Don’t Rush to Be Sincere on Its Behalf

What rushes out first is not necessarily mockery; sometimes it is pity. In the half second when the high note cracks, before the breath has even fallen, we have already filled in a sentence for it in our minds: he is sincere. It is a little better than laughing out loud, but still not slow enough.

Return to that instant of sound: the vowel is squeezed thin, the breath narrows, the voice briefly flips onto another track, and the air misses a beat. First there is the sound, not the conclusion. It has not yet had time to explain a person; it has only pushed a mouthful of breath into a very narrow place, without quite making it through.

But we love hearing effort inside it. The same line can be genuinely strained, can pretend to be strained, and can also try to hide its strain while straining. The listener, at times, perversely believes the pretending more; one tiny tremor is enough for “he is trying so hard” to surface. That tremor is not necessarily lying, nor necessarily confessing. It merely sets our familiar judgment moving first: here there is holding on, here there is almost not being able to hold on, so here there ought to be truth.

When a voice reaches the top of its strength, meaning instead becomes blurred; we hear the intensity, but not necessarily what it is saying. Some notes are not unheard; the body has simply not sung them back. The ear arrived, but the throat and movement did not arrive with it. A circuit failed to connect; it does not have to be immediately corrected back into “he is sincere.” That sentence is not pretty, but it can leave the cracked note inside the throat, the movement, and the circuit that failed to connect.

Some fissures are craft; some smoothness is labor or style. Before the breath falls, do not complete it on its behalf. Let that instant sound bad for half a second. We hold back, and do not add a reason for it in our minds.