{"id":3880,"date":"2018-05-20T09:32:02","date_gmt":"2018-05-20T09:32:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dotkalm.com\/bumpspark\/?p=3880"},"modified":"2018-11-19T19:15:53","modified_gmt":"2018-11-19T19:15:53","slug":"you-write-your-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dotkalm.com\/bumpspark\/you-write-your-voice\/","title":{"rendered":"You Write Your Voice"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Interactive Voice<\/em> is the name of my first course and book<\/a>. Choosing a title is always tough, but I\u2019m confident now; I chose the right two words. Last week, I spoke about the first word and now, I\u2019d like to talk about the second.<\/p>\n

Watching the royal wedding at St. George\u2019s Chapel this week made me think of a different exchange at a different Church of England.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a voice.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a piece of dialogue in a narrative, that phrase is terribly obvious. Who would say such a thing in real life? How could an actor hope to deliver such a line and live up to it?<\/p>\n

Yet in Tom Hooper\u2019s Oscar Winning Best Picture The King\u2019s Speech<\/em>, he and writer David Seidler place those four words at the crux of their story.<\/p>\n

In the scene, King George VI, plagued by a stutter for his entire life, is rehearsing his unexpected coronation as the leader of the United Kingdom on the eve of World War II, when the world needed every strong civilized voice it could find.<\/p>\n

Actor Colin Firth delivers the line with all the frustration and self-revelation the moment requires. The King has struggled for every syllable he has spoken up to this point. His first clear statement is a physical ejection from his soul.<\/p>\n

Film editor Tariq Anwar gives the words the resonance of the location, Westminster Abbey, and Firth peals like a bell, \u201cI have a voice!<\/a>\u201d Hooper turns clich\u00e9 into revelation.<\/p>\n

The King makes his voice heard within the word itself so that it is a moment of irony too, surprising the very man who provoked it, the King\u2019s voice therapist, Lionel Logue, played with equal vitality from Geoffrey Rush. The words are earned and meant and it makes all the difference in the world.<\/p>\n

I hesitated to use the word \u201cvoice\u201d until I saw the film in the theater in 2010. Voice is a literary, artistic, and subjective term, and I taught communications science majors. When we say an author has a voice, it can indicate anything from command of language to significance of message, but it speaks to an important creative part of all of us that science can\u2019t quantify.<\/p>\n

Voice is an ambiguous concern with practical ramifications, which The King\u2019s Speech<\/em> illustrates.<\/p>\n

Critics of the artistic license in Seidler\u2019s script diminish the genuine work and results between His Majesty and Logue at the center of the picture. Here was a man called by history to lead, yet overwhelmed by the physical and psychological. The King could not speak clearly, and then he overcame that obstacle. A stammerer himself, Seidler was inspired to write the story by the King\u2019s utter success.<\/p>\n

In another great moment, immediately preceding the one above, the King questions Logue\u2019s credentials. Logue freely admits he is no doctor and has no certificate. Logue invented his techniques to heal Australian soldiers returning from the First World War, silenced by PTSD.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy job was to give them faith in their own voice and let them know that a friend was listening.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

Logue was a failed actor who found his voice in voice training and wrote the manual on it. He, like the King, was either his confidence in his voice\u2014or he was nothing.<\/p>\n

The movie unnerves us, with the embarrassment of a man in such a position lacking his voice, and the realization that his lacking lies entirely within his creative power to overcome. He did not have a disease or disability. The King had a crisis of confidence. And if the King of the British Empire could lose his voice, so could we all. But if he could find it again, so could we all too.<\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t have chosen the word \u201cvoice\u201d for my students unless, like \u201cinteractivity,\u201d it came to indicate something new to me.<\/p>\n

Traditionally, we say writers \u201cfind\u201d their voice. I\u2019ve pursued mine long enough and surrounded myself with others seeking the same goal to understand none of us will discover our voices. The phrase is an inaccuracy worth correcting.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t find your voice. You create it.<\/p>\n

You build a voice from a hundred thousand trials and happy accidents, and a good amount of luck and timing. Authors have no idea if the eccentric mix of words and variables they bring together in their works are worthwhile or will ever be noticed, never mind acclaimed. Enough works in the garbage heap of history attest to that.<\/p>\n

Once work is recognized, and becomes familiar, it loses the precise characteristics that made it successful\u2014its strangeness and difference.<\/p>\n

Voice is not bestowed or innate. Anyone can write a voice, thankfully. Like Lionel Logue, anyone can pursue a unique and unknown path until it\u2019s worthy of royalty\u2014but the work must be done. Logue built his work from scratch, and the King rewrote his voice through creative technique too.<\/p>\n

Now that technology has given everyone the opportunity to write, and everyone seems to want a voice, it would do us well to remember the effort required.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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