Sunday, December 16, 2007

Me Talk Pretty One day

I want to say so many thanks to everyone who has emailed, texted or called saying "I know you can't call me back, but..how's your voice?"

Better! And such support (see above) is part of why, I'm sure.

But it's been maddeningly slow for a singer. Today is 24 days since I got sick, and 19 days since I woke up unexpectedly - silent.

On about day 7 I could make a couple hooting sounds.

By day 10 I could speak and be understood - barely. Every other word escaped behind the rasp or the squeak.

By day 14 I could be understood, unless I was trying to express sarcasm. You'd be surprised how much of what's BEHIND what you say is off limits when you have only an octave range. And I could access that octave only if I sang on "oooo" and slid carefully around. Not ideal for normal conversation.

Day 19 - today- I still sound like I have a cold, but I have about 2 1/2 octaves, and some of it even has that "forment" singers are always talking about. I actually hear overtones! Whew! It still feels a bit "foggy" and I'm missing my top octave or so, but with steady progress each day, I'm satisfied.

And I still have the steroids in hand if I feel I need them.

I've never lost my voice before. I keep wondering if it's going to be "reborn." I'll come back a mezzo. Or I'll be so glad to have it back it'll constitute a mystical religious experience, and I'll be a spirited dynamo who never tires of vocalizing. Maybe it's like re-booting a computer - my voice is going to come back to me - reformatted somehow.

In any case I'm glad to have what i have of it back.

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Phoenix

Today was day ten without a voice. I have to say it's a little weird that in the same month I lost my voice, a dancer friend broke her ankle, and a very discerning artist friend who's hard on herself lost part of her breast. What is it we are supposed to be learning? Maybe it's how to survive without something to which we are very attached.

But I think we are all not to be separated from them forever. When I woke up I had a feeling. I saved my voice all day, and when Colin came home I knew it. I knew I'd be able to talk.

"Hhhhhhhi!" I honked. "hhhhwelcmhhhhhmmehhh!" OK he can only understand every other word, and it's really more of a duck imitation with some consonants worked in, but it is a voice. Later I discovered I had five whole notes I could sustain...actually sing...sort of sing...right, smack in the middle of my voice. No high, no low. But it's a voice.

Before I move back into the world of the voiced, there are a few things I must admit I will miss about my period silence. Perhaps this is what I have learned.

One: Not talking with credit card companies, insurance companies, or people who want to rent our house. Not that I have anything against the latter, it's just that I get anxious when they ask for a rate and I have to pull out my calculator and get on our website because I've forgotten the rates and come up with something. And I'm self conscious about sounding too desperate. That people pleaser comes out and it's hard to hide.

Two: Not having to think about what I'm going to say next in any conversation.

Three: The fact that when I do have to communicate, I have to do it face to face. Closely. This is especially poignant with Colin. There's no calling from the kitchen, "Do you know where the lids to those containers are?"

Instead I have to move, across the whole apartment, if necessary, to wherever he is, with container, get right up in his face and whisper, very verrrry softly because I know raspy whispering is bad for the voice... "These c's...lid?"

Likewise he must come to me. If what he says is important enough to need an answer, he's aware that he needs to come near me. It takes his utmost concentration to understand me. I've commanded his...attention, yes, that's it.... every time I wish to "speak" to him, we must look one another in the eye and make the information pass between us.

I've noticed his retention rate of what I say has actually gone UP since I've had no voice. I love it. How ironic.

Now that I have a few noises back, there is the rest of me. I haven't felt so close to having mono since I had it. I keep thinking, has this something to do with the new medication, Plequenil? Dr. Rackoff insists not, but I was exposed to a - cold. The sniffles for three days in my dad's case, a slightly more bronchial thing for Colin which took maybe a week. Others I know have lost their voices for 2-3 days, but not 10.

I slept 'till after noon today - Solid. I was dreaming of this bird who had a double set of wings, and could fly like a normal or a humming bird. Twin orange feathers made a triangle of a white tuft on her tail, and when she turned to speak to me the face was dark, like an owl's. And then she spoke to me without speaking.

Perhaps like the bird I am meant to fly at two different speeds. And communicate sans words for a little bit longer.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

King of Crickets - or - Say Ah (or not)

"Oh, My God, that is SO inflamed!" Dr. B., normally a mask of professionalism, self-consciously closes her own mouth.

The professional is back. "I'm sorry, that's probably the last thing, you want to hear from your doctor, 'oh, my God,' but..." she looks in my throat with the flashlight again. "Oh my God!"

It's about the baby. Just back from maternity leave, my primary Care Physician has a three month old at home, and I doubt she's high on anything so much as lack of sleep. And guilt.

"Do you see it written all over my face?" she asks when I mouth the word "HOW?" and make rocking motions with my arms. "I feel so guilty. Everyone is coughing," she ads, and I wonder passingly if children of doctors grow up with these immensely well functioning immune systems, because they're exposed to everything from e.coli to typhoid by the time they're one. Or if they grow up sick.

I feel her struggle. Clearly Dr. B feels just as guilty about having left her medical practice for a few months. "What is this about a chronic fracture at C5?" she asks me, for all the world as if I'd wet the bed. "I was coming in every week, I should have gotten this!"

I don't know what to say, and couldn't if I did.

"Have you had a bone density test?" I shake my head no. "It'll be a fight with your insurance company because you're so young, but a chronic fracture...you should have one."

I kind of like this version of my doctor. Her relaxed sense is catching. "Now, what about this laryngitis. I've heard of people having it for two, up to three days, this virus going around but...eight?" She smiles a little wryly. "You want some 'roids?"

Now I know she's high. The word slips from her mouth like a teenager who's been drinking a little too much for the first or second time, a little amused at her own audacity. "' 'Roids" is not a word the old Dr. B. would use to discuss prescribing so serious a substance as steroids. I bet Dr. B hasn't had a full night's sleep in over three months.

"Maybe," I mouth and make a balancing motion with my right hand. "Remind me about side effects?..." I whisper.

"Oh, well you'll have lot's of energy..." she laughs and goes to explain exactly what to expect if I should take the 6-day dose of steroids. Reminding me this is only the secnd time she's ever done this. I am regularly impressed by how much information this diminutive woman keeps somewhere. She's like her own self-contained database. She pulls phone numbers out of her hand-held device, processes what's in front of her quickly and retrieves lists of the most random information out of her head. Dr. B is to me a tiny, whirling walking wonder.

I pantomime writing a prescription, and indicate that I'll take it home and think about it. I think I may be getting better without 'roids. Yesterday I was able to make this one honking sound, precisely on a B flat. And today I can make two sounds. When I put them together I sound like Tarzan. I keep my experiments to a minimum out of respect for my ailing vocal folds and my neighbors.

Today is day nine without a voice. My friend Stacy says maybe the King of Crickets has it.

El niño busca su voz.
(La tenía el rey de los grillos.)
En una gota de agua
buscaba su voz el niño.
No la quiero para hablar;
me haré con ella un anillo
que llevará mi silencio
en su dedo pequeñito.

The little boy is looking for his voice
(The king of the crickets had it.)
In a drop of water
the little boy looked for his voice..
I don’t want it to speak with;
I will make a ring of it
so that he may wear my silence
on his little finger.


-Federico García Lorca

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Silence of the Am














The funniest thing is that it really happens - when you whisper, everyone in the room begins to tiptoe. They creep along in silence as if...as if there's really something to be quiet about.

It's day four of my acute laryngitis, and it's been mostly entertaining, as I use Colin and my friend Stacy, visiting from Chicago, as my "translators" for phone conversations, and we laugh at the oddities of life around a person who can hear but not speak above a whisper. It's like driving on the left side - everyone feels the need to re-orient. Colin can't help but whisper back - I think it's a sign of empathy - and though with Stacy around there've been three people consistently, we're all beginning to feel how my relatively constant stream of conversation fills the room. The silence is - just weird.

But immensely comforting, to be with people with whom speech isn't necessary every minute. We were upstate when my voice left me and it started to snow, and in front of the fire I lay in silence on one couch with my head in Colin's lap as Stacy typed into her laptop on the other. I can count on one hand the times in my life when I remember feeling so - content. And complete. Actually kind of nice, that my "disorder" keeps me from ruining a perfectly companionable silence by filling it up with unnecessary chatter.

Only yesterday afternoon - day three- did I begin to entertain the notion that there may be something more lasting going on than vocal folds slightly inflamed due to my recent cold. Maybe I really injured them coughing. In twenty years of professional singing, I've never had laryngitis, therefore I'm unsure as to its "normal" track of recovery.

It's strange to imagine a world without my voice. More than part of my identity, more than an extension of my ego, my voice is almost another person with whom I feel I've always lived. Like my "deamon" (a la The Golden Compass.)

Already yesterday I heard the outgoing message on our answering machine and thought, she sounds so far away. Who is that girl? What if I lost my voice, or I regained it and it wasn't...pretty to listen to? Imagining such a world requires reorganizing the pieces of my soul. It's not entirely a bad thing, ...just...completely different.

Maybe being sans voice would help focus my now scattered energies. Funny how over the past few days I've become more diligent about practicing my harp. And I'm more interested in that dance class I've been studiously not attending for ten years. Perhaps it doesn't matter what my mode of expression is. I just need one.

Maybe without my voice I would finally get that job with Doctors Without Borders and do something important in the world. Maybe focus my energies on healing. Maybe many things would be different.

Anyway, I'm settling in. We've pulled out the sign language dictionary, and changed the outgoing message on my cell phone so it instructs people to leave an email address, FAX, or some way to reach them which does not involve my speaking. I'm wondering how I'm going to change that plane reservation for which I need to speak to a person. How much can I depend on others to be my voice, and for how long? How much does one of those TDD devices cost?

Colin thinks maybe I cursed myself by taking the picture above. We were in a special place in Glacier Mountain National Park called The Trail of the Cedars, where gigantic trees have grown without being molested by fire, some for over a thousand years.

The Cedar forest feels holy. Footsteps fall almost silently on the ground softened by pine needles over eons. Like when you walk into a church, all but the most insensitive immediately lower their voices. And look up. To where a canopy of ancient trees instructs your soul upwards, to your third eye and then the Baihui, the point in Chinese Medicine which translates as The Point of a "Hundred Meetings."

There's a reason monks take a vow of silence in order to hear the subtleties of the energies around and within. I can see why. Losing a voice is like losing one of your senses - all the others immediately become heightened. In the sanctity of the forest I suddenly wanted to feel how soft one of those pine branches was and instinctively put it to my lips. Colin said it looked funny, so I made eyes and he snapped a picture.

I think I can live in this space happily for some time. Hopefully, though, not forever.