The voice

I talk to myself. I also talk to my dogs. It’s conversation I don’t care much for — you know, that thing involving other people? That leaves me speechless. There’s little chance of me disagreeing with myself and virtually none of my pets talking back, hence my trepidation to engage those who can actually do both. I’m not even what you’d call spontaneous, much less eloquent.

God bless my grade-school teachers, they actually believed I was. Their reasoning went like this: If I could write, then I could also think on my feet and speak extemporaneously. They conveniently overlooked the fact that all the writing I did consisted of quarterly dispatches to the school paper reporting on the activities of the student council. A hack job, really. All I had to do was copy from the minutes of the occasional meeting, change a tense here and there, then pepper the piece with some choice adjectives and strategically placed adverbs, e.g., “The Student Council, led by its energetic and hardworking President, So-and-so, successfully organized a charity drive for the benefit of the victims of Typhoon Such-and-such…” It wasn’t exactly Pulitzer material, but with some people you never knew; I mindlessly churned out enough of the stuff and suddenly I was Quijano de Manila.

Oh, others have been deemed worthy on flimsier evidence (Exhibit A: Congress). Still, such misplaced trust did nothing to bolster my confidence. For one, I was uncomfortable being on a raised platform and speaking to a crowd — stage fright, I believe it is called. I could be counted on to play an elf at Christmas productions, singing and dancing with the rest of Santa’s helpers; I was no killjoy, after all (and quite small for my age). But to stand there and offer an opinion on some random issue of the day was quite another bag of peanuts. Tried it once, won (there’s the wonder), and swore to never do it again. That was after I threw up in the toilet.

For another, I hated my speaking voice — or at least the sound of it coming from a speaker. It was not what I had thought I sounded like — not that I entertained any notion of sounding like Mr. James Earl Jones, but I was dismayed to discover that I spoke in a thin croak. The onset of puberty did nothing to improve things. My voice cracked, then stayed that way. What really pissed me off, however, was that it also ruined my singing voice. Oh yes — this rabid karaoke-hater used to love to sing. I may have been no Bieber, but I could carry a decent tune. In falsetto, at that. Up until then I had consoled myself that my singing voice could make up for my speaking voice. Well, no more.

(Doubtless someone will point out to me that there’s nothing wrong with my voice, that it’s just fine, and so it is. Really. I have no major hang-ups in that regard, just don’t get me near a mic; if I want to make myself heard I’ll yell, thank you. In any case, I never had need to raise my voice at myself. As for the dogs, you know they can be stubborn at times.)

So there you have it: I hate crowds and I hate microphones. (I also hate Kris Aquino, but we’ve covered that before.) My voice, I’ve decided, not so much, although it sounds a lot better when I talk to myself.

Since we’re talking about talking, every once in a while someone would come up to me and ask, “Do you really talk the way you write?” I don’t take that as an insult or a compliment, even as I would never ask that of someone like, say, Jessica Zafra, but you know how some people are. And much as I hate to disappoint, it has to be said: “Sorry, I’m actually boring in person.” Much more boring, if that’s at all possible.

So, yeah, I can actually write. So can millions of others, although I suspect they’d rather talk instead; it’s certainly more convenient. Me, I like it this way. I hurl words into the ether. What do I hope to achieve? I have no idea. Sometimes writing feels like talking to yourself. You do it because, well, that’s just the way you roll. And if, as a result, people think you more spontaneous and eloquent (and funny and smart and interesting) than you really are, then what the heck — thank you. Lord knows there’s little enough appreciation in the world.

Photo: The Skool of Life