Voices

Sitting in a café years ago, I  realised how, despite always being aware of voices, they excite and intrigue me - each of them a stranger yet compelling. It made me reflect how much my world is constructed from voices. How much I rely upon them to tell me about somebody, to create an impression, a picture of them.

 

vacuous piercing outbursts of laughter, speaking much louder than is necessary, arrogant, stiff, smooth and prickly voices, alluring, miserable, embittered, confident, sullen, content, board, thoughtful, over-effusive, understated and dynamic ones.

 

Just as sighted people make significant judgements about others based upon their appearance - making connections or avoiding them upon this basis – blind people do exactly the same with voices. How a voice can seduce or turn off, convey beauty or disgust, how you can fall in love with a voice and imagine flying away together with its owner for ever. How voices suggest trust-worthiness or dishonesty, tension, or coldness, shallowness or boastfulness.

 

A voice can elicit my interest, excitement, suggest a possible connection, irritation - even the chance of an argument. There are some voices though that I find so unattractive, so grating, unpleasant even, that I would never want to get beyond to meet their unfortunate owner.

 

how accents and dialects contribute to the enchantment of a voice. God, how terribly dismissive I can be of people with particular regional dialects and forgiving of others.

 

I question the ‘wisdom’ that "a picture saves a thousand words". It’s  far more my truth that a sentence or conversation negates a thousand pictures. Surely, the mere utterance of a phrase invites attention, an interpretation, almost as though the voice is a window, behind which innocently lies that raw personality - gaping there yet unselfconscious in its nakedness for all to meet.

 

 

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