Voices
When do we hear voices? Some poeple say it's only the insane who hear them, and some say it's only the insane that talk back to them. I say people may be insain but nobody is crazy, and we all hear voices.
Voices come through many mediums, whether intentional or not. We hear them over the phone, radio, and through the television. We hear them underneath spoken voice inflection, through peoples' intentions, and in thier physical dimeanor. It becomes obvious in the style of a home, yard, motor vehicle and hairdo. Voices speak in our dreams and behind our thoughts. They live in our writing.
Voices are our friends and our enemies. Some people use them to manipulate others and to take advantage of some. Their mouths move and people move too. An unconscious voice creates opportunities to view others with contempt or acceptance. They help us to read people and to make decisions based on those that we hear. They help us dream, or cause us fear. They turn us into friends or enemies, moment by moment, year to year. Our choices are based on voices and we choose our own voices, whether we know it or not.
Voices are evident in our writing. We can choose our mood through the rhythm of each sentence, and can create a rhythm by word choice. In fact, many studies were performed on rhythms and how these are what we use to understand what people are saying before we learn (or hear) the words being spoken. Those learning a foriegn language use the voice patterns and rhthyms to understand the native speaker. So even as we speak, we learn to write because we hear what we want to record. Otherwise we would just be copying what we've read all the time, never knowing about language. I can't imagine what it might have been like to have written language before spoken language was spoken. It just wouldn't be.
So we must use the voices we hear to support our writing and to express how we have interpreted what we heard. And that is what makes everyone's writing unique; the voices we listen to and how we convey what we've heard. Who is to decide who is insain or crazy then? We all hear constant chatter and we can't get away from it by closing a book until we reorganize it and lay it out on paper (creating a new voice in the process). Then we can close the book. But I don't think we will ever not hear voices.
Voices come through many mediums, whether intentional or not. We hear them over the phone, radio, and through the television. We hear them underneath spoken voice inflection, through peoples' intentions, and in thier physical dimeanor. It becomes obvious in the style of a home, yard, motor vehicle and hairdo. Voices speak in our dreams and behind our thoughts. They live in our writing.
Voices are our friends and our enemies. Some people use them to manipulate others and to take advantage of some. Their mouths move and people move too. An unconscious voice creates opportunities to view others with contempt or acceptance. They help us to read people and to make decisions based on those that we hear. They help us dream, or cause us fear. They turn us into friends or enemies, moment by moment, year to year. Our choices are based on voices and we choose our own voices, whether we know it or not.
Voices are evident in our writing. We can choose our mood through the rhythm of each sentence, and can create a rhythm by word choice. In fact, many studies were performed on rhythms and how these are what we use to understand what people are saying before we learn (or hear) the words being spoken. Those learning a foriegn language use the voice patterns and rhthyms to understand the native speaker. So even as we speak, we learn to write because we hear what we want to record. Otherwise we would just be copying what we've read all the time, never knowing about language. I can't imagine what it might have been like to have written language before spoken language was spoken. It just wouldn't be.
So we must use the voices we hear to support our writing and to express how we have interpreted what we heard. And that is what makes everyone's writing unique; the voices we listen to and how we convey what we've heard. Who is to decide who is insain or crazy then? We all hear constant chatter and we can't get away from it by closing a book until we reorganize it and lay it out on paper (creating a new voice in the process). Then we can close the book. But I don't think we will ever not hear voices.
posted by Anonymous at 10:41 PM
2 Comments:
Very interesting, Kirsten. It is indeed the voice we write with that makes our writing unique. I try imagine all of your voices when reading your writing, but I'm not that used to them. The voices that scare me the most are the ones broadcasted from number stations on shortwave radio.
"I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell...Talking to myself in public, dodging glances on the train. I know they've all been talking 'bout me, and I can hear them whisper and it makes me think there must me something wrong with me... somehow, I've lost my mind!..."(Matchbox20). Your blog made me think of that song.
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