Voice cuts that make us lose our tongues and instruments of recovery
Before compact discs, there were cassettes. They seemed magical when
they first hit Sri Lanka, these little things containing neatly rolled
brown-coloured tape. Before cassettes and their micro versions we had
larger spools that smelled strange and were played on what seem now to
have been gigantic machines.
Then there were records. I found them pretty and pretty amazing too.
It was magical, back in the ‘70s, to watch my Uncle Upali Seneviratne
place one of those large black discs on his large record playing station
(it had a compartment to store the music and I believe another section
to store liquor), gently place a needle and have the voice of that man
who seemed to be never happy unless he was sad, Jim Reeves, coming out
of machine and floating around the living room, telling us how he was
accused, convicted and condemned by someone who was judge and jury all
in one.
Record player
I’ve seen many records since then and listened to quite a few too,
but the one thing I remember most about them is the logo and the brand
name: a dog sitting in front of a record player and peering into a
trumpet like contraption which probably amplified the sound and the
words ‘His Master’s Voice’.
Back then it was a pretty picture which by and by got layered with
notions about ‘man’s best friend’, loyalty, affection and so on. The
image still makes for nostalgic re-visitation but the line has other
connotations which of course others have played with when talking about
lackeys of the powerful.
My brother, Arjuna, stopped me once when I started saying something,
beginning with the words ‘in my opinion’. ‘Are you sure this is your
opinion?’ he asked looking me squarely in the eye. It rattled me for a
moment. I said ‘yes’ quite confidently.
Then he gave me a lecture about how opinions are formed. He would
have been about 15 at the time and it was a remarkably lucid and
insightful set of observations that he shared with me for one so young.
We are made of everything we encounter. That which we label ‘I’ and
use name to refer to is essentially constituted of things that are in
movement.
They are in us and make us now and the next moment they get scattered
into other bodies, other people who also say ‘I’ and have names. It is
the same with thought. Same with words. We think they are ours and in a
sense we are not incorrect but at the end of the day we are but part
owners and then only in a very transient sense.
Analytical capacities
Most times we are not even conscious that what we assert in the
manner of idea-creator was born elsewhere, nurtured somewhere else and
coupled with other things from other sources as it enters our minds and
sensibilities. What’s worse, however, is that there are times when we
are conscious slaves committed to regurgitating things that others
utter. This is that other side of ‘the master’s voice’ that I talked
about. Parroting, some would call it. It is an exercise one can engage
in only after internalizing, willingly or unwillingly the conditions of
slavery. One has to retire the question mark, the ability to be critical
and all analytical capacities and persuasions before one can aspire to
someone’s voice, especially the voice of the powerful.
It is like playing a part in a play. There’s script and there’s
rendering of script. The margin for deviation is limited to what
gesture, facial expression, stage presence, voice projection, inflection
and modulation adds to portrayal. The good actor could stretch the
particular lines in ways that the audience obtains several layers of
meaning, but he/she would still be constrained by the script. This is
all good for theatre, but in life and politics when you decide to be
player you automatically choose slavery to script and therefore script
writer.
There are times I look around and what I hear (including what I
myself say) makes me wonder if we are all in a gigantic studio where
multiple masters and mistresses get us to speak in their voices, vomit
out words well-rehearsed under their direction. I wonder how many times
we all had to say this or that before it was decided that we ‘got it
right’. Life is a studio and articulation about someone thrusting a
script and you having to read it out ‘right’ and do it over and over
again until some minimal standard line is crossed.
Fraudulent elections
I know, I know, it’s not a one-way street and we are not slaves at
all times and in all contexts, but still, I find we are reluctant to
admit that there are times when we are pretty servile. I asked the
following question seven years ago: ‘After how many voice-cuts do you
lose your tongue forever and how many fraudulent elections before you
win your franchise?’
There was a question I didn’t think of asking back them and maybe I
am asking it now because other voices have crept into my sensibilities
and because I’ve become slave to their masters, knowingly or
unknowingly. I am not sure if ‘slave’ is coterminous with ‘adherent’,
for example whether a follower of the Buddha Vachana is ‘fettered’ or if
the follower of Jesus Christ is a prisoner of the Bible. What is
pertinent to me is the Buddha’s compassionate suggestion that we could
benefit from a closer examination of who we are, what ‘I’ is, so to say.
At some point in this larger incarceration that is of greater
magnitude than the fetters employed by political realities and
ideological fascination, I believe we need to recover our tongues.
This has nothing to do with elections, fraudulent or otherwise, but a
conscious decisions to embark on a journey that could begin with
reflection on the notion ‘His master’s voice’ or even, as my brother
pointed out, ‘where did your opinions come from?’ We might be surprised
by the number of voice cuts that cut our voices to size and we might
surprise ourselves by the potentials of recoverability.
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