Dear quarter lives,

Portable aren’t they these voice of ours? Yet how is that we lose them sometimes? And how is it that we find them when they are already with us? If they are always there, if they never vanished, then is it our memory of their presence that vanished? Is it us who forget our voices and not our voices that forget us? But why forget our voice? Why abandon such an integral part of ourselves, why remain quiet? They say a baby’s cry at birth is to recognise their own vibration, to know their presence, to hear their existence. Our voices are our DNA in sound. They not only tell us about ourselves but tell the world about us. As you might have already noticed, some voices are louder than others, some scream for attention and others forcefully quiet themselves to disappear. What happens when you forget your own voice because you haven’t used it in years or used it only in unison with another and made noise instead? What happens when you can no longer hear yourself, when you fall mute and go deaf to your own vibration? What happens when you finally decide that you want to speak but can’t because you’ve lost all contact with your voice? What happens when you look and look for your own sound but do not know what you are looking for because you’ve forgotten what you sound like? How then can you keep yourself safe? How can you tell a foreign vibration from your own? How can you tell if someone entered your space if you do not know where your space begins in the first place, who your space is, and what your space is made of? Could you have been afraid of an intruder this whole time that was you because you forgot that this is what you sound like? Could you have been hiding this whole time from the big bad wolf only to realise the wolf is you? Could you have been chasing your own tail this whole time? Fear muddles our vibration and confuses us. It creates doubt around our boundaries and we can no longer recognise where outside begins and inside ends. But fear developed from self is only fear now; fear in the present that later transforms into love but only when you can remember who you are, what you feel like, and what you sound like. So speak up. It is the only way you can finally recognise this sound is coming from you. It is possible to violate one’s own space, just as it is possible to suffocate oneself. And the only way to stop yourself from suffocating is to recognise it is your own hands that are choking you. It is your own silence that is eating you up. So let it out. Those sounds you wish to make. Wail. Cry. Until you can finally sing with the butterflies once more. 

Love,

S.A.