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The Tone of Voice That Will Fix It
This sound does not exist
A voiced consonant, a neutral vowel, a flowing brook, a puff of wind.
The sound that is coming to save us once we make it with our lips.
It does not exist, this tinkling bell, this righteous anger that sounds exactly like patience, this genuine distress that sounds almost like calm, the see-sawing complexity that sounds instantly correct.
People are working to fix the problem, to heal the disorder, to untrouble the earthquake, and their tone is helping or hurting, so they are changing their tone and trying again. They narrate themselves to see someone else. They narrate someone else to see themselves. They are swapping tones, like trying on new musical hats. One always seems better than another.
Meanwhile the person who’s advanced the most through the conundrum has done so through a quality other than their tone. They never found a tone of voice to fix what’s wrong. Soothing sounds do not fix things. Sharp sounds do not fix things. The person who succeeds may soothe or sharpen, and anyway they get the work done. They know that each word is spoken in a tone but also that the tone is not the final key.
