speaker, the listener of a paradise forgotten and one yet to be created. A human voice, whether spoken or left tiptoeing around inside the head waiting to be written down, The human voice is the music of the soul.

A man named Wallace Stegner once wrote that a writer should never try to create a masterpiece but instead be the sort of person from which a masterpiece may flow.  I love these words and fear them.  What if the voice I use, the voice you hear, the voice that is a secret between me and my Maker is not masterpiece ready? And so I fear using lest someone tell me that it will never be ready, that it is diseased of mind like Hitler, that it died still-born and deformed.

But isn’t that what makes a masterpiece? Isn’t the struggle against the unknown, against the odds, against the very depths of fearful hell the very outline of a masterpiece? And so I write with this voice.

Isn’t the value of a (heroic) protagonist measured by the articulations of his fears and the depths of his struggles? The protagonist rarely knows the end of his story and yet he fights on for what he has hoped and believes. And so I write with this voice.

Doesn't a masterpiece reflect frustration, hollowness, and anger as much as it projects love, joy, beauty and hope, intent, and triumph? A masterpiece is written by a voice connected to the most visceral aspects of a evolving humanity; this is why no story will ever be new, and this is why no story will ever be old. The voice connects humanity to its own soul, to your soul, to my soul. And this is why I write, and I would desire to do no other.