Cobweb and Rust 5
@sedsemperamor
March 2014
“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
Zora Neale Hurston
There are voices that can be heard halfway round the world; voices that cannot be ignored; voices that will be heard in any language; voices that reach deep inside and squeeze our bloody hearts. There are voices that only need to whisper our name, cry out in pain or ask for our help and we will immediately drop everything and run – voices that we love, voices that we need , voices that we fear, voices that we do not understand. A certain voice speaks and we are repelled. Another voice speaks and we are compelled to listen.
The human voice consists of sound made using the vocal folds for talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, whispering and so on. The tone of voice can be modulated to covey emotions such as anger, surprise or happiness.
“Thus I spoke, more and more softly; for I was afraid of my own thoughts and the thoughts behind my thoughts.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
The sound of each individual’s voice is entirely unique not only because of the actual shape and size of an individual’s vocal cords but also due to the size and shape of the rest of that person’s body, especially the vocal tract, and the manner in which the speech sounds are habitually formed and articulated.
Humans have vocal folds that can loosen, tighten, or change their thickness, and over which breath can be transferred at varying pressures. The shape of chest and neck, the position of the tongue, and the tightness of otherwise unrelated muscles can be altered. Any one of these actions results in a change in pitch, volume, timbre, or tone of the sound produced. Sound also resonates within different parts of the body, and an individual’s size and bone structure can affect somewhat the sound produced by an individual.
“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.”
Coco Chanel
Research from the University of Glasgow suggests that people take less than a second to form an impression of someone’s personality based on their voice alone. “You had me at, ‘Hello.'” seems to be a scientific fact.
A thought, a breath, a word. Our thoughts, our breath, our words, our lives, our stories, ourselves.
Voix Mortes
Through gaping wounds of silence
The dead speak
Their thick spittle solidifies
Between the cracks of wasted minutes;
In empty mouths, the vowels roll
Grains of mountain, millstone, molehill
To inert powder of unspoken ambition;
Fantastical forms drip from long, lonely nightlights
And pool – electrifying – in empty sockets
Dead voices cannot lie: they have no tongues;
They cannot shout: they have no mouths;
They cannot whisper: they have no lips
Only a mortgage of mortal memories remains:
A void of hushed human vibration
In breathless, kissing caress
Spinning slowly, seamlessly towards
A vortex of final ultimatums, underworld finales,
Yawning, lacerated monologues –
Mute gash of mutilated truth
@sedsemperamor
February 2014
Don’t remain silent. Make your voice heard.
sedsemperamor 