“Everyone” is an artist..”

My dearest most darlingest friend Naruna  came to visit me last weekend. Naruna is this wonderful woman who is kind of like my other half. On this trip we liked to tell people that we were sisters only we had different…parents. We are very similar, apart from small differences like age, nationality, sexuality, and height.

And whenever we get together, whether it be me visiting her, or her visiting me, or us visiting somewhere that isn’t Paris/London… we tend to do a lot of talking.. And I mean A LOT of talking. And likewise, her being Parisian and I being … a chain smoker. I also find that when I’m with her I manage to go through a lot more cigarettes than normal. All the while doing a great amount of talking about everything from literature, cinema, politics, relationships, women, men, sex, fashion, and everything we’ve been up to since we’ve last seen each other (which tends to be a lot).

So after spending our

2/3/4

days together we separate and generally I say goodbye only to find that I can’t say much of anything else after. But on this occasion, the effects were quite drastic, and rather than being simply husky, throaty, or breathy (and those come with their merits) I found that making any sound involved a painful super human effort and the voice that came out wasn’t much of a voice at all. It was of course entirely my fault, as I had committed numerous vocal sins including: incessantly talking, screaming, shouting, drinking (and I mean DRINKING) chain smoking, and getting very very little sleep.

Maybe secretly my body knows the only way to stop me is to stop me from talking. I tried my hardest to ignore it and push on. I stopped smoking, I went in to work. I stayed silent behind my desk (keeping my need to endlessly communicate for the electronic realm, my outbox certainly swelled) but no one really seemed to understand how I was feeling, or how odd it was for me to struggle to talk. At lunch I went to the park to sit by myself, as it was the only way I could make sense of my newly mute status. I could just about talk then, but I knew doing that could only make it worse.

So there I sit in the mi

ddle of the park, hiding under my gargantuan sunglasses and lo and behold before I can sink into my Grazia and turn on my ipod, two mates from work appear. I must have had a not terribly friendly look on my face as the first thing one of them said was “Are we interrupting you?”  And I couldn’t really say “I’m hiding away from everyone so I don’t end up using my voice”. So I ended up talking, and my voice didn’t sound so bad, but it hurt like hell to use it, and I for some reason I kept that to myself.

By the end of the day, I had less of a voice left. The next day I went in to work again.  I turned off my mobile, and hoped no one would call me on my work phone. At lunch time when everyone went out to the pub, I snuck out early to the park. I couldn’t face going out en masse only to not drink, smoke, or talk. It sounds so silly and superficial but it felt like I wasn’t me. And when. I got home. I had no voice left at all.

I communicated to my girlfriend via writing notes on a notepad. Which luckily she found amusing (initially). I think as much she believed I was genuinely afflicted, there was a part of her that felt like this was a twisted game I was playing

Anyways, yesterday I texted in sick (calling being out of the question). My girlfriend (usually the quiet half of our partnership) had her patience tested beyond belief as I made it through the day silently. Between the notepad, body language

 

and a new expressiveness I found with my eyes I was surprised how unnecessary talking really was. I stopped fighting the fact that I couldn’t speak and submitted to it, and it felt oddly liberating. I didn’t have to have the answers to anything, I didn’t have to have opinions or back them up. I couldn’t argue or rant.

It was like detoxing from myself.

It was considerably testing watching Belle Du Jour in the evening. I found myself loving and hating the film and having quite complicated reactions to it. But without a voice to express and process what I felt, I contended with my girlfriend’s simple and conclusive sense of loving it and left it at that. And went to sleep better. Before I left the house this morning the first words I said in days were “I love you” to my girlfriend. And my voice sounded both foreign and familiar to my ears.

But now that I’ve got my voice back (or at least I’m starting to)  I’m thinking of  purposefully trying this silence thing out again. Obviously not at work, or with my girlfriend (I think she’d smack me if I did it for the sake of it and rightly so) but maybe I just need to spend more time on my own, with my phone switched off. Somehow I think the effects can only be positive, it may even make a better

Listener…

There’s a café’ Nero next door to where I work. For the last year or so I’ve noticed a homeless woman who seems to be a regular of sorts there. It used to really disturb me to see her. At first she used to sit outside in the summer. The staff is generally quite hard on anyone using their seating who is not a paying customer, but somehow she was always left alone. Maybe because they felt sorry for her, maybe because they were scared. I’ll never know.

But then the seasons changed, and it was too cold to sit outside and I began to see her sitting inside. Usually sitting in the cosiest love seat, no one daring to sit next to her or across from her no matter how scarce seats were. It was then that I noticed that she always had a coffee. Although for the life of me I couldn’t imagine her ever going to the counter to order one. Or more plainly, I couldn’t imagine her having a conversation with anyone. She looked too agitated, too crazed. And yet she was always talking, chain-smoking (but ironically never drinking coffee…), eyes fixed on something or someone only she could see. Her hair was short, which made me think someone must be looking after her to keep it that way.

But as much as she ranted, the words were never intelligible; she would sit for hours and hours and hours. I would see her in the morning; I would pass her in the afternoon. I found myself sitting closer and closer to her, maybe self consciously willing a conversation to happen. How did she get this way? Was it drugs? Was she just mentally unstable? Where did she live? Who was she ranting to? Who took care of her?

But then I cut down my coffee intake considerably. Finally to the point of not buying it at all. And I forgot about her. Until today, I can’t remember the last time I gave her any thought. And then just now I went out to buy cigarettes and coming back to the office, I randomly cast a glance at the window at next door café’ Nero. And then I saw her, sitting by the window. And what struck me, what bothered me, is for the first time in this year gone her eyes seemed totally vacant, and she was silent. Whatever had agonized her to rant for all these months had stopped. But she didn’t look happy.

I’m an urban woman who grew up in a suburban neighbourhood with a small town feel. As cosmopolitan as I like to think I am, I know how easy I form attachments to people, places, and things. I constantly create stories and build internal connections to strangers I never meet but see on a regular basis. They become part of the fabric of my city.

And so now, as removed as I am from this elderly stranger I find myself sitting at my desk now, and worrying about her …