The Violence of Voice

Having just gotten home from a Power of Hope summer camp, I'm feeling extra sensitive to ideas of power, privilege and voice. Which got me thinking today about the power of voice, both metaphorically and literally.

I saw a friend crossing the street as I was walking home from coffee downtown. Upon hearing me, he turned like he'd been hit by a bullet. This is a fairly innocuous example, and I'm sure hearing his name while wearing headphones in and thus being audio-directionally challenged probably had more to do with his reaction than my voice, but having seen these kinds of reactions before, I can't help but imagine there must be some kind of power to our voices.

In the same way that silence can be suffocating and confining, voice and the release of sound can be uplifting. So many of us find release, find catharsis in music because it fills the silence.

I've been told that I sound different when I yell. My voice is a little deeper, a little bit more what people would traditionally call masculine, a little harsher. I think it's the volume and the fact that when I yell it's more what people would call barking.

The point I think I'm trying to get at (if I have one) is that when my voice changes like that it's effective. It gains a kind of violence and power that's physical. Here, a few videos to help explain:

Or if the Ted Talk is too long:



Or as another visual example:



These are fancy scientific devices that use physical principles of human anatomy, but at the same time, our voices can achieve much the same effect in a way that these devices cannot, our voices can communicate the violence of emotion. Often I find myself flinching at the sound of anger or leaning into the sound of earnest excitement.
Our voices have real power over those who listen. They create and enrapture. They destroy and reduce. It's a responsibility when we use it, so use it wisely. Think before you say.

On Walking By

I am the infection,
the contamination,
the word that plants the seed of an idea.
And, like a weed,
I flourish in the spaces in-between.
If kiss is kill,
then kiss me deep,
but don't you dare kill me.
The inflection, Pontypool,
screams at me to tell you to shut up.
I'm in the thick and in the thin,
waiting inside the outside.
My roots are strong.
They are tendrils and strings that,
woven,
cross the divide.
This fabric a blanket forms,
and I wrap you in my love.
Hypothermia seeps into your bones,
Under heat disease
Take the pressure off and go to sleep


If any of you have read this blog in the last few months, you know how much I go on about silence. It's the ninja aesthetic that draws me there. Move in silence, strike with deadly precision. I'm no ninja, but I like the imagery.

I'm drawn to silence I think because I live a noisy life. I'm always busy running around, involved in something. I'm always thinking about something I care about. Silence is a retreat for me, it's where I want to come from.

I don't think silence is as bad a thing as we credit it in society. To be by yourself, to be present does not require speaking or noise or sound. I view silence the same way I view the concept of nothingness. It is a container and an inverse that we cannot exist without.

But at times it feels like a fool's errand because to seek silence is to make noise. It's like Enlightenment, to truly be enlightened, one must not strive for Enlightenment, right? So I'm at a loss because I'm not sure what to do with all this sound.

Perhaps I should make a:

Awkward Sauce

"Well, that was awkward."

"Awkward sauce."

"And... cue awkward silence."

Awkward: 5. Ungraceful, ungainly in action or form; uncouth: a. of things, action, speech, etc.
-OED

It's not awkward. Awkward is what we've taken to calling that which makes us uncomfortable.

"I don't like talking to him, he's awkward."

Is he? Or is it your perception of him and the effect that he has on you that's "awkward?"

For the most part, I'm arguing about semantics. I'm arguing about the meaning of a single word and how its use or misuse can completely change how we interpret a thought (exactly the kind of stuff I imagine is going on in the 202 class).

So I adapted a new way of life about a year and a half ago. I decided that I wasn't going to "do awkward" anymore. Now, it has changed my life.

I thought I would share how this happened and what it means to not "do awkward." I have been getting a lot of skepticism and giggles at the concept. People seem to not understand what it means to rid myself of awkwardness. Well, I thought I would explain it. There are a few things that characterize awkward:

Lies
Something not being said
A misunderstanding

So how do I rid myself of awkwardness?

I've eliminated white lies. I just tell the truth no matter what. It always turns out better.
I say what's not being said. Its not awkward if you talk about it.
I clarify misunderstandings. I'll stop the conversation just to explain fully.

What have the benefits been from this:

I can be a much more genuine person. I never create stupid lies to cover up my tracks or make excuses. I can feel good and honest with those around me.

I become a role model for those around me. If I stand up and say what's not being said, it allows for others to do the same. It helps me be an Ally.

Conversations go much more smoothly.

I am happier.

I like people more.

I can be around anyone.

I've done it and you can too! You should try it out for a while. It helps a lot to say to yourself in awkward situations..."I don't do awkward." You'll be amazed how comfortable just thinking/saying that makes you.

-From a Facebook Note by former plurker and nanotexter Josh Foley

While I respect Josh's aim here, it's important to notice that he defines "awkward" and the situations that create it rather explicitly, but in general conversation when we describe something as awkward there's a much broader concept in mind. Awkward in that sense isn't simply the causal relationship between a kind of statement and reaction, but additionally the power we give that relation (in its ability to make us uncomfortable).

I asked the plurk world about why silence makes us uncomfortable and the conversation kind of turned into a discussion on awkwardness.

After bouncing some thoughts around for a bit, what I got out of this was the idea that awkwardness is based in power relations and silence and communication are networks through which we notice (or not notice) these power relations.

It was stated repeatedly that whether or not we become uncomfortable with silence is dependent upon the company we keep, i.e. the familiar makes us more comfortable with the silence which translates to less awkwardness and the converse of that as well. And we are comfortable because in this company there is no struggle in the power relation; it can be assumed that those issues have been worked out already.

So when we are in company where silence makes us uncomfortable, the power relations are not defined. We're on less steady ground because we do not know who has the power or control in that interaction. So we seek to fill the silence as a way of exerting control and demonstrating that we have some semblance of power, of authority.

But there is also power in silence. In our information driven society, knowledge is power and silence is a key way of withholding that knowledge. Secrets. And here I would probably make some kind of connection to Derrida and The Gift of Death, but I'm not that far into it.

We demonstrate that we have power, by expressing knowledge, by speaking. And so again, we kill the silence. We exclude the silence from our lives, replacing it with noise after noise after noise because the ones who can convince take power and to convince someone of something means you need to communicate with them.

After a point though, the sounds we use to break the silence become noise, they become meaningless. As I saw last quarter in reading Serres's Parasites, they cease to interrupt us and so lose their power. As was the case with Low for many members of the tooth-hurty class, you just kind of glaze over it.

Mentat said, "While the professor speaks we are to be silent and listen or raise our hands if we have something to say before we speak." What of when that is not the case? Well, that brings me now to class on Wednesday when Tony did his I'm-not-going-to-talk thing as the perfect example of how silence translates to power. What Tony effectively was trying to do was translate himself from a role as teacher (authority figure in the front, bringer of sounds) to that of noise (hiding in the background interrupting only as much as we pay attention to it).

Silence is striking and often more powerful of an interruption than noise in part because of its subtlety but also because of its in-your-face obviousness. Silence is always there and we take it for granted, so to bring attention to it makes it that much bigger.

"Intention does not disappear: it will have it's place, but from this place it will no longer be able to govern the entire scene and the entire system of utterances."--Derrida

But to notice it in this context is to immediately make us uncomfortable. Without that authority figure, without Tony telling us what to do and directly guiding the conversation, the class doesn't know who has the power or who has how much of the power. In this way, even silently, Tony is still able to control the class, despite not wanting to.

Here again, I must thank Mentat for wording things so well, because "silence creates a SPACE." And in our society, that space must be filled otherwise it feels wasted. So someone talks, someone breaks the silence so it doesn't feel "awkward" and we move along.

One last point that I think I'll try to save for a larger post later and so only introduce briefly here, but in relating sound and silence, we come to another binary system. As such, we also are faced with the Other. Silence is the great opposition. It is the absence that is always with us and so we cannot relate to it in the same way we do sound.

Questions, Comments, Concerns, Rebuttals?