I can't sing

Those of you who have known me forever may think it is not news that I can't sing, but I'm not talking about singing on key, I'm talking about singing at all. I went to a funeral yesterday and tried to sing a couple of notes of Amazing Grace, and I simply could not do it. This inability shocks me; sounding funky is one thing, but losing a function is something else.

I have started talking a bit, and my voice sounds better to my ear, though the tests at the speech therapist's office today tell a somewhat different story. I have more vocal strength, but the distortions in my speech pattern are still pronounced, and in a couple of respects are worse than three weeks ago. Mostly I found today's visit encouraging, but it is clear keeping my vocalizations to a minimum needs to continue for awhile longer.

On the outside

I went to a meeting yesterday of Chairs, Directors, Advisors, Associate Deans. I sat in the front row so I could use the white board on my iPad to ask a question if I needed. A few cracks about being "one of those first row types" started the session. These remarks were jovial, nothing unkind intended at all, but they reinforced the oddity of my position.

As I listened to my colleagues chat and greet each other before the session began, I was reminded again of how much of this particular job is about just showing up and making conversation. But it was during the question and answer portion of the meeting that my silent position really became pointed.

My friend Julie, who is going through her own challenges with her vocal cords this summer, remarked that silence puts you on the outside, and as an outsider you have some clarity on what is going on inside. She said it more eloquently, but that is the gist of it.

Academics are a pretty irritating lot, really, when you are looking at them from that perspective. Folks asking questions that weren't questions at all, but challenges in the form of "I'm smarter than you" assertions, the tendency to be immediately negative or critical...things I know all too well from my normal behavior. And I felt my own urge to be a voice in the room, to make myself and my brilliance known. When you are silent in an academic world, you are dismissible.

Venturing out

I ventured out into the world today. I had to get some glasses repaired and order a spare pair. With the aid of a whiteboard application on the iPad, it worked out pretty well. People are generally quite satisfied with a broad smile and a thumbs up sign in lieu of verbal communication.

The day is like wide water, without sound

I have always loved Wallace Stevens' "Sunday Morning" in many moods. This line is apt for my current week of silence, though, in the poem, I think sound has a doubled meaning.

I am in my third day of this vocal rest, having blown the first day at 3 am when I woke up and told Callie she was a good dog. Oops. She has adjusted well to my silence, coming when I clap, and responding immediately to hand signals. Smart, smart dog. She and my cats have been my only companions these last three days. I had not expected how isolating this experience would be. I took Callie for a walk, and a man stopped his car to remark how pretty she was and ask her breed; of course, I couldn't answer him. It was both awkward and dispiriting to be unable to enjoy this simple interaction.

I am not depressed, oddly, but being alone and being quiet look an awful lot like depression, and I am conscious of keeping that at bay. I am learning a tarantella on the guitar, and such liveliness doesn't jibe well with melancholy. There is also a John Wayne marathon on TV all weekend, so I can happily indulge my guilty pleasure in Wayne films (I hadn't seen Wings of Eagles in years, and they are showing Horse Soldiers, which I have never seen in its entirety). Since I am loath to go to a restaurant and not be able to order my food without writing, I am cooking and eating well. A very cocoon-like existence; not depressing, but I do feel cut off from the rest of the world.

Vocal rest

I wanted to get back to my theater stories, but this voice issue is pushing all other thoughts to the side.

I now am to go on total vocal rest for a week. I'll start Friday.

I'm trying to look at this as a game, a challenge, the way Pam Schriefer and I used to set up challenges for each other when we were teens and wanted to be like Kwai Chang Caine. For a week I will not speak. I will not use the phone, I will not sing with my guitar. I am even specifically enjoined from laughing.

Someone said to me today that the news from the ENT was good. What??! When I pointed out that this could mean a permanent change in my voice, he responded, "at least you don't have cancer." True. And my house didn't burn down last night, and I didn't lose both legs in a war. But even the temporary loss of one's voice is not trivial, and a possible permanent change--even a modest one--is quite a blow to one's identity and to a livelihood that depends upon public speaking.

Even without the bigger issues, everyday life is more complicated. Ordering lunch today at Noodles was difficult. The person behind the cash register couldn't hear me, and I couldn't talk more loudly. Last night I had to order something over the phone, and it took three tries before the person on the other end of the line could understand the numbers I was saying. I can't call Callie to get in her kennel when I leave the house. I can't sing.

I can't sing. And yes, I'm not Julie Andrews. The loss of my voice is not a loss to the world, but to sing in the car, to sing with my guitar, to sing to my new nephews and niece....this is not trivial.

Damage to the Voice

In early May I started coughing. This wasn't my usual, asthmatic bronchial spasming kind of cough. It was just as intense and out of control, but it didn't seem to be coming from my chest, and I had no shortness of breath. It was bad. Embarrassing bad. It kept me awake, it kept others awake, it kept me in my hotel room a couple of afternoons in NY napping so I could make it through the evening's performances without getting myself thrown out of the theatre (with the aid of constant cough drops and bottles of water, I did okay from start to intermission, then from intermission to end).

Antibiotics, steroids, multiple doctor visits, and five weeks later I was still coughing, but I woke up with a new symptom--no voice.

Three weeks later still, and I am hoarse, and the otolaryngologist tells me I have a nodule on my right vocal fold, caused by the coughing (though I have some suspicion that the forming nodule may have caused the cough, and the two kept working on each other sans proper diagnosis for a few weeks, but that's another matter). He also tells me my voice may be permanently impaired.

My voice may be permanently impaired.

Let's set aside the importance of speaking to little things I do to earn a living--like teaching lecture classes--and get to the heart of this problem: I love the human voice, and I rather like mine.

The actors I admire the most are the ones especially gifted/skilled vocally. I think nothing is more glorious than a song sung in a strong and sweet voice. Nothing. The joy that is the American Musical is predicated on the illusion that we, too, could burst into beautiful song at any moment while we are sweeping the floor or walking in the rain. The young actors I see at school have much to learn, but nothing eludes most of them more than understanding the power of the human voice and how to use it.

A few months ago, some strangers told me after hearing me speak in public that I should do voice over work professionally. I have been thinking about that, and had recently made a call to a friend who is a pro to ask how I might go about pursuing such work. Folks who have known me longer have long encouraged me to get into radio, and I have dabbled a bit there. The voice. My voice. A good voice.

I said I was going to get to the heart of this, but I'm dancing around it. I want my voice back. I was angry to hear the Dr. say "you damaged your voice with all of that coughing," then tell me to sip water instead of coughing. As if I had taken a knife to my vocal cords, as if I had acted stupidly by getting sick.

It never occurred to me that this voice of mine could be so fragile.

Why am I gripped by NY Theatre? pt 1

It started with a trip in the late 90s with a group from school, led by my mentor (and then-Dean) Al Goldfarb. Al picked the shows and some of the restaurants, told me how to navigate the subway, and generally made the city manageable. Two of the shows were standouts: Sideman, which won the Tony that year and starred (then-not-so-well-known) Edie Falco, and Wit with Kathleen Chalfant.

For Wit, I sat front row center, and Chalfant used me as one of her visual touch points in her performance. My mom had died just exactly one year earlier, and the show just wrecked me. Sobbing, I was, by the end. There is one scene where she is remembering being a young girl sitting on the floor next to her father's chair, reading. I flashed back to many evenings with Mom in the kitchen preparing dinner, Dad in his work clothes reading the paper in the living room, and me on the floor near him with some part of the paper spread out before me spelling out the words I did not know to them. I remember with great specificity doing that on the day Judy Garland died, spelling out words like n-a-r-c-o-t-i-c-s to my mother, as tears fell on the South Bend Tribune.

But the real hook, the game changer for Shari and NY theatre was 2003's Long Day's Journey into Night, with Brian Dennehy, Robert Sean Leonard, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and above and around and over everything, Vanessa Redgrave. I'll go on about Redgrave in another post. I found then the possibility of seeing her in the flesh in such good company sufficient reason to ask my friend Cindy from New Haven if she wanted to go with me to see the show and spend a night in NYC. We couldn't get tickets together, so she sat in the last row in the Orchestra house right, and I sat one row in front of her. Crap seats. But when Vanessa Redgrave walked on stage, her blue eyes shone to the back of the theatre. Seeing her and Dennehy work together was thrilling. This play, which I never much liked, lasted about 15 hours, but the time flew past--normally a fidgeter, I don't think I moved a muscle during the first act.

Cindy and I were giddy after the performance, and I knew NYC theatre and I were not done with each other.