Voices

I recalled yesterday, that during my first few months in Japan I thought a great deal about finding a voice in this new home.  It wasn't until I was walking away from observing some wonderful Suzuki lessons that I began to reflect on voice and the many voices I have around me in New York that it occurred to me that I am not feeling this void.  Rather there are many from which to choose, many incredible teachers to observe and from whom to learn, students to steer me, and the strong voices of all the people around me, telling people to move in on the train, saying what they like and don't like very clearly, no offense.  New York is strong and moves along.

But in Japan there wasn't a voice around me that I could hear.  It was such a silent existence, and the voice that was there was of a few fellow expats, trying to make meaning of their place in the sea of Japanese.  But there was also the wordless voice, something very special and as foreign and valuable as anything else surrounding me.  It was a different way of listening.  Listening to the intent, listening to the air, through my skin, and from within myself.  I miss it, and yet the cold has not yet fully set in and I am very grateful for the beautiful wealth of guidance that surrounds me.  I am touched by what is possible to communicate in words and inspired to find the imagination that words can create in their poetic cross-modality, the excitement, the quickening they can fire in the learning process.

What would it be like to have grown without words?  They say that words gives us the concepts and categories that we manipulate to have thoughts.   We might not be able to navigate if we didn't have a "right" or a "left".  Might not be able to differentiate without words for colors or textures or statures or lengths.  And what more can we learn with our creative use of words?  What concepts can we create and more importantly, what concepts can we share with one another?

But still, there is a world without words that has great feeling and meaning and carries an incredible about of importance in our lives as artists and human beings.  It can transcend us beyond the categories and concepts that we have so explicitly created and packaged and exchange with one another, but it somehow needs a voice.  There must be translators, through music, through art, through words, but most certainly through listening to it and from it.

The cold air is exciting this time of year.