Fire in the voice

More than two years ago, Mayo Lopez, AIM professor and dear friend, gave me the book The Heart Aroused: Poetry and Preservation of Soul in Corporate America. It sat in my home waiting for the opportune time for me to discover it, when my life and concerns would be most enriched by what its author, David Whyte, had to say. When the student is ready, the teacher with the right book will come. Now I find this book complements my writing classes.

In the chapter entitled "Fire in the Voice," author David Whyte, an English poet who found a place for poetry in corporate America, tells a story about his friend. I’ll call that friend Charlie. Charlie worked in a corporation whose CEO had just come up with a plan that Charlie and many others thought was likely to fail. The CEO wanted team support for his plan so he called a meeting and asked all of them to vote on it, to rate it on a scale of one to ten. The plan’s most outspoken critic voted "nine and a half." The last vote was Charlie’s. He badly wanted to say "zero," but heard himself instead say "10," his voice quivering in the air, ringing uncertainly in his ear sounding mouse-like, a meek disembodied voice. Somewhere else in his mind he hears the proverbial question: Are you man or mouse?

Charlie hates himself. Why could he not speak his mind? Why did he squeak like a mouse? This book says, "Courageous speech has always held us in awe. From the first time we spoke back to our parents as angry, stuttering teens, or had to stand tongue-tied before a roomful of people, feeling naked as the day we were born. There is something bare and revealing about speech." Communications research shows that communication is only seven percent content, 35 percent tone of voice, the rest body language. When we speak before others our bodies know instinctively that we are exposing more than just words. Speaking is a physical experience. Our voice comes from within our bodies, ideally from our solar plexus, our guts. According to the book our voice "... carries our experience from the past, our hopes and fears for the future, and the emotional resonance of the moment." So, the book concludes, the very act of speaking out is an act of tremendous courage. Writing poetry, expressing your personal voice, is an act of tremendous courage.

We may want to condemn Charlie for sounding like a mouse but we must remember that before the squeak there was only silence. David Whyte writes, "...the mouse voice is an indication of where exactly our voice is hiding and in its minute, brittle sounds intuit a greater voice that lies behind it. We also learn something about the fears that lie behind our speaking out. The mouse is the part of us that learned how to hide between the walls of the house until nightfall, emerging when the master and mistress were asleep. A mouse sound heard in the light of day, then, is the first indication that our voice is coming out of hiding, though it may still be fearful of those we perceive to be rulers of our world.

"Hearing the mouse emerge in a conversation at work, especially with someone who may have power over us, we are reminded that Mother and Father are still very much present in our lives. In psychological language, we have stumbled into the complex (as in inferiority–BCG) that lies at the center of our relationship with our parents..." or anyone, possibly with authority, who intimidates us or in whose presence we feel that we want to keep our true lives secret. Maybe we fear their judgement. Maybe we don’t want them to control us. Maybe we hold certain parts of ourselves sacred, so sacred we don’t want them to see.

The curriculum of my writing class requires reading aloud of written work in class as part of the exercise of finding one’s voice. Also, to build the realization among writers that writing makes a sound in the reader’s soul. You must not only write right, you have to ring right. Many students initially have problems with reading their work out loud, in spite of the strictly observed rules: No judgement of self and others and confidentiality. Still they must read aloud. I hear them emerge from their silence like mice squeaking through the first few sessions, but through time squeaks acquire body and volume until they roar, proud of their work, proud of their writing.

David Whyte writes, "The frail, vulnerable sounds of which we are capable seem to be essential to a later ability to roar like a lion without scaring everyone to death. Without the compassionate understanding of the fear and trepidation that lie behind courageous speech, we are bound only to our arrogance. Lion sounds that have not grown from the mouse may exude naked power... but cannot convey any wisdom or understanding... The initial steps on the path to courageous speech then are the first tentative steps into the parts of us that cannot speak. Entering their shadowy, previously hidden abodes, we discover an interior soul energy that has not seen the light of day in a long time."

Many of us never bring this energy to light because we gave up too early. We did not like the results of our first attempts so we stopped trying. Because we could not sing like we wanted to sing after our first few voice lessons, we gave up singing. Because we could not write poetry like our favorite poet the first time out, we gave up poetry. We measure our mouse’s squeak against their lion’s roar ignoring their work, practice and determination. We forget that they too were once mice but they persisted beyond the squeak.

So I write this piece as a tribute to all my writing students, now numbering around 50. Thank you for making me a proud witness to the sparking and flaming of the fire in your voices. We have come so far together. Thank you too to Mayo Lopez, who gave me the book The Heart Aroused, and to David White who wrote it, for giving me insights into the miracles I see occurring in the writing classes once a week. They are beyond description, except in Session 5 when, absolutely, we must find the words to describe them and read those out loud.