Speaking: of knowing my voice

Welcome to the first Know Your Voice blog post! In this piece, I share my reflection on getting to know my own speaking voice. Many of us speak or communicate through verbal sounds, and here’s a glimpse into my personal journey (: I originally posted this on Notion.

Beginnings

It was hard for me to speak without stuttering for a long time. I often stumbled over words, fluffing it to make it sound like what I heard from others or saw on the screen or paper before me. I don’t know if people noticed, but I thought they did and would be kind and not point it out. I felt like I didn’t know how to speak and it was terrifying when I was in school and the teacher would ask us to stand, to read a passage. It made me so nervous when it was nearing my turn, and I would revise the passage over and over, trying it out silently, mouth and tongue and jaw moving, eyes staring intently and intensely. It’s my turn. I stand up, and read. What is that word? What does it even mean? What did I just say. Move on. The next sentence. Thank you, next is index number 23.

Then came oral tests. An unseen passage, with only a minute or two to try it out. My mouth and tongue and jaw again felt uncoordinated, betraying my thoughts and intention. Move dammit. Searching for the words, the precision, the movement. I wish there were an easier way to read aloud. Why could others do it so easily?

I started choir. Singing, and doing languages I don’t speak nor could I read much. People around to shield my slip ups. A relief. Precision is still important but I could lean into the cushioning of other clearer speakers. Being around others who spoke eloquently helped me to learn the accents, melody, the cadences. I wished I could be like the older girls, leading the choir with confidence.

I started voice lessons. But the more I went, the heavier my voice felt.

You’re a singer, why aren’t you able to articulate well?

…I don’t know. If I don’t know how to learn, and I don’t know how to ask what I don’t know, how could I do it differently? Why aren’t you the teacher teaching me these?, I wonder. Maybe being coordinated is for the people who are born into families or environments of well-speaking adults. Or for people who were gifted with language skills. Maybe I wasn’t one of them.

A shift

I transferred into a specialised arts school. A voice student, I am. Well, supposed to be. I struggled still to utter my thoughts. These kids around me sound like they’ve been doing presentations and discussions for ages. How do I speak up and ask questions about the content if I’m so afraid of stumbling and fumbling, and that the teacher would not understand me? My mouth and tongue and jaw freeze up, get heavy, stiff, taut, fat, languid. Sometimes they move too fast, quicker than my brain can catch. I still wonder if people notice. And if they do, will they want to understand me? Or help me.

We have to do in-class presentations about ethics. And about literature. And about fallacies. Practice makes…better? Perfect? Well I’m practising and it’s not working. What am I doing wrongly? I hear that the sounds are wrong, not quite what others do, but I’m not sure what. The shape, the colour, the pitch, the crispness. I hear all of it, and I know how it could sound. But I’m not finding it in my mouth tongue jaw. I learn about the soft palate as a singer but how the hell does that work in speaking? I wish I could just sing and speak with tones and colours and images. That people would understand. That there was not an even-tempered diction to lean into, that would make me a good speaker or an excellent one. Just me, speaking.

Where does understanding grow?

There are more presentations. No more oral tests, but we’re told that for graduation we would need to do an unseen analysis of some text. Bringing words up left and right. And then pairing that with my boisterous vocal anatomy. I do well in writing and I’m surprised. I don’t really know what I’m doing. Winging it over and over. I present about the presence of first-person pronouns, and the vertiginous effect of vacillating narrative perspectives. Not to different from my life. I tried my hardest to read from the brief script I wrote.

It’s the second-person pronoun, you, your, yours—

—my teacher says. I’m afraid.

But, I listen and she’s encouraging and patiently walks me through all my stumbles.

For once I felt like I was supported.

Guided.

Each correction a gentle nudge towards showing that

it’s not that I didn’t know,

I just needed to match it to the right words and the right manifestation of it

Maybe I could get good at this. It was the first presentation where someone told me I had great ideas, and I knew what I could do to improve.

Specifically.

Somehow she understood me. My peers didn’t understand the topic, and said it was complex. Maybe I just needed to find the right people who would understand, who could guide me and teach me. Rather than try hard only by myself.

I grow. Another teacher in anthropology class tells me to rephrase my idea in another way. Chapter 14.

What does sign language enable the deaf Japanese women of the late 1900s to do?

Yes it gives them communication.

And what does communication give them?

I think.

I find the words.

I shape my mouth tongue jaw and utter—

connection.

Belonging.

Understanding.

Yes yes yes. I found it.

I continue growing. Confidence in finding words. Having time to make mistakes. I learn that my jaw can move in different ways. I’m 18 by now, and somehow I’m winging presentations even though I still feel stuck.

Learning to learn

I get into music conservatory. There are diction classes. And holy shit our professor teachers us how to move our mouth tongue jaw to make shapes around the syllables that become words and sentences and understanding and song. We repeat exercises.

Change this. Do it in contrast.

Italian, German, French.

Then we circle back to English.

It’s my home language but it might as well have been a foreign one. In half a year I learn to use my mouth tongue jaw and more. With the tools I figure out how to match what I’ve heard and known all along to actual physical, audible changes. Changes that stay. I practise and it changes further. I change.

People say I have an accent. What accent? My primary school classmate meets me in the university residential college—she couldn’t recognise me, my voice and speech is so different, she says. I’m pleased and I glow. That’s the plan, that I can shape how I sound, so that I enjoy the sounds that come out of my mouth tongue jaw. My being. Clarity and resonance. My voice is less tired, I enjoy speaking more.

A voice workshop at a local arts space. A wonderful speech language pathologist who would in the years to come become a co-artist, collaborator, mentor, and friend. He shares about the source-power-filter model. The tripod. We do voice exercises, and I learn to take care of my voice. I gather my courage to talk to him, and learn so many things. Books to read. Things to try. A person to become. We keep in touch.

My friend invites me to co-start a students’ initiative committee. We would lead meetings and speak with students and present ideas to the school board. To bring change. I am empowered, with the clarity of speech aligning with my thoughts. I do what I believe in with conviction and less barriers. We created spaces for students to speak up, give suggestions, funnel it to the management. We co-created parties and events, and our school changes. I learn to change.

Trying to try

Sitting with teh bing and a trusted friend, looking out over the green field (a human-planted one, but a field nonetheless). I’m inspired to start my own voice workshop space for people to learn about their voices and to sing and speak with confidence. For fun, in a safe and supportive space. But I’m so new and still learning, maybe when I graduate it’ll happen. Why not just do it now?, he asks. But I’m only in my 2nd year of university and I’ve barely figured out how to use my own voice.

“When will you be ready?”

I’m stumped. I…have to learn more. What do I have to learn? Learning never ends, and I love learning so would I never feel complete to start? I tell him I’m not sure.

So why not start now? He encourages me to try and that it’s okay to take time to build and figure out. I don’t have to know it all now. I can give what I know for sure, and admit what I don’t.

I’m not ready.

More than 30 people show up for the workshop.

Getting to Know Your Voice: how to project and protect your voice

They ask questions, I ask questions, I share what I know. They understand and are empowered. I learn and I grow some more. The first of many workshops and Know Your Voice events to come.

Embracing change

I meet people of different backgrounds, I perform, and I present. I give talks. I lead and participate in many, many discussions. I take up classes to get better at writing, thinking, sharing ideas. It’s utterly stressful, painful, tiring. So much to figure out.

I ask so many questions, and the professors answer. I could have gotten lower grades and I’d still have felt like I’m walking the path towards being me.

One of the first seasons in my life, where it felt like what was on paper matched how I saw myself, how I felt, and how people could perceive me. I want to be perceived and heard more than ever now.

My voice changes. How I speak changes. Where are you from? I’m asked on taxis in Singapore. I loved Melbourne and my voice carried echoes from the conversations and relationships I had with people from there. A Youtuber’s sassiness latches onto the tail end of my sentences. The confidence and steadfast pace of my good friend, the same one who invited me to start a committee, becomes part of my inner rhythm. Code switching is easier now. And each time I feel lost, I come back to the basics:

mouth, tongue, jaw, breath.

Pauses.

I record myself, look at myself in the mirror.

Slow

down.

There is always more to learn. I seek new teachers and mentors. Perform and record. Go for workshops and trainings and certification programmes. Keep practising what I know, refining. Trying things out with students and clients. Reframe and relearn. Dare to change.

A circle and then more

It’s 2020, COVID times (are we out of it yet?)—I give my first ever livestreamed voice workshop. Know Your Voice has grown a lot since then. I’m still not ready, but I’m ready to learn and try. I’m at the same arts organisation as where I’d first met my friend who gave the workshop that inspired me and changed my perspectives on voice work.

The workshop is delayed, and I’m doing push-ups and lip trills and tongue stretches. We are rolling in 60 seconds. 60 minutes later, we have a recorded workshop.

People thank me and tell me they discovered how to love their voice and bodies more. That they were touched and inspired by the session. I’m touched. A circle and then more.

It’s 2021. My friend (who gave the workshop that inspired me) and I are brought together by another mutual friend. We’ve kept in touch til now. We once were a fox and a cat for a Pinnochio-inspired puppet show. Now, 8 years since our first meeting, we record a 10-minute video on warming up and caring for your voice.

They ask us to also give a workshop that’s related to vocal health. I’m worried and scared, for I feel lesser and inexperienced compared to him.

We talk about it in detail, and he encourages me to speak from my perspective as a performer and teacher. We each do what we’re good at. A collaboration, and a learning experience.

2022—I move to New York. Learning about our human bodymind and movement potentialities through the Alexander Technique. There is so much more to learn and grow into. Where does my voice fit in this new landscape? There is plenty of space for differences. People understand, and take time to understand. I pick up a few lilts from the Heights, some from my friends, some from my own fancies. So many possibilities.

Where do I go from here?

I’m back in Singapore now. It’s 25th July 2024. Back where I grew up, my voice and speech and accent changed, but some parts not. I sometimes still struggle to speak with clarity and fluency, especially when I’m tired. Or sometimes when I’ve been around different types of accents and my code switching brain is confused, taking time to update and recalibrate.

What is my voice? Beyond singing and speaking? Who is this I?

I’ve been figuring out for a long time and am still figuring out. And I’m glad that now I have people and the tools to help myself. With all my experiences, experiments, failures and struggles, there is much I know. That I hope to share with you in the days ahead through one-on-one sessions, workshops, walkthroughs, videos in the Know Your Voice space (@knowyourvoice.space on IG; www.knowyourvoice.space from August 2024 onwards).

I wrote this piece because a good friend, also a beloved voice mentor of mine, shared a journal entry by Vanessa Lau with me. Within, and in her video on the same theme, she reflects on doing things as yourself. To start when you might not feel ready. It reminded me of my conversation with my friend with the teh bing, by the grass fields. It reminded me that I’ve always been here, just that how I choose to show the world me shifts as my experience of life morphs.

For you

To know my voice is to acknowledge how this is a living, breathing process. I started a long time ago, and if you’d like me to journey with you to know your own voice, I’d love to work with or collaborate with you to do so! I condense and distill the most essential parts of this wide world of voice-seeking and expanding your capacity in various ways, so that you can more easily steep in the expanded perspectives and clarity of living the life you’ve envisioned.

It’s my hope that Know Your Voice continues to be a trauma-sensitive, queer- and neurodivergent-affirming, and disabled-aware space for folks to explore and experiment with how their bodymind, voice, and soul makes them who they are. The energetic and timeless voice of your soul. Your voice that is waiting to be known and witnessed fully—unapologetically so.