For those of you who don't know, I am a street performer. (yes, they don't, in fact, pay me to spend this much time on the Internet). It started out something I did occasionally from the age of thirteen, nowadays I take my guitar to Manchester or Chester and sing a couple of days every week and I guess it's my... job? That word seems somewhat of a hyperbole. But I do it on a regular basis, make around the same money from it as I would waitressing or working in a shop or something (I do sometimes think I'd rather do those things, but to be honest, there's so few vacancies around that I don't have a choice, really.)
Between yesterday evening and this morning, I've caught layrngitis and can't sing. My throat is incredibly sore. Talking hurts, swallowing hurts. I can't smoke, I can't sing. Acute laryngitis isn't serious or anything, it's currently being drowned out with honey and whiskey and lemon, and strepsils and strepsils and strepsils, but it means I can't go out and play music until next Friday at best, and I'm going to run out of money, and this causes lots of problems. I just have to wait it out, it's not like I can just get a shot of steroids.
For some of the dates on her European tour, Amanda Palmer lost her voice. She took is as opportunity played a show in Paris where, karaoke style, she invited fans upon stage to sing each song, crowd-sourced her own voice as a replacement. Lyric signs were held up, the crowd sang along. This is incredible, inspiring, but I don't think it would work when I'm stood outside a betting shop or by a riverside cafe playing Laura Marling covers.
Just the phrase "I've lost my voice" seems kind of weird to me because it makes me feel like it's a thing. "Vocal cord inflammation" sounds like a fire or a pain but the whole "lost voice" way of putting it is different. I think it's because of The Little Mermaid I picture it this way. I can't even really remember how Ariel "gave" her voice to Ursula but I have a vague memory of seeing some sort of sparkly, misty aura being sucked out of her and put in some sort of box, is that what happens? Maybe I'm thinking of a different movie.
Either way, it's strange to imagine a voice as something you can lose but that whole imagery has made me feel like my voice isn't in me, not right now. Physically, when I talk and the way my chest and throat feel, it doesn't feel like I'm capable of singing or talking at normal volume or ever really was, so it must be outside of my body. Like maybe my voice is just floating around my head in the air and if I grab it with my hands or breathe in really sharply and suddenly I will "have" it again.
I got pretty angry at myself about the money thing, because it's my fault I'm not able to go out and work this weekend, because the voice is such a fleeting and fragile thing to depend on, I could get a cold any time, this could happen any time. But then thinking about it, any kind of employment is just selling bits of our bodies, in a sense we are all prostitutes. People that work in factories sell the use of their hands. People in office jobs sell the use of their minds. People are paid to go on errands, to lift and carry and transport, for the use of their feet or their strength or their driving skills. And we're industries and products within ourselves and that's so weird.
I've consequently been stuck inside going crazy. That probably explains some of this.
I hope you're doing well.
Lizzie x
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