I’m speechless! The lessons of enforced silence

I opened my mouth to speak, last weekend, and what emerged sounded like the strangled bleatings of an afflicted ewe. By Monday I was entirely speechless, my voice chords silenced by a nasty attack of laryngitis.  Whispering and written messages were the only replacements.

People were understanding when I signalled “I’ve lost my voice” – and the funny thing is that it sometimes has a psychologically contagious effect. If you whisper to someone, they feel instinctively that they should whisper back. Then they realise this is odd and revert to normal speaking – since they can.

But to be robbed of a voice – in all senses of the word – is a privation, for sure. Like everything else in life, you don’t miss your voice until you are rendered mute.

And perhaps it’s a fitting discipline for people like myself who have always been chatterboxes, or what my late husband used to call “gasbags”. The “gasbag” is the chatterer who just never shuts up. I’ve been guilty of that, at times.

There’s a disparaging phrase about chatterboxes: “He (or she) likes the sound of his own voice.”

Then a voice’s sound can be variable. Some people have mellifluous speaking voices and you could listen to them all day. Others might need what voice coaches call ‘attention’. When women get voice coaching, the first thing they are taught is to lower the pitch, following Shakespeare’s description of Cordelia: “Her voice was ever soft, gentle and low – an excellent thing in a woman.” A contralto voice is also easier to hear than a high-pitched one.

Speechless, I came to understand how much I enjoy speaking. I’m sometimes invited to do public talks and it’s a lovely experience when things go well and you realise there is a real sense of communication and exchange of ideas with an audience. And it’s a learning experience when you realise that it hasn’t quite been a success, and it teaches you to analyse why. (Failure is often down to lack of preparation – or fatigue: but occasionally, there can be a lack of ‘chemistry’ twixt speaker and interlocateurs.)

Valued
 gift

But the human voice is a valued gift in itself. To be able to utter, to speak your thoughts, to make verbal connection with another person, to converse, to exchange the news, to tell stories, to recall things past, to enquire of others’ lives and very especially, to sing – these faculties are simply awesome.

Perhaps it takes a period of (in my case, enforced) silence to come to reflect on all this and to appreciate the privilege of having a voice.

Mary Magdalene – the movie

The new film of Mary Magdalene is set to correct the view that she was a prostitute. But I never did get the idea that this had been her way of life. I thought she “loved not wisely but too well”, as it says in the Gospel.

The devil is in the detail

‘Domestic abuse’ has now been expanded in category to include ‘emotional abuse’ and ‘economic abuse’ (where one partner controls the money). I know that people can be cruelly subjected to these conditions, and there should always be redress – and help – for victims, but the more the definition is widened, the more vague it can become.

‘Domestic abuse’ used to be called ‘wife-beating’, which isn’t very sophisticated, but it’s instantly clear what it involves, and it doesn’t euphemise the brutality of the act either.

But ‘economic abuse’? It’s not generally a happy recipe for marriage in which one spouse controls or withholds means which should be held in common. Yet again, it can be a complex area. A woman with something of a dowry (be it land or other assets) had a certain degree of economic status in entering marriage – I saw cases of that in my own family.

I also saw another case where ‘economic control’ was for the best. The man had a serious alcohol problem: he was lucky to find a wonderful wife who helped him manage and moderate his drinking, partly by controlling the purse strings. She allowed him enough money for a few beers now and then, but not for a binge. They had a long and happy union.

Human situations are complicated.