Page 21 - WTP Vol. V #2

“Along with the individual,
whole popula ons, otherwise sub- merged or marginal- ized, can be voiced as literature.”
summon. The voices of schoolmates at our fiftieth reunion, for instance, have no print in memory. They could call, as two did afterwards, “Hey, know who this is?” I didn’t. Their breaths against their vocal cords.
been born the year my father died. My mother
lived alone in their four-bedroom ranch in Vil-
lanova, PA; and my tape was from our visit from
Boston. Ruth was three, boosted by phonebooks
in her chair, with me beside her, Connie across
and Mom at the head of the formal, mahogany My own recorded voice has never sounded like dining table, chandelier fixture overhead. Mom me to me. My pitch is higher than I hear from in- had served us a stew. I cut small pieces of sau- side, and more quavering and monotonous.
sage on Ruth’s plate and added a spot of ketchup. She ate the carrots, potatoes, celery, and peas with her fork, but wasn’t interested in the re- maining slivers of sausage. I tried to make a game of cutting a sliver of my own, then spear- ing and holding it in front of my mouth as an example. “Hey, meat!” I said. “Hello, Mr. Meat. Goodbye, Meat,” and chomped it from my fork. My mother’s voice, meanwhile, is in the back- ground, along with Connie’s. They’re discussing our return to Boston the next morning. Next, spearing a piece from Ruth’s plate, I held it in front of her. “Hey, Meat!” she sang in that ascend- ing, high-pitched trill of hers. “Hi, Meat!” But she wouldn’t bite.
of recognition in forgotten rhythms and tim- bres. I listen and go on later to imagine the other voices I know. Voices of my older brothers. My father. Close friends. I’m ready to hear and rec- ognize them, though I haven’t heard them alive for decades. Some living voices, however, I can’t
***
Even after decades, daughter with daughters ninth symphony, as instrumental music yields to now, mother long since passed, there is the shock voice and lyrics: “Alle Menschen werden Brüder.”
My brother, Jack, having quit college, visited home when I was ten, with Lady, part collie, part some- thing else, a dog that he had rescued from abuse in a Colorado logging camp. He left her with us as he returned to Colorado and I became her sur- rogate master. From time to time, he called long distance, I held the phone to Lady’s ear; Jack spoke and gave his special whistle, driving her beserk with joy, barking, whining, tail whipping. She recognized his sounds. Even five years later, hearing him long distance, the same excitement. She never forgot.
Some of us have singing voices, trained and un- trained. Voices with volume, sweetness, clarity, and range. Others, tone deaf and unable to carry a tune, improvise in the shower or in our cars. From recordings, at least, we know the opera voices of Caruso and Pavarotti, the resonance of the Irish tenor John O’Sullivan, the blues of Billie Holiday or Nina Simone, the crooning of Frank Sinatra, the folk singing of Joan Baez and Judy Collins. A gifted singer speaks for all: magnificently different,
yet the same. We also blend our different voices, bass, soprano, mezzo, tenor, in choral singing, and nowhere more wonderfully than in Beethoven’s
We recognize the individual voices of actors (re- gardless of roles), public figures, newscasters
and weather people, voice-over narrators, and other celebrities. Think of Richard Burton, Olivier,
(continued on next page)
12