Monday, March 24, 2008

Find Your Voice (It’s Multiple Choice!)

I came down with laryngitis on Sunday night. It’s the final farewell of a cold I thought I’d outsmarted. Being more than a little bit verbal, I don’t find laryngitis much fun. But this time, I find myself wondering if my old voice will ever fully come back.

I’m ambivalent. I don’t love my voice, but I don’t hate it and I’ve had it for a long time. I’m psyched to have a lower voice—I think this will be the coup de grace that finally defeats people’s impulse to call me ma’am. It’s just a question of how it will happen. Will I sound like a teenage boy (which I figure could be kinda fun because I could bat away questions by saying "My voice must be changing," which is sort of Dada)? Or will I just feel it fill with more and more reverb (which is mostly exciting, but a little bit uncomfortable because I find myself sometimes having a visceral man-hating reaction because some guy’s voice is so loud and penetrating)? Or will I get laryngitis—which caused my (cool) coworkers to observe that my voice is "awesome," and my boss to make an uncharacteristically bizarrely sexualizing/feminizing remark that it’s "husky" (italics indicating the tone of insinuation, tampered by his lack of skills and practice at being inappropriate)—and recover with a whole new voice?

All this to say, I should be recording myself everyday...but it feels entirely too self-absorbed. And how awkward is it to talk into a tape recorder when you’re alone in your room?

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