Voices and Masks and Costumes. Oh. My.

Yesterday, I found myself praying in the shower and this was the prayer:

Creator God, please amplify your voice from among all the others around me and in my head so I can hear whatever obvious instruction You have for me today. And you’re going to have to really drown out that other shit because it is SO. VERY. LOUD.

Those were the exact words.

I have always wanted this voice of my conscience (for me, that’s the voice of God) to be that of Patrick Stewart’s…not his words or thoughts necessarily, but the sound of his voice. It is so mellifluous – yes, I wrote that word first…no thesaurus! I’ve never measured it, but I believe that hearing him speak actually lowers my blood pressure and gives be a sense of calm --like meditating or letting an infant sleep on my shoulder or rhythmically petting a dog’s head. So I recently took some time to listen Marc Maron’s podcast (WTF) in which he interviewed Mr.Stewart. Having a stressful day? Bring out the honeyed voice of Jean-Luc Picard and Charles Xavier. I’m sure that if I could receive my spiritual instruction in that voice, I would absolutely be able to respond bravely and appropriately.

As I listened to the interview, I was astonished to learn that he grew up speaking a regional native dialect…a form a speech that was unique to his birthplace in Northern England and nothing like the King’s English with which I associate him. He demonstrated for a few moments and although it was the same tone, the words were unrecognizable. I felt my face twist in confusion as I listened to him. This was NOT the voice of Patrick Stewart, it was something else entirely and my blood pressure began to rise. He went on to say that when he young and just starting to perform, he employed a voice and dialect coach to help him learn to speak so that people outside of his hometown could actually understand him.

He wasn’t born with that voice, someone had helped him find it.

I had a fleeting thought that I might actually be able to train the voice in my head -- which usually sounds more like Fran Drescher or Rosie Perez (not bad, but decidedly not relaxing) – into something that offers its own, calm reassuring tone in moments of anxiety or, even better, into brilliant prose when I feel trapped in the creativity vacuum. If I could do that…it would be ME talking to ME in the words that I thought with MY own mind and then those words could flow from my brain down the right side of my neck…over the shoulder…into my arm, wrist, hand, fingers and eventually onto a page. This would translate into easy authentic writing everyday forever and ever. My dream.

Could there be anything more satisfying than being the narrator and writer of my own story? And is there anything that would require more courage? 

As it turns out, Patrick Stewart is that courageous. As I listened on to the podcast, I became less preoccupied with the sound of his voice and more focused on what he was saying with it. This guy had a pretty messy life. His father, Alfred, knocked up his mother, Gladys, and then didn’t marry her or even hang around. Instead, he left to join the military while she gave birth to Stewart’s oldest brother alone. Sometime later, he returned, they married, and they had two more kids of which Stewart was the youngest. He thinks he was conceived the night before his father went off to serve in WW2 so, for the first 5 years of his life it was just Stewart, his older brother, and his mom. (Stewart's eldest brother was 17 years his senior and also fighting in the war.) When his father was discharged from service – a father Stewart knew only from pictures – their home life became tumultuous and violent. This I actually knew about him already.

For years, he spoke pretty openly about the violence in his home while he was growing up. His father was a drinker. When he came home after an evening of drinking, he was usually angry and his mother was always the target of that rage. No surprise that this had a profound impact on Stewart, so with his considerable voice, he has advocated on behalf of domestic abuse victims as a way of honoring his mother. He spoke out for years, and in sharing his story, his father was most definitely the villain.

But his story doesn’t end there.

Many years passed and he was invited to be a guest on a BBC television show called “Who Do You Think You Are?” which researches the family trees of their famous guests and then chooses one interesting ancestor whose story they share with that guest.

They chose Stewart’s father.

It was a multi-phase interview process in which Stewart was asked to metaphorically (and in some cases literally) walk through portions of his father’s life as a soldier. It turns out that Alfred had witnessed atrocities that most of us will never even imagine, let alone see with our own eyes. In the midst of an interview, Stewart was shown a news article about his father returning from war in which they actually used the word “shell-shocked”…which we know now as post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. Somehow, learning this about his father – seeing him through a new lens – changed his perception. In fact, after processing this information about his father (with a helping professional), he has also become an advocate for British veterans who are suffering from PTSD. Rather than cling to his anger, he figured out a way to assimilate this new information, use it to ease his own pain, and in the process, honor his own father’s memory by speaking on behalf of others.

Am I the only one who finds this remarkable?

As I was listening to him share, I realized that it’s not only the sound of his voice that is so appealing, it’s the way that he uses it. He strikes such a beautiful balance in his honest storytelling. He doesn’t overshare but he’s not so worried about seeming cool that he appears closed off. It’s easy to connect with someone who has such a strong sense of self and the confidence to let the world see it, but who also displays genuine humility and a sense of appreciation for what he’s accomplished and the people who have walked with him on his journey. Regardless of the sound of his voice, the content of his words are authentic.

I don’t know if the weight of his words are what strips away the mask or if it’s the tearing away of the mask that gives depth to his words, but the result is the same -- authentic crafting and rich narration of one’s own story. It isn’t often that a performer – or anyone for that matter – removes his or her mask in front of the world. I’ve observed that “celebrity” usually pushes people in one of two directions:

They either completely withdraw from the world (think Garbo…Brando) 

or 

They throw on a mascara-coated, lip-plumped mask atop a booty/boob-enhanced coat of armor OR they don a ridiculous hair piece and a superhero get-up fashioned from insults and shocking or deceptive rhetoric. They parade into the public eye in all their regalia and thrust their costumed personas into the scope of any camera they can find – desperate for attention but not at the expense – the risk – of revealing their true selves. 

This is oversharing and overexposure – not truth-telling. I won’t give cultural examples here (other than my thinly-veiled descriptions above) because we can all come up with our own models for this behavior. But while I believe there is value in examining the world around us (and the people in it) for the things that reflect our values, we would be better served by identifying our own masks and costumes before we start hacking at what others are wearing. I’ll just leave it at that.

What mask, costume, or alternate voice are you using to avoid telling your authentic story? And are you brave enough to strip it all away?

She asks herself.

If you are a fan of good interviews and good storytelling, you should listen to the podcast when you have some time. Click here for the link.