Ah Veronika. Voice. What a beautiful article. You give voice to language. Words speak through you. Words speak to you. The first sound is no sound. Then it arrives. Lips. Tongue. Vocal cords. Throat. Nose. Tone. Ears. I love to just close my eyes and listen to voice. I love how it wakes me. I love how it shakes me. I love how it expresses darkness and light. The confluence of both. Some voices call us home. Some voices call us to action. Some for us just to stand still. Sound. Echoes. Words mean so much. Yet that tone of flow brings meaning. Thank you for connecting all of these rivers here. Thank you for being a languageer! Keep writing. We need you. 🙏❤️
"...exerting pressure on human inspiration": for sure.
Splendid Hebrew poetry... resonant.
And there is King Solomon's Ring still if we can find it.
We can all hear voices that have not spoken but can still nudge our minds? And I have a story of waking from a dream, a crescendo of Chopin still cascading... too much to say even now.
And it is too long a story, but I made a friend from deafness.
Well, It is 'like' Beethoven, but err... not quite. We have to be grateful for his out of the ordinary gift. As luck would have it I catch brief echoes of him and others. There are also equally astonishing stories of 'vibration' imagining music into existence. We can imagine music made trees.
My story though is really about a friend I made while we stood under some banner or other on the Town Hall steps. Her hearing was a lot worse than mine but she made sense of what I could say of deafness, and somehow we can still make sense a few miles further down the road.
My hearing with ears was still making sense when Chopin came as that gift, and again, later, fortune and serendipity danced the tune, putting as Veronika puts it, 'pressure on imagination'. A poem came while there was still time. Smile.
PS My digital hearing aids are useless for digitised music but I could hear live our young grandson's guitar and enough of his voice last Christmas, and the small birds in their crescendo this Spring. There are voices still to remember. The man sang 'The Seeds of Love' back when.
Words soft enough to be heard, thank you. There are those suffer worse, noise they cannot tune out, or incomprehension, their own or others. Though we are short of remedy, harmony can yet remain a tune for many ills?
Exhale is such a fascinating and beautiful word to me. On the surface, purely as a combination of letters, it seems hard, harsh even. But the very use of voice, the mechanism of mouth and sound transform it into its very action and soften it. Great post, thank you for filling my morning with such beauty.
I absolutely loved this article! Maybe since I'm also a bit of an anatomy geek by profession, but never really gave how your voice is formed much thought - at least since struggling to produce new sounds years ago while living in Asia.
In tonal languages like Thai and Mandarin, the same word can have up to five different meanings depending on the tone of pronunciation (high tone, low tone, mid-tone, rising or falling tone). Adding added layers of complication.
For some reason, I'm curious what your actual voice sounds like because if it's anything like your 'writing voice,' it can only be beautiful.
Thank you Dorette! I imagine it to be terribly difficult to distinguish sounds in tonal languages as a foreign learner.
The funny thing with voice is that you can never really hear your own. Having worked as a simultaneous translator (where conference participants literally have the translator's voice plugged into their ear) I can confirm that several listeners told me they loved hearing my voice, finding it 'soothing'.
Hi Veronika, thank you for the gift of your voice — and all it offers us to ponder and seek. I often wonder about the intent behind words, those vibrations that carry meanings, those thoughts that may remain unspoken yet resonate across seas and worlds, to that which gives them voice. How the sounds of silence can sometimes drive us to nature, to listen for clarity. 🙏 🌊 🌱 💜
yes, so many layers to explore and contemplate, so many nuances to listen into and pick up the vibes, and the unspoken thoughts that give voice to words (as you say)
what a huge responsibility that is for us languagers... 🤍 🙏 ✨
Yes, l remember often saying to kids speaking in class in their first language, “stop talking about what you did on the weekend, and get on with your work”. “how did you know what we’re talking about?”. Tone, l would laugh 🤣. I would allow them to use their first language to discuss work. 😊
I'm enamored by this seemingly backdoor entrance into the connection between inner voice and wilderness. Somewhat related is Blaise Pascal's quote, "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." 🌲🌺🌷
This is indeed a kind of 'emergency exit' ~ a bridge between this week's wordast on Symbiopædia and today's chapter on Synchronosophy (the first in a new series on the inner wilderness)
Thank you Perry, I'm sure you would know!! Sitting in our garden and listening to the uplifting symphonies of birdsong every day, especially at this time of year, I often wonder. I wish I knew more about birdsong to recognise who is singing (at least in term of avian species, beyond the obvious voices of cuckoo, turtle dove and owl). Recognising them by voice and feathered dress (without app) would feel like a way to acknowledge their visit
Veronika, your reflections on voice – its intricacies, its presence in silence and its connection to language and soul – are all so beautifully expressed. There’s such depth in the way you explore its resonance, from birdsong to breath and the wilderness as a space for authentic expression.
And then I got to thinking – ah, voice – this is something I tried to write about years ago. So, gently nudged, I dug through my old notebooks just now, in search of my old creative writing journals. And there it was, written on the last day of term, on the very last page: "What is a voice?" A single question resting on a blank page, discovered twenty five years later.
Well, all these years later, I wonder if voice is not something we find, even our own, but something that finds us – rising from silence, shaped by time, carried by breath, and waiting, always waiting, to be heard. I'll write more about this later as I have the most wonderful experience to share from a few days ago.
Another thing I note, intuit, is that through my Jungian lens there’s such a difference between the voice of ego, persona, shadow, and the Self. I say this because with my poetry books, I look back and recognise which 'voice' was doing the writing for which 'poem'. It's fascinating to witness.
And that’s what brings me to this morning's realisation – to utter but a few words from the Self is the glory I seek in life – for in those sacred moments, voice is no longer mere sound, but the echo of something vast, something timeless, something true. Wow! What a discovery!
A voice immediately recognisable, as I’ve done reading through your incredible post – a voice that speaks not just to the mind, but directly to the soul. Thank you so much for sharing.
"I wonder if voice is not something we find, even our own, but something that finds us – rising from silence, shaped by time, carried by breath, and waiting, always waiting, to be heard."
... a wonderful answer you have found, or that has found you, or you have met somewhere along the path (I always envision these Q&As as meandering towards each other along the journey, having some innate magnetic attraction towards one another)
"voice of ego, persona, shadow, and the Self."
yes, if 'voice' means 'speech' (= form of expression/ communication), they would each have their own. Of course.
So many impressions forming a singular expression! I appreciate you expanding on these impressions “compression, depression, oppression, repression and suppression” and how they shape a soul “long before the mind develops the corresponding skills.” Makes me think of stone and how wind and sand and time and creature leave similar impressions on mineral, giving voice to the geology of this planet.
Speaking of voice, I’m reading a beautiful novel right now, Once Were Wolves by Charlotte McConoughy. Voices of wolves, voices of resistance, twin sisters, one speaking for the wild, the other not speaking at all bc of trauma… it’s quite incredible. I finished a chapter last night and thought, I must recommend this to Veronika!
Thank you for taking us on an amazing linguistic anatomy of voice and silence, Veronika. Such a complex process, and yet it is mastered by healthy newborns with that first breath, the initiatory cry into life. And with that cry, the accumulation of 9 months of impressions, or perhaps even longer, who knows for sure, into expression.
And yet, it feels so inadequate as we attempt throughout life to reach into the voices and silences of others. Our words may not be received as we intend them. Our silences not at all. Intent, hard to fathom.
Our words but a feeble intent to compress meaning and emotion and experience into something more universal. As humans, we are meant to also take into account facial and vocal expression, hands and bodies, motion or stillness to further amplify meaning.
And as writers, we do this hesitantly, without all the tools that turn words into language, language into meaning, meaning into action or reaction, and all that into connection (or disconnection). We find our voices, but how do others receive them, if at all. And conveying silence in words--it gets back to that "sound of a slender silence" - which is to say, soundless wonder.
wonderful reflection, Robin, thank you. A complex process which starts with the voice, the healthy newborn infant's first breath and cry, and the complexity increases through entanglements with languaging, wording, tones of voice.... and meaning!
So much to wonder and ponder to the sound of slender silence 🤍 🙏 ✨
Veronika, superb essay again. So much to unpack that resonantes. 💚 And thank you for the mention. It interweaves really well with what you craft as the wordsmith that you are. Because words the voice are so powerful, I'm currently looking at some way that we 'Voice the Future' into existence. Like all things, it's unfolding slowly.
Thank you, Vincent! In my writing I have developed the habit to tune into the topic to 'let it write itself', and in the comments I stay in the 'groove' 🙏 😉
Thank you for this thoughtful interrogation into languaging and silences, Veronika, and for taking up the multiple meanings of Midbar in Hebrew. The versatility of that language, especially in ancient texts, where we can create, expand and recreate meaning through a few root letters is fascinating to me. It is why Torah scholars might spend a lifetime arguing with one another about a particular word in, say, Genesis, that completely changes the meaning of the text (or God's word--as the literalists think of it).
To give one example: years ago, my husband and I were studying together with an Orthodox rabbi (I adhere to the Reform movement--a more progressive branch) who contended that "In the beginning," God is looking to create a relationship with Man.
God's commandment to Man to partake of everything in the garden…AND NOT from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil…which commandment is customarily translated as there are good fruits and plants – take as you will, BUT DO NOT eat from that tree.
The word “BUT” negates the entire commandment – that you should take from everything I have given you, for I have created these things to meet your every need and pleasure and created within you the capacity to enjoy and satiate your SELF to your heart’s desire. The word AND connects those thoughts. Left unspoken is the idea that even the thought of taking from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil introduces cynicism and doubt, and takes away the innocence of the pleasures God has created.
God was creating a connection with his creation, the offering of everything God had provided to satisfy man – had thought through the relationship so that God offered complete sustenance, all that mankind could ever need in the garden AND even one thing Man did not need – cynicism. After taking the one thing that Man did not need, even as God warned him not to, Man could no longer see that it was all good, but could suddenly see that God was trying to hold Man in check by denying him that one thing.
The garden could no longer exist; the need could no longer be satisfied if Man thought God was trying to deny him. Thus, according to our teacher, was born the doubt and mistrust that have plagued Mankind ever since.
We learned that changing the meaning of one word in the context of the Torah can change our whole perception of our relationship with God.
--
Just glancing at your new post brought this story to mind--as a fellow languager, I thought you might find it revealing.
Saving a deeper read of this post for a moment when I can really read into the rich silences you are creating through language, and savor it word-by-word! ;)
Absolutely! The interpretation of the whole story around the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (which of course is familiar from the Old Testament too) has fascinated me ever since I started writing (wrestling with words?) ... indeed, changing the meaning of one word can make a profound difference, triggering a seismic shift in perception ~ especially in this creation story, where 'the word' carries so much meaning.
And yes, the structure of semitic languages with their 3-letter-root words have long held their fascination for me too.
Ah Veronika. Voice. What a beautiful article. You give voice to language. Words speak through you. Words speak to you. The first sound is no sound. Then it arrives. Lips. Tongue. Vocal cords. Throat. Nose. Tone. Ears. I love to just close my eyes and listen to voice. I love how it wakes me. I love how it shakes me. I love how it expresses darkness and light. The confluence of both. Some voices call us home. Some voices call us to action. Some for us just to stand still. Sound. Echoes. Words mean so much. Yet that tone of flow brings meaning. Thank you for connecting all of these rivers here. Thank you for being a languageer! Keep writing. We need you. 🙏❤️
Thank you Jamie 🙏❤️
You're right. I think words do speak to me... (to you too btw)
Languageer ~ another great word. Much better than 'wordsmith'...
Languageers! I salute you!
( Excellent. And I found lemon & ginger for the morning a little while ago without prompting.) PS PC lost my little icons so I must use words.
💚 🙏
"...exerting pressure on human inspiration": for sure.
Splendid Hebrew poetry... resonant.
And there is King Solomon's Ring still if we can find it.
We can all hear voices that have not spoken but can still nudge our minds? And I have a story of waking from a dream, a crescendo of Chopin still cascading... too much to say even now.
And it is too long a story, but I made a friend from deafness.
Will you tell story
of making friends with deafness
as did Beethoven?
Well, It is 'like' Beethoven, but err... not quite. We have to be grateful for his out of the ordinary gift. As luck would have it I catch brief echoes of him and others. There are also equally astonishing stories of 'vibration' imagining music into existence. We can imagine music made trees.
My story though is really about a friend I made while we stood under some banner or other on the Town Hall steps. Her hearing was a lot worse than mine but she made sense of what I could say of deafness, and somehow we can still make sense a few miles further down the road.
My hearing with ears was still making sense when Chopin came as that gift, and again, later, fortune and serendipity danced the tune, putting as Veronika puts it, 'pressure on imagination'. A poem came while there was still time. Smile.
PS My digital hearing aids are useless for digitised music but I could hear live our young grandson's guitar and enough of his voice last Christmas, and the small birds in their crescendo this Spring. There are voices still to remember. The man sang 'The Seeds of Love' back when.
While soft-of-hearing
does sound challenging enough,
worse if were tone-deaf?
Words soft enough to be heard, thank you. There are those suffer worse, noise they cannot tune out, or incomprehension, their own or others. Though we are short of remedy, harmony can yet remain a tune for many ills?
well spoken 🎶 ♪ ♬ vibrating into attunement 🤍 🙏 ✨
thanks so much for sharing 💗 🙏 ✨
Exhale is such a fascinating and beautiful word to me. On the surface, purely as a combination of letters, it seems hard, harsh even. But the very use of voice, the mechanism of mouth and sound transform it into its very action and soften it. Great post, thank you for filling my morning with such beauty.
Thank you so much Tim for such beautiful feedback 💗 🙏 ✨
I absolutely loved this article! Maybe since I'm also a bit of an anatomy geek by profession, but never really gave how your voice is formed much thought - at least since struggling to produce new sounds years ago while living in Asia.
In tonal languages like Thai and Mandarin, the same word can have up to five different meanings depending on the tone of pronunciation (high tone, low tone, mid-tone, rising or falling tone). Adding added layers of complication.
For some reason, I'm curious what your actual voice sounds like because if it's anything like your 'writing voice,' it can only be beautiful.
Thank you Dorette! I imagine it to be terribly difficult to distinguish sounds in tonal languages as a foreign learner.
The funny thing with voice is that you can never really hear your own. Having worked as a simultaneous translator (where conference participants literally have the translator's voice plugged into their ear) I can confirm that several listeners told me they loved hearing my voice, finding it 'soothing'.
Beautiful indeed!
Heard her in recorded post.
Veronica's voice.
Hi Veronika, thank you for the gift of your voice — and all it offers us to ponder and seek. I often wonder about the intent behind words, those vibrations that carry meanings, those thoughts that may remain unspoken yet resonate across seas and worlds, to that which gives them voice. How the sounds of silence can sometimes drive us to nature, to listen for clarity. 🙏 🌊 🌱 💜
yes, so many layers to explore and contemplate, so many nuances to listen into and pick up the vibes, and the unspoken thoughts that give voice to words (as you say)
what a huge responsibility that is for us languagers... 🤍 🙏 ✨
Yes, l remember often saying to kids speaking in class in their first language, “stop talking about what you did on the weekend, and get on with your work”. “how did you know what we’re talking about?”. Tone, l would laugh 🤣. I would allow them to use their first language to discuss work. 😊
I'm enamored by this seemingly backdoor entrance into the connection between inner voice and wilderness. Somewhat related is Blaise Pascal's quote, "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." 🌲🌺🌷
Oh, thank you Lani, for this great quote! 🙏
You spotted the backdoor entrance correctly 😅💛...
This is indeed a kind of 'emergency exit' ~ a bridge between this week's wordast on Symbiopædia and today's chapter on Synchronosophy (the first in a new series on the inner wilderness)
Whew! 😅 I passed the test! 😂
Your writing is like birdsong itself, so beautiful. I’m truly honored to be included in such a thoughtful piece. Thank you. 🕊️
You are most welcome, Debra. Thank you for your work and such a sweet comment 🪶 🙏🤍
Peruse, ponder on,
linguist schools us on speech, voice.
Put in true practice~
...
Attending to tone,
attuning our ear, heart, voice.
Makes a shared language.
...
Speak our minds, our truths,
speak our conscience’s, soul’s voice.
Silence, speech, writing.
attending to attunement indeed 💚 🙏
Our voice; our breath; our being. Yes, birds can and do recognize the sounds of other birds. The vocalizations are distinct.
Thank you Perry, I'm sure you would know!! Sitting in our garden and listening to the uplifting symphonies of birdsong every day, especially at this time of year, I often wonder. I wish I knew more about birdsong to recognise who is singing (at least in term of avian species, beyond the obvious voices of cuckoo, turtle dove and owl). Recognising them by voice and feathered dress (without app) would feel like a way to acknowledge their visit
Veronika, your reflections on voice – its intricacies, its presence in silence and its connection to language and soul – are all so beautifully expressed. There’s such depth in the way you explore its resonance, from birdsong to breath and the wilderness as a space for authentic expression.
And then I got to thinking – ah, voice – this is something I tried to write about years ago. So, gently nudged, I dug through my old notebooks just now, in search of my old creative writing journals. And there it was, written on the last day of term, on the very last page: "What is a voice?" A single question resting on a blank page, discovered twenty five years later.
Well, all these years later, I wonder if voice is not something we find, even our own, but something that finds us – rising from silence, shaped by time, carried by breath, and waiting, always waiting, to be heard. I'll write more about this later as I have the most wonderful experience to share from a few days ago.
Another thing I note, intuit, is that through my Jungian lens there’s such a difference between the voice of ego, persona, shadow, and the Self. I say this because with my poetry books, I look back and recognise which 'voice' was doing the writing for which 'poem'. It's fascinating to witness.
And that’s what brings me to this morning's realisation – to utter but a few words from the Self is the glory I seek in life – for in those sacred moments, voice is no longer mere sound, but the echo of something vast, something timeless, something true. Wow! What a discovery!
A voice immediately recognisable, as I’ve done reading through your incredible post – a voice that speaks not just to the mind, but directly to the soul. Thank you so much for sharing.
"What is a voice?"
precious question you've been living into, and...
"I wonder if voice is not something we find, even our own, but something that finds us – rising from silence, shaped by time, carried by breath, and waiting, always waiting, to be heard."
... a wonderful answer you have found, or that has found you, or you have met somewhere along the path (I always envision these Q&As as meandering towards each other along the journey, having some innate magnetic attraction towards one another)
"voice of ego, persona, shadow, and the Self."
yes, if 'voice' means 'speech' (= form of expression/ communication), they would each have their own. Of course.
xx
So many impressions forming a singular expression! I appreciate you expanding on these impressions “compression, depression, oppression, repression and suppression” and how they shape a soul “long before the mind develops the corresponding skills.” Makes me think of stone and how wind and sand and time and creature leave similar impressions on mineral, giving voice to the geology of this planet.
Wow:: giving voice to the geology of this planet! You've just taken 'voice' to a whole new level 🤍 🙏 ✨
Speaking of voice, I’m reading a beautiful novel right now, Once Were Wolves by Charlotte McConoughy. Voices of wolves, voices of resistance, twin sisters, one speaking for the wild, the other not speaking at all bc of trauma… it’s quite incredible. I finished a chapter last night and thought, I must recommend this to Veronika!
Wow, it does sound incredible, and like the kind of book I need to read! Thank you so much for thinking of me 💕🙏 ✨
Thank you for taking us on an amazing linguistic anatomy of voice and silence, Veronika. Such a complex process, and yet it is mastered by healthy newborns with that first breath, the initiatory cry into life. And with that cry, the accumulation of 9 months of impressions, or perhaps even longer, who knows for sure, into expression.
And yet, it feels so inadequate as we attempt throughout life to reach into the voices and silences of others. Our words may not be received as we intend them. Our silences not at all. Intent, hard to fathom.
Our words but a feeble intent to compress meaning and emotion and experience into something more universal. As humans, we are meant to also take into account facial and vocal expression, hands and bodies, motion or stillness to further amplify meaning.
And as writers, we do this hesitantly, without all the tools that turn words into language, language into meaning, meaning into action or reaction, and all that into connection (or disconnection). We find our voices, but how do others receive them, if at all. And conveying silence in words--it gets back to that "sound of a slender silence" - which is to say, soundless wonder.
wonderful reflection, Robin, thank you. A complex process which starts with the voice, the healthy newborn infant's first breath and cry, and the complexity increases through entanglements with languaging, wording, tones of voice.... and meaning!
So much to wonder and ponder to the sound of slender silence 🤍 🙏 ✨
Veronika, superb essay again. So much to unpack that resonantes. 💚 And thank you for the mention. It interweaves really well with what you craft as the wordsmith that you are. Because words the voice are so powerful, I'm currently looking at some way that we 'Voice the Future' into existence. Like all things, it's unfolding slowly.
Thank you Vincent, again, for your resonance and words, echoing through your languager's voice back to mine 🤍 🙏 ✨
I look forward to the unfoldings of voicing the future.
Veronika, you write your reply comments as exquisitely as you do your essays. 🌞💚
Thank you, Vincent! In my writing I have developed the habit to tune into the topic to 'let it write itself', and in the comments I stay in the 'groove' 🙏 😉
Go you! 🎯
The sounds of silence: stunning essay!
Thank you so much, Mary 🤍 🙏 ✨
Thank you for this thoughtful interrogation into languaging and silences, Veronika, and for taking up the multiple meanings of Midbar in Hebrew. The versatility of that language, especially in ancient texts, where we can create, expand and recreate meaning through a few root letters is fascinating to me. It is why Torah scholars might spend a lifetime arguing with one another about a particular word in, say, Genesis, that completely changes the meaning of the text (or God's word--as the literalists think of it).
To give one example: years ago, my husband and I were studying together with an Orthodox rabbi (I adhere to the Reform movement--a more progressive branch) who contended that "In the beginning," God is looking to create a relationship with Man.
God's commandment to Man to partake of everything in the garden…AND NOT from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil…which commandment is customarily translated as there are good fruits and plants – take as you will, BUT DO NOT eat from that tree.
The word “BUT” negates the entire commandment – that you should take from everything I have given you, for I have created these things to meet your every need and pleasure and created within you the capacity to enjoy and satiate your SELF to your heart’s desire. The word AND connects those thoughts. Left unspoken is the idea that even the thought of taking from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil introduces cynicism and doubt, and takes away the innocence of the pleasures God has created.
God was creating a connection with his creation, the offering of everything God had provided to satisfy man – had thought through the relationship so that God offered complete sustenance, all that mankind could ever need in the garden AND even one thing Man did not need – cynicism. After taking the one thing that Man did not need, even as God warned him not to, Man could no longer see that it was all good, but could suddenly see that God was trying to hold Man in check by denying him that one thing.
The garden could no longer exist; the need could no longer be satisfied if Man thought God was trying to deny him. Thus, according to our teacher, was born the doubt and mistrust that have plagued Mankind ever since.
We learned that changing the meaning of one word in the context of the Torah can change our whole perception of our relationship with God.
--
Just glancing at your new post brought this story to mind--as a fellow languager, I thought you might find it revealing.
Saving a deeper read of this post for a moment when I can really read into the rich silences you are creating through language, and savor it word-by-word! ;)
Absolutely! The interpretation of the whole story around the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (which of course is familiar from the Old Testament too) has fascinated me ever since I started writing (wrestling with words?) ... indeed, changing the meaning of one word can make a profound difference, triggering a seismic shift in perception ~ especially in this creation story, where 'the word' carries so much meaning.
And yes, the structure of semitic languages with their 3-letter-root words have long held their fascination for me too.