Finding Your Voice
Did you try looking in the last place you left it?
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Poconos Underground Comedy 1 Year Anniversary Sat 2/15 | Tix
Comedy and Coffee Show 3/1 | Tix
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"The human voice is the most beautiful instrument of all, but the most difficult to play. The sweetest music is not in the oratorio, but in the human voice when it speaks from its instant life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I hate my voice!” My eight year old lamented on the verge of tears. “I sound so stupid!”
I froze in a moment of undeniable recognition—I remembered exactly what he was going through.
In an instant, I was back on the stage at The Boston Comedy Club on W. 3rd St. in the West Village, recording a set that I’d later listen to, feeling dismay over the sound of my own voice.
I thought I sounded too deep for a girl, and kind of clumsy, as if I wasn’t sure what to do with my tongue. The slightest lisp played just behind my teeth, and I was sure everyone one in the audience heard and catalogued my every single flaw.
I contemplated quitting comedy, and instead doing something that would guarantee a paycheck that would not rely on me depending on the wretched-sounding words spewing from my obviously broken voice box.
How are our voices developed? Over the months and years and decades that become our lives, things as seemingly as unimportant as colds, and screaming, and genetics all shape our personal sound. The wood a luthier selects to carve into a guitar wholly impacts the tone that will ring out from its strings, and humans aren’t much different. Our voices come down to and reflect what we are made of. (How’s that for an argument for comedians to eat right, not smoke and sleep more?!)
Years later, countless shows and paid gigs, a healthy bag of radio and TV spots, and a handful of recorded albums later, I had all but forgotten about how I once hated the sound of my own voice, until my son’s lament brought it all back to me.
I’ve made peace with how I sound, and have even come to love the sound of my own voice (what speaker doesn’t?!). It’s been a highly useful tool in my life that has alloted me everything I have and am, from my home, to my family, to my memories and travels and achievements and strike outs.
But my son’s vocal journey is just beginning.
If you’re a comedian, you surely record your sets and listen back to them. That’s comedy 101.
And unless you started comedy this week, you’ve been through the self-doubt period about your own voice (unless you’re some kind of Ruby-throated songbird). This story might even ring true to you, too.
How did you make it past disliking the sound of your voice? Were you perplexed the first few times you heard your recorded self? Did you consider other jobs that required no speaking? Tell me all about it.
DMX probably has zero issues with his voice these days | Instagram
Max Headroom monologue written by Larry David | Instagram
David Lynch makes writing a screenplay seem pretty easy, actually | Instagram
Bye bye, friend. We’ll see you again next time.
