my under-developed vocal cords

i went for my voice production class yesterday.

where we learnt how to yeah you've guessed it, produce and project our voice properly.

after every few lessons, our instructor will give us an individual assessment, to encourage us with our strengths, guide us on our weaknesses and for her, to record down our progress.

because i missed the first two lessons during the add/drop period, this was my first voice assessment.

i've never felt so...what's the word here...demoralised before.

every other student got something bad commented and advised on; and something good pointed out to feel better about.

and my instructor was sooo generous with her good comments. she didnt shower phoney praises all over the place, but once she saw your real strength and potential, she kept banging on it like you are the only person in the world who can do that.

but for me? i think i'm a hopeless case.

i'm like absolutely the worst in the class.

not even one teeny-weeny good point about me.

i'm just like, doomed.

sigh~

at first, somebody said i sounded nasal. but i had flu, so that was alright.

and then the instructor said i have a kiddish voice, which was again, a comment i already predicted (and worried about) before.

so ok i will live.

but what really brought me down was her insisting that whether to use this kiddish voice is a matter of choice and hinting that i'm actually deliberately doing it because "people may have said that they like my voice".

well, apparently our vocal cords will develop as we grow up and mature when we reach puberty.

but mine havent.

and so i'm stuck to "sounding like a five-year-old".

no dont get me wrong, she didnt scold me or said all this in a sarcastic or unfriendly way.

i guess you can say she said it in a very neutral, professional way, like a doctor diagnosing her patient.

but somehow, i still feel very sad.

i dont know if it's the content of what she said, or the tone and meaning hidden beneath her comments, or her 眼神 that i thought i saw.

it just made me feel so...argh...what's that word?

no NOT angry.

hmm...demoralised. yes.

and worried.

and wronged.

you know, as in 冤枉.

her tone implied that i have chosen to sound like a kid.

to i dont know, act cute or something.

i have a feeling my instructor, and now my classmates, think that i'm some bimbo who gets my way by mesmorising unaware guys with my innocent-sounding, sweetie-kiddy voice.

sigh~

i really didnt choose to sound this way. i didnt even know i sound like this.

ok i mean i know i sound like this because i've watched myself on home videos and all that. but i didnt know that is considered a kiddish voice.

neither have i ever thought it's an exceptionally nice voice.

even when people comment that i have a nice voice, i just thought i sound pleasant, friendly and just you know, nice.

nice but normal.

so if i've never thought my voice is worth "faking", why would i purposely make myself "fake" it?

anyway, after the instructor made all her comments, i cheerfully said ok because i wanted to sound like i was very grateful for her enlightenment and am willing to change for the better (which i am, of course).

and then she still made me repeat those letters at a lower pitch.

oh but i admit that only then did i realise how shamefully childish i can appear to be sometimes.

it's not just the voice; it's the excited nodding of the head and the 1000-watt smile and everything.

it's a miracle that i didnt just sit on the floor, cry and kick my legs right there and then.

might as well throw in the whole package right? haha...

but i swear i didnt purposely behave in this way. it's like you know, innate to me.

my natural response.

reflexes.

sigh~

the instructor then asked me to re-read the passage with a lower pitch.

i tried hard but just a few lines down the passage and the pitch went up again.

it's like trying to swim at the bottom of the swimming pool. i just keep coming up no matter how hard i try to stay low.

then when i finally managed to suppress the pitch at say one or two octaves lower than my normal, my instructor said that is my natural voice and that is what i should sound like.

ok i'm like so...disturbed.

it's like after having grown your hair on your head for all these years, your hairstylist suddenly tells you that that's not your natural hair and you've been wearing a wig all along.

then he shaves off all your hair, put a wig on, and tells you that that should be your real hair, and you should start wearing this wig from now on.

can you imagine how confusing and scary and crazy that is?

i dont feel natural at all.

and you know what the funny thing is?

while the instructor was explaining my defective voice, all i could think about were all those child and trauma psychology books by torey hayden that i've read.

maybe something traumatic happened when i was five. my voice is from then on, fixated to that period of time, refusing to move on because it is scared of what lies ahead when it transforms.

my subconscious thinks that by sounding like an innocent little five-year-old, nobody will bear to harm me.

so i continue to sound like a five-year-old, without me know exactly why.

ok at least this is what happened to those children torey hayden counselled.

meanwhile, my (very clever) brain went into self-defensive mode and altered and wiped out all the memories related to the incident so i dont have to go through them anymore.

that's why i have no memory of what happened then.

like that boy
with the warped memory in "the screaming tree" by phillip love (excellent book - i highly recommend).

wow.

i have "issues" eh, machiam hollywood star. so cool. haha...

such a waste i didnt go into psychology. haha...

oh so you wanna know how the assessment ended off?

the instructor, maybe in an attempt to motivate me, said that since i'm in mass comm, i should work even harder because no news anchor or DJ speaks like a kid.

as if i went into mass comm because i wanna appear on tv.

funny how people always ask me if that is what i wanted when i entered the course.

no, even better, they ask me is it because i wanna be an actress.

wow i didnt know you can learn acting in university (or even poly). and not even theatrical acting, but, hmm...zoey tay-style acting.

mediacorp-style acting 101.

aiyo...do i look like some naive 16-year-old airhead desperate for that one minute of fame?

sigh~

i dont know why i feel so bad about this, maybe because 60% of the marks in this course is based on oral presentations, where i suppose i have to use my "natural" voice to articulate and all that.

maybe because i feel very hurt when my instructor implied that i choose to sound like a kid.

maybe because i've never been the worst student in any subjects i've studied.

maybe because i have a feeling my instructor doesnt like me.

maybe because it's the whole experience that day, that i just cannot relate properly and completely because of my lack of vocabulary and weakness in expressing myself.

i dont know leh.

maybe i'm just being drama.

as always.