Tuesday 10 November 2009

Reading Aloud

Resonance. Sound is in this day the sensation that rules the world. It amazes me. Human beings constantly draw breath, and hardly every think about doing so.  It is a simple thing. Crude and unimportant. Air is, after all, a simple nitrogen and oxygen cocktail with the capability of supporting life. Science makes it sound cold and uninteresting. I'm telling you that it isn't. I'm telling you that breath sustains more than life.

It struck me earlier this week that unflattering air is responsible for words. Hum to yourself quickly, deep in your throat. You hear that? That's air. That's the same air Miley Cyrus and Bono breathe. It's commonplace; worthless. That humming in the back of your throat? That is beautiful. That is something special even if you don't have your face plastered on a billboard.

I don't really know how to use my voice. Heck, I'm an accomplished public speaker, but that's nothing. What I want to be able to do is read aloud. It is more difficult that it sounds. To read something for the very first time and get all the right tones an inclinations is a godly Art, and one I'm practicing daily now. It requires an intuitive knowledge into the writer's mind; in truth, it requires love. To read aloud is to love the world.

It is something I want to understand, desperately. It is one of the Ultimate Truths. It may just be impossible to achieve, but I have to try. Perhaps for others reading aloud is easy. I would not know. For me, it is a quest. It is a journey to find out how to love unconditionally.