Five days in May

...spent thinking about my writing voice

As part of our homework for our mentorship group with Breccia’s Ruth Allen, we were tasked with exploring our writing voice, outside, over the duration of five days. It turned out to be a challenging task, for many reasons not least of which were logistical ones in a busy month. Here are my thoughts, via freewriting, some edited, some left as they tumbled out.

Day One: Early evening, sitting on the step beneath the yew tree in our garden

A busy day with many thoughts competing for attention but now, on this fresh May evening, I sit and listen to the village inhabitants, human and more-than-human, coming home to roost for the evening. A distant crow, a car sweeps down the hill, the drone of a strimmer, a skyline of twittering high above me in the trees. That blackbird with its catchy Austin-Powers refrain that I’ve heard through the years, parent taught to child. A woeful lament by a pigeon and a scurrying in the yew branches ahead of me. But I am quiet. I am here to think about my voice and, by extension, my writing voice. Using my voice here feels awkward. I am more an observer, a listener in this space, with my feet amongst the woodchips and the symmetrical opening of a hypericum at my side, like one of those finger paper games we used to play as children. I want to sing. I try to whistle. I start then I stop, unaccustomed to joining these cadent voices. The blackbird gives short, shrill whistles, the sparrows send out trilling chatter: each voice so eloquently suited to its place, its place in the spring auditorium. My voice jars in this place.

The plants gather here as silent witnesses to the sounds unfolding around them. Such ebullience, expansiveness, unabridged love for their place. But I have a right to be here too. I belong here – don’t let anyone tell you otherwise – I want to be here with you all. Maybe you might like what I have to say too?

What would it feel like to chirrup with joy? To rustle my limbs in the breeze? To shout life at the drooping sun? To rise above the hum and whir of humankind and say yes, yes to it all, yes to the swell of it?

And what would it feel like, then, to close my pores and stop up my stoma, for the cool air will come and the great blackness will be amongst us once more. Leaves are still now in the lowering sunbeams, but life still creeps imperceptibly forward. A blackbird joins me in my reverie, sitting in the topmost branch of the yew tree to sing the evening in. A cackle, a giggle, a twrrrrppt. I smile at the jubilant complexity of his song and I want to sing back to him. How can I use my words instead, to chant wonder at the fading evening and sing the sun to its chambers? To mark my place in this beautiful web of voice and song?

Day Two: Early morning, walking along a hedgerow west out of the village

I came across postcolonial theorist Spivak whilst studying for my doctorate and the title of her book intrigued me: Can the Subaltern Speak? I wonder what might happen if I turn the question around and ask: can this woman speak? Can I speak? As Spivak argued, it is a question of rights and capacities, and a question of who is attentive enough to listen. The hedgerows along the quiet lane out of our village soon give me my answer.

Can these hedgerows speak?

[yes, they can, they are]

Can the tiny bluebells speak, hidden in the verdure ?

[oh yes, they sing out so beautifully]

Can the green ferns speak, who give strength and structure to this hedgerow?

[yes, their call is robust and confident, there is always space for their becoming]

Can the dandelion clocks speak, soon to spread their message of air-light seed?

[oh yes, let them please, allow their fractal spheres of potential cry out to the compass]

Can this yellow-hazed field of buttercups speak?

[they do, bounteous in their cry]

Can the foxgloves growing in the shady corners speak?

[they will soon enough, give them time]

Can the fly speak on the lichen-decorated gate? What might he tell me of distant fields and small spaces? Can the swallows speak on the wing, amidst their urgent synchronised fly-by?

Can the robin speak from his watchful perch on the rusting trailer? What about the hazel, with her shining crinkled leaves? Or the rock about to tumble from the bank, if root, cleaver and moss loosen their embrace for a moment? What might it want to tell the world: of hiding and sliding, waiting and appearing?

As I ask these questions, the hedgerow shouts the unmistakeable answer back. Our stories are tied to those around us. If we refuse to hear them, to allow them to express their sweet momentary presence, then we will never allow ourselves to do the same. I hear the voices in the place, speaking in their own tongues to me. They are all here, singing their song, shining their colours out in the world. The least I can do is join in. To join in the orchestra of sound and life. There is a space for us all, darling beings.

A snail, tiny and florid yellow, circles back on its glistening racks and returns to the hedge. A crow calls, a bee hums. I am listening. And I will speak too.

Day Three: Midday, sitting on a pebble beach in a Cornish village

Today I pose a further question of my writing voice: how can my writing share what I see and what I value? If I have a right to a voice, as every living being in my horizon has (see above), then what do I choose to say? What ‘work’ can my voice do in the world?

But, before that. What is it about this sound, the voice of the sea, mellow and drawn out across grey and dusk rose pebbles, that empties my head? What is the point in having a voice if there is nothing to say? But there can be plenty to say if I gift myself time and space and grace, the grace to say what comes up, when it comes without forcing or judging. There is grace to tell how the land touches me and gives me solace when there is none to be had. To say things that only the green ones, the feathered ones, the furry ones, can say? That there is space for every single living breathing being here in this place, including me.

I want to share my care, my attention, my love, my enthusiasm for this life, this place, with people. Just writing it now – with hot sun on my shoulders, eyes squinting on the page, voices in the cold water squealing and shrieking – it feels hollow, pointless, pathetic almost, like life is happening elsewhere. And yet in other spaces, surrounded by voices that know too about this writing life, then it feels sufficient to speak of this unspeakable joy, to tell this untellable story.

I want to sleep here, put my ears to the grey pebbles and tune out the shimmering rattle of the bunting in the breeze. It is time to rest. My voice is one that is tenuous, place-based, contingent on my solitude perhaps. I must never take it for granted for it is as fickle as the sea and will ebb and flow as readily as the waves across these pebbles.

Day Four: Early afternoon, sitting beneath the old Signal House on a rock looking out to sea

The sea is on three sides of us here. This old mystical place: what signals did it send out into the blue? Who was listening? Who took note? What work did this place’s voice do in the world? And what work might I, at this fractional moment in time, do to serve the world? People listen, and then they don’t, but the permanence of the intention to signal is real, solid. I want to send out a signal – of care, of hope, of connection, and other ways of being. If I step too far down that other road, the immanence of it all overwhelms me. Do nothing, it calls, for nothing remains, nothing is permanent. But voices have a temporality that makes them more poignant, for their brevity and their light glancing touch on this blue world.

This morning, I stepped over a granite stone, the first of a series of steps up to the chapel. It marked the life and death of Sally. I could make out only the words exult in this life. And that is all I can do with my words. Use them to exult in this life, to lift up to the vast skies filled with birdsong and to smooth across great flowery swathes of tilting earth. Tilting towards the unspeakable sea. I send out my intention to signal.

Day Five: late afternoon, sitting by the quarry face, amongst stone.

To speak – or not. To listen – or not. To say my truth – or not. Either way, there is time to grow towards my contribution. One word, then another, a simple refrain, chained to the next voice out into the world, judgement soon after, it’s not easy to stake myself to my words. They must add to the experience of it call. They can’t be there just to fill space or mark time. This process of exploring my writing voice has been more difficult than I anticipated, but I have reached some conclusions: I have a right to a voice; I have a voice that cares and loves and seeks to make things well. I want to voice that to the world. But it is not everything. It will never be everything. I will give my words space and time to build into something meaningful. To me, to you, to whoever needs to hear them.

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If you would like to hear me in conversation with Blackbird on Day One, here is the audio. Just playing about with making sound and soon realising I wasn’t a patch on Blackbird! If you ignore me, then the evening birdsong is a delight.