Voice is complicated, although it seems so utterly natural. Sound expressing desire as uniquely one's own. And yet the act of speaking, of finding words, or rather finding the right words, doesn't always flow from my mouth. I think of a work by the artist Ann Hamilton (although I cannot recall its name) of a mouth. Just a mouth. Lips, teeth, tongue. A mouth filled with marbles that roll and rock and clatter utterances all their own. Sound blocking guttural sound.

How many years have I too felt the coldness of those marbles within my mouth, constricting thoughts, emotions from deeply within? How long have I lived with the fear that if I dare engage my authentic voice that I risk choking, or swallowing myself whole.

It has always been easier for me to speak my voice with written letters, creating words with form rather than understood as resonant sound. Words flowing onto lined note paper, building layer upon inky layer. But words uttered ~ the act of speaking up for myself? Well, that is another story.