Listen. Not to my writer’s voice but to my real VOICE. The pitch, tone and textures of my voice. Writing my short story to be read out loud at the Seattle Rep has made me think about how a story SOUNDS. Coincidentally, I started studying voice over / voice acting the last few months, and finished narrating an audiobook of a Japanese memoir (Tei) I translated some years ago. I also rediscovered a recording of Mom reading that Japanese memoir for me. So a lot of things happened recently to make me think about VOICE.
One of the first things my voice coach told me after just listening to me say a few lines was: “You’ve got to smile.” What? You can hear a smile? But it was true, without thinking about it, you can hear a smile. I tend to keep a poker face. Especially if I’m focused on reading out loud. Maybe that habit comes from being self-conscious. Or guarded. Or growing up with Japanese immigrant parents. So I forced myself to speak with a smile. But that was just the beginning.
The human voice is much richer than the written word. Think about it, the written word is just a two-dimensional symbol. In fact, the voice is such a rich medium, if you pay attention, you don’t even need to understand the words to feel the emotions of the speaker. When I made the audiobook of Tei’s memoir, I first recorded my mother reading the book for me. Anyway, Mom was the one who first told me about this book. At the time, I recorded her for practical reasons. Listening to Mom was much easier than trying to read the original Japanese text. (I curse the Kanji gods every time I see those sixteen-stroke characters!) So I asked Mom to read the memoir for me at her kitchen table. Then I took my cassette recorder home and listened to the recordings as I pored over the Japanese text and rewrote the memoir in English.
I now know that Mom’s voice was just as or more important than the Japanese words written by Tei Fujiwara. As I wrote the memoir in English, I “emotion-checked”, as well as fact-checked each sentence. By that, I mean I looked for the same emotional reaction to the English version as I had to the Japanese version. Did my eyes tear up? Did my heart pound? And then when I narrated the translation, I used my subconscious emotional knowledge gleaned from Mom’s voice, as much as my academic knowledge of Tei Fujiwara’s story. I found the original cassette tapes buried in my closet, dusted them off and re-recorded one small segment into my computer. Of course, the quality is pretty horrendous but I think you can pick up on Mom’s emotions.
(Listen to attached MP3 file)
Can you hear how much this story meant to Mom? Can you hear her voice break? Can you hear the emotions? The memoir was originally published in 1949 Tokyo. Only a few years after the war ended. When Mom first read this memoir, she was a teenager who had recently lost her own mother in the chaos of post-war Japan. Like the people in Tei’s memoir, Mom was homeless, hungry and overwhelmed at the prospect of rebuilding her future.
Here’s my translation of the part Mom read:
My eldest son, Masahiro, who was five when we fled from Manchuria, is now thirty-five. He studied mechanical engineering at university and is now employed by a large car maker. He became a father himself but he also never speaks of that time. Whenever any mention is made of that year, he becomes silent, gets up from his seat and leaves the room. Something terrible was burned into the soul of that five year-old boy.
I feel so sorry for him. I still remember the emaciated little boy who tried to comfort me by saying, “Mommy, I’m full, eat my potato so you can breast-feed the baby.” And this when he hadn’t eaten anything himself for three days! That day he proved the incredible capacity of his young heart. So I am resolved to not speak of that painful time in front of him now.
In writing, it’s possible to bolster up the authority of the narrator and the characters with research, careful word choice and editing. But with voice, the speaker’s got to draw upon a much deeper well. The listener connects, consciously and subconsciously, with the speaker. Our reptilian brain remembers a time before language. When we communicated with screams, cries and grunts. Without our even being aware of it, when we hear someone’s voice, we sense that person’s essence. We know instinctively - I trust you. I believe you. Or - I need to get the hell away from you as fast as I can. We pay attention to the hairs on the back of our neck.
Although I can’t name the process by which a listener knows the unseen speaker is smiling or not, I now know that there is a whole language out there beyond just words - in our VOICE. A language separate from the actual words we write.
If you have time, listen to the 8 minute clip of my narration of Chapter 2 of Tei.
Thanks, Tom. I'm really enjoying learning about voice. I'm being forced to be more emotional (gasp!). But that's also helping my writing. I'll let you know when the audiobook is out.
Hi Nanako,
This is Randy from Story Night. What is the name of the short story you read for us on Monday night?
Thanks,
Randy