that little voice

It’s back to isolation and Zoom meetings, rather than mixing with the masses in person. Even outdoor gatherings are being discouraged with masks for groups over four to five in number.

So, here I sit in my lovely casita in San Miguel wondering how long I can go without using my voice except through a computer microphone or over my phone.

I am always surprised at how my voice sounds when I hear it on a recording. I think I have an authoritarian sounding timbre when I speak. Then I hear myself and I sound as though I don’t know what I’m talking about and am a child.

I do speak loudly, probably because I’m getting deafer by the hour. But loud doesn’t necessarily mean that it carries much weight. Often people will comment when hearing me on the phone “You sound so young.”

At my advancing age I am proud my voice isn’t shaky or feeble, but ‘young’ can be heard as immature, unclear, or not knowledgeable. Who wants to sound like that, unless you are wanting to disguise yourself as a person pleading for help?

How do I want my voice to sound? Forceful, knowledgeable, in control, smart, powerful, kind, gentle?

I am aware I have a Texas twang with a touch of southern drawl. People will ask me if I’m from the south, but I have never thought of the Texas panhandle as ‘southern’. I did attend a girls’ school on the gulf coast of Mississippi for a year so I may have picked up a bit of that inflection.

Media commentators are known to learn how to eliminate local intonations, brogues and enunciations in order to have a non-identifying tilt to their voices. I think that can make many of these talking heads somewhat boring to listen to. I like to hear the way Bostonians pronounce words, or the Irish’s tonal lilt, and how Mexicans roll their r’s around their tongues.

Because of my advancing hearing loss, I often don’t understand what is being said when spoken with a foreign accent. I just nod my head and act like I got it, hoping I can fake my way through the conversation. Sometimes that works, and sometimes I see the person walking off shaking their head at the inane response they got from me as I shake my head wondering what they said.

I went through a period of attempting to change my voice. I began answering the phone with what I thought was a sultry and sexy tone. That wasn’t successful. People thought I had a bad cold and quickly offered unsolicited remedies.

Guess I’ll just stick with my southern Texas twang. It’s a bit silly to think people care what I sound like anyway.