Speaking wasn't always a struggle for me. Until I became unable to speak around the age of twelve, my voice was clear as a bell. When I was little, my parents said that I had a good pair of lungs. Where I grew up, this was priceless.
I was raised in the 1950s. My family lived on Chicago’s north side in a neighborhood that was predominantly Jewish. Whether we were walking down the street or spending an afternoon at home, I was surrounded by noise and non-stop banter. Constant gab epitomized the world I lived in for the first eighteen years of my life.
There was always a lot of shouting and laughing in our home, but everyone I knew talked a lot. There were no computers or email, so we all relied on speech and the telephone to communicate. To be in on the action, I had to be able to speak. As my speech worsened in my teens, I became a good listener but I felt like I was on the outside. I tried my best to express myself through my broken utterances, but it would remain my biggest challenge for decades. Luckily, I had something else.
I was eight years old when Mommy bought a piano, insisting that my sister Ellen and I learn music. Ellen hated it, but I loved the piano as soon as I touched the keys. I spent hours practicing everyday to become competent. Yet, without any effort or training, I could sing. Even when my speech fluency was gone, I could still sing, and do it incredibly well.
It was easy for me to memorize the words to songs. I sang every one I heard on the radio, every show tune that my parents listened to, and I learned classical pieces too. As I got better on the piano, I accompanied myself. Sometimes it embarrassed me, but I was proud that Mommy wanted to show off my musical talent whenever we had visitors. Yet, with my splintered speech, it made no sense to me or anyone else why I could sing as well as I did. At one moment I could render a beautiful song; in the next my strained speaking voice made me unintelligible.
As my speech worsened, I relied more on singing to steady myself. I tried to control my speaking voice with the same techniques I used to sing, but nothing worked. While my singing improved, my speech flip-flopped from bad to worse.
If I ever thought of myself as a speaker, it was lost in my teens. I was ashamed of the way I struggled to speak and how badly I sounded. Some friends shocked me when they said they liked my speaking voice; I thought it was ugly. I struggled so hard to speak, but could only emit jumbled and broken sounds. If I could have remained silent, I would, but there were always people around who expected me to engage with them verbally. When I sang, the pain I felt in my throat when I tried to speak was magically gone. I produced sounds that were beautiful and, in the moment, I felt good about myself. Singing gave me a tremendous means of expression, and an escape from all of the shame and worries around my speech. I thought of myself as a singer, even though I could barely speak.
Of course, it was impossible to sing my way through life. After I sang for others, they would often ask me a question or try to engage me in conversation. I could feel my throat tighten as soon as I tried to respond. When my shaky, unusable voice emerged, I could see that people were shocked. I had no explanation why I spoke the way I did, so I tried to put people at ease and make light of it. Frequently, I’d say, “Ah-I’ve g-ot s-ome cr-crazy q-uirk in me! Ah-I d-on’t g-et it ei-either.” Then I’d just try to move on and pray that whomever I was attempting to speak with would do the same.
In college, I majored in music. Many encouraged me to declare voice as my major instrument, but I didn’t. By then I recognized that my speaking voice would vary like the wind, from being slightly broken to totally incomprehensible. If I was very calm, my speech was better. But, for the most part, it was bad. I still hated the staccato-like quality of my speaking voice, so I knew I didn’t have what it takes to be a professional singer. I could easily sing to a captive audience, but never speak.
In the late 1970s after graduating college, I continued to study classical singing. My voice teacher said that the San Francisco Opera was auditioning for choristers, so I decided to try out. I worked hard to get myself calm and ready for the audition. When I arrived at the opera house, I found out that over 200 people were auditioning for six openings. As soon as I began singing for the panel of judges, I could feel the power of my breath surging up from my diaphragm and out through my mouth. There was enthusiastic applause when I finished. We spoke a little, and — because I was so confident and relieved by my performance — I managed to speak at my best.
Two weeks later I was asked to perform again. The chorus master said, “We have three singers we like, but we only have room for one.” Even though I was more nervous this time, I was chosen. Before I left, one of the judges said, “You have the voice of an angel!” I thought to myself, “Yes, but only when I sing.”
I sang in the opera chorus for five years. It was an incredible learning experience, full of fun, but lots of tension too. Some choristers were very competitive so I was always on guard, trying to keep peace with everyone. Although my speech was more shaky and abnormal at times, I still managed to sing well and do my part. However, after a few years, I became bored. Singing grand opera wasn’t something I really related to. It wasn’t me.
Additionally, performing night after night and rehearsing so many long hours was taking its toll. Frequently, my throat felt tight and painful, and it worried me that I might be doing harm to my throat or my voice. I was constantly tired, and that alone made my speech worse. It was fun to have fans greet me at the stage door, or to meet famous stars and attend lavish parties. But, with my speech problem and lack of interest in the art form, I stopped practicing as much. I began wondering, “What else can I do to make myself happy?”
I remembered one morning when I was a little girl. While sitting on my parents’ bed, Mommy put on a record of Spanish guitar music. Mom was a professional ballerina and danced a little fandango around the bedroom for me. I was enthralled by her performance as well as the music. The Middle Eastern sounds reminded me of what I heard at Bar Mitzvahs or whenever I went to temple. This music was a part of my culture; it was a part of me.
In 1983 I auditioned again for the opera chorus, but it came as no surprise when I wasn’t chosen. I had barely practiced classical singing since I began studying Flamenco six months earlier. From the moment I heard the guitarist’s strum at my first Flamenco lesson, I felt a connection to something that mattered to me.
With my musical knowledge, I quickly understood the complicated rhythms of Flamenco. After a few years of studying dance, I began to seriously study the singing. Although my Spanish was weak, I worked hard to learn the pronunciation. I progressed, learning the meaning of every phrase and how to sound more authentic.
Most aficionados agree that singing is the hardest thing to do well in Flamenco. Always up for a challenge, this only made me pursue it with more passion. I went to Spain numerous times to study and by the late 1980s I was performing Flamenco as a singer/dancer. A lot of people liked my singing, but when I spoke they continued to ask, “What’s with your voice?” Nothing had changed except that I was older. I was singing very well while I still struggled to speak.
When I was forty-eight I decided to stop performing. I loved it, but I was exhausted after each show. Naturally, it was more physically challenging as I aged, but I noticed that I had almost no speaking voice for a week, or even two weeks after a performance. The healthy volume that I once had was gone. I worried that my voice, in its entirety, was going too.
I did well the evening that I gave my last Flamenco show at a small club in San Francisco. The audience applauded, and I left the stage with pride. Afterwards, though, there was a tremendous void. Expressing myself to others through music was over.
As I caught up on rest, I noticed that my singing and speaking voice remained weak. I had trained with professional singers who had studied voice for years, but none of them ever suggested what I could do to strengthen mine. All anyone ever said was “Try to relax.”
It was only a few years later, when I was fifty-one and finally diagnosed with a severe case of spasmodic dysphonia, that the irony of being able to sing well while being unable to speak made any sense. I learned that the laryngeal muscle spasms that cause the breaks in my speech are usually absent while singing, laughing, whispering, or even speaking at a higher pitch. No one has confirmed this, but I believe these activities, unlike speech, force us to breathe in more deeply from the diaphragm. In turn, this opens the airway and produces sounds that are smooth.
Although I had less volume, I could still sing before I got the first treatment for my voice disorder. At the time, one of my speech doctors said, “Iris, if this goes well, we’re hoping you’ll be able to speak fluently again. However, you won’t be able to sing. Do you still want to do this?”
In the moment, I actually hesitated. Even after a lifetime of praying to be able to speak with any kind of normalcy, my response of “Yes” didn’t come easy. The idea of not being able to sing was devastating. It was my identity, my lifeline for the last forty years. Still, I thought, “Even though I wanted to, I could never sing my way through life. I was lucky to have sung as much and as well as I did. I have to let it go and move on.”
More than eleven years have passed since I put my singing voice to rest. I spent years grieving and mourning its loss. The power and four-octave range are gone, but at times there are remnants of it. Once in a while I can quietly sing within an octave. With the passage of time, I am now able to think back on it fondly, with gratitude. Often, when I felt so lost, it was singing that gave me hope and a connection. It gave me a voice.
