MyLastUsername
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Hey guys this is a short letter I wrote. The writing style, I hope, is to be a mix of Proust and Dickens. Tell me what you think:
Dear Mr. Thomas,
It would be difficult to provide an accurate time as to when I had lost ‘it’, but I can ascribe a range that I believe to be appropriate: between the conclusion of grade eight and the beginning of grade nine. Somewhere—a day—I noticed that Robin Hood had stolen my voice. Had reached into the cellar of my throat, purloined it from my body and given it away to someone whom I may never meet. I can only hope that whoever is in possession of it now is taking good care not to damage its sonorous pitch and authoritative tone.
They say that silence gives one an intelligent air, but I wonder for how long one has to be quiet before a group begins to regard him as ‘simple.’ One year, in my opinion at least, is more than enough. Any number of years beyond that, he too will think of himself as ‘simple.’ And, when he is alone, he will think himself ‘an idiot’ although he will never give voice to this declaration for he knows that one should not give voice to something they haven’t any desire to give life to. So, he will only think it, and it will remain dead inside his chest.
Already, Mr. Thomas, you may have an insight to the power of the voice—you being a Thespian, after all—and of course you have a strong reverence for It (I hope I do not approach heresy by capitalizing that ‘I’). But, let me take a moment to describe to you my voice.
‘Alex’s’ voice.
It was a voice that loved to laugh at the silliest of things in life. A voice that rambled unceremoniously before a girl it liked, listing off the plays, novels, and poems it has read, never realizing that the target of its affection is ‘literary incompetent’ and on the rare occasions when it has realized it, my voice had a tendency to ramble into another explanation, listing the reasons why falling in love with one’s opposite was good for the spirit. My voice cried. It cried when Rose Dewitt Bukater let go of Jake Dawson’s hand in Titanic. It cried when it had lost its hat in the third grade, when the snowman it was building had been destroyed by a meaty ne’er-do-well. And when its mother cried, my voice wept.
Now the voice I am in possession of is only an effigy of a voice. It is emotionless, banal, monotonous, bereft of any quality that, when heard, the receiver would at once define it as ‘human.’ The voice I have does not like me for it knows that I do not appreciate its emptiness, its ability to make a dreary topic at once unimportant and satiric. Its ability to trap its listeners inside a cocoon where no passion exists and, as though an uncanny form of metempsychosis were being undertaken, the people taken into this cocoon transform into passionless people themselves, and forget the life they had previously experienced with their voices.
Mr. Thomas, if in this letter you would allow me to list the goals I have for this semester then I will limit them to only one: to discover my voice. To find the one who had received it from Robin Hood. To beat that one, to cut him, to shoot him, to pummel him, until he, at last, decides to return that voice to me. And even if this one does not exist, even if the part of my brain that would normally separate fiction from reality is unhinged, so that I am capable of using Robin Hood as an explanation as to how I had lost my voice. Even if, the one who had taken it was myself—hidden it away in my mind—as I do believe that mind and brain are two different things—then my goal for this semester is to perform all the atrocities I had, before, directed towards this ‘Prince of Thieves’, to be directed towards me, so that I may return my voice to myself.
Only then, will I be content.
Sincerely, Your Student
Dear Mr. Thomas,
It would be difficult to provide an accurate time as to when I had lost ‘it’, but I can ascribe a range that I believe to be appropriate: between the conclusion of grade eight and the beginning of grade nine. Somewhere—a day—I noticed that Robin Hood had stolen my voice. Had reached into the cellar of my throat, purloined it from my body and given it away to someone whom I may never meet. I can only hope that whoever is in possession of it now is taking good care not to damage its sonorous pitch and authoritative tone.
They say that silence gives one an intelligent air, but I wonder for how long one has to be quiet before a group begins to regard him as ‘simple.’ One year, in my opinion at least, is more than enough. Any number of years beyond that, he too will think of himself as ‘simple.’ And, when he is alone, he will think himself ‘an idiot’ although he will never give voice to this declaration for he knows that one should not give voice to something they haven’t any desire to give life to. So, he will only think it, and it will remain dead inside his chest.
Already, Mr. Thomas, you may have an insight to the power of the voice—you being a Thespian, after all—and of course you have a strong reverence for It (I hope I do not approach heresy by capitalizing that ‘I’). But, let me take a moment to describe to you my voice.
‘Alex’s’ voice.
It was a voice that loved to laugh at the silliest of things in life. A voice that rambled unceremoniously before a girl it liked, listing off the plays, novels, and poems it has read, never realizing that the target of its affection is ‘literary incompetent’ and on the rare occasions when it has realized it, my voice had a tendency to ramble into another explanation, listing the reasons why falling in love with one’s opposite was good for the spirit. My voice cried. It cried when Rose Dewitt Bukater let go of Jake Dawson’s hand in Titanic. It cried when it had lost its hat in the third grade, when the snowman it was building had been destroyed by a meaty ne’er-do-well. And when its mother cried, my voice wept.
Now the voice I am in possession of is only an effigy of a voice. It is emotionless, banal, monotonous, bereft of any quality that, when heard, the receiver would at once define it as ‘human.’ The voice I have does not like me for it knows that I do not appreciate its emptiness, its ability to make a dreary topic at once unimportant and satiric. Its ability to trap its listeners inside a cocoon where no passion exists and, as though an uncanny form of metempsychosis were being undertaken, the people taken into this cocoon transform into passionless people themselves, and forget the life they had previously experienced with their voices.
Mr. Thomas, if in this letter you would allow me to list the goals I have for this semester then I will limit them to only one: to discover my voice. To find the one who had received it from Robin Hood. To beat that one, to cut him, to shoot him, to pummel him, until he, at last, decides to return that voice to me. And even if this one does not exist, even if the part of my brain that would normally separate fiction from reality is unhinged, so that I am capable of using Robin Hood as an explanation as to how I had lost my voice. Even if, the one who had taken it was myself—hidden it away in my mind—as I do believe that mind and brain are two different things—then my goal for this semester is to perform all the atrocities I had, before, directed towards this ‘Prince of Thieves’, to be directed towards me, so that I may return my voice to myself.
Only then, will I be content.
Sincerely, Your Student
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