"The Green Door", Oil, 10" x 8", 2007
Painted in Venice

A couple of years ago I lost my voice--I got a condition called spasmodic dysphonia.  Doctors say this is an incurable neurological problem and they give botox injections into the vocal cords.  You can listen to Robert Kennedy Jr. on his radio show if you want to know what it sounds like.  I didn't want botox shots in my vocal cords so I went to a cranky, 80 year old voice therapist in LA--Dr. Cooper.  He had a lot of stories about the medical community and notebooks filled with scathing letters to the spasmodic dysphonia associations and doctors and reporters--because in his book spasmodic dysphonia is a functional problem, not a brain disease--its a misuse of the voice.  He sat me in front of a musical biofeedback machine and made me say "um hm" a million times at a certain pitch.  I nearly passed out the first day from hyperventillating.

My voice is better now.  But it can sound pretty bad when I get nervous.  Sometimes the least uptick in my emotions and my voice crackles and breaks and people think I am about to cry.  It makes them nervous.  You never think about your voice until it doesn't work.  You don't realize how many mechanisms have to be in sync to speak.  I hold my breath when I get excited.  That's part of the problem.  I talk to myself all the time in my head, and it sounds perfectly normal.

Painting doesn't require speech--I can go for days without speaking much to anyone except my husband and my cat. When I talk to Muffin, I don't have any problems, because I instinctively pitch my voice higher.  Dr. Cooper calls this "pet talk" and he says it proves that spasmodic dysphonia isn't an incurable brain problem.

I bought a CD from a guy named Roger Love on using the voice--Roger works with Hollywood stars and famous singers.  He teaches specific exercises.  Two years ago I couldn't sing at all.  Now I can sing again, thanks to Dr. Cooper and Roger Love.  But now I get daily email newsletter solicitations from the outfit I bought the CD from, exhorting me to buy other programs--ex-CIA operatives expert in body language, brain aerobics for the elderly, secrets of obscure farmers now worth millions.  I keep unsubscribing but it doesn't stick.  Its hard not to associate all the cheerleading art marketing experts with all this stuff--they all sound pretty much the same. Just one more person telling you what to do. Maybe they never had teenagers. I remember when my daughter told me to stop telling her to practice--because it made it harder, not easier.

Losing my voice was one of the best things that ever happened to me. It gave me an excuse to chain saw a lot of stuff that I didn't want to be doing--to start to figure out what is really important.  I was freaked out and I wanted to fix it.  But it made me realize that there is wisdom within--wisdom that expresses itself in the most unexpected of ways.