Well, at least I think I’m funny.

Voice isn’t something you teach or coach. There is no “one way” to do things. There is no “proper,” no “perfect.” There is only flux, and furthermore flux that responds differently from the causality of different personalities.

To try and influence voice is to try and influence God with godlessness. There is only self, and self is determined by a lifetime of exposure and adaptation to all, or spirit, or God, or Nature, or life force, or whatever it is that you call upon or worship or put your faith in.

There are those who try to control voice. Passively or actively, some do it to themselves while others try to create what they see as right, everywhere they go. They see voice as tractable. They are the teacher who only passes failing grades and they are the misguided religious extremists (this being ALL extremes). They are those who fail to find their own voice because they have faith in nothing and believe what is told to them. They are the quitters who strive only to see others quit and become apathetic. They are those who do not understand that voice is individual. That voice is creative, chameleon, and true.

And creativity cannot be forced, it can only be allowed. No job, no art, no work will ever be said to be worse for being creative. This applies not only aesthetically, but also scientifically. Not only in beauty, but in form and in function. An artist may see a flower and see beauty in color, a scientist in biological process, a gardener in growth and vitality. A tone cacophonous to one is sonically enlightening to another. It is simple to one brain and transfixing to the next. It is green to one mind and verde to another.

Voice is written word, it is brush-stroked paint, it is molded clay. Voice means no wrong notes and no bad ideas. Voice is light and dark, brooding, miserable, angry, happy, silly, hilarious, pensive, thoughtful and thoughtless. It is mood. Voice is the effect of causes gone on for hundreds of years or only fragments of seconds.

To ignore voice is to ignore the self. To ignore the self is to ignore the infinite universe. And to ignore the infinite universe is to turn one’s back on life. See through your own eyes, hear through your own ears, and affect change with your own hands – all-stemming from your own self.

All this to me is truly voice. Not impressing someone, not doing as others do, not adhering strictly to form. A voice nurtured to be itself will impress all, it will both comply with form and add to it something unique and beautiful and possibly even “wrong” to it, and it will improve it. Nurture voice, do not fight it.