Missing My Voice

Here’s the thing about apartment living: noise travels. Especially when I am standing in our hallway, I can hear conversations through the walls, can tell what television shows people are watching, can hear if someone is vacuuming or using a blender. Whatever. It’s par for the course. But it’s made me very conscious of my own noise making. I ease doors closed with my foot so they don’t slam. My television is low enough to ensure that nobody in the hallway can tell I am watching National Geographic’s “Hostile Planet” (11/10 recommend). And, the inspiration for this post: I’ve stopped singing.

Okay. I still sing. I sing in the shower and while meal prepping and during most other idle moments. But I’m not really singing. I’m singing so softly that some words drop out, that you probably wouldn’t even be able to tell what I was singing unless you stood right beside me. I can barely hear my own voice.

Living in the suburbs, it came naturally to put on a song really loud and belt it with abandon. You trust the sturdy walls of your home and the yards of distance across lawns and streets to keep your voice from the ears of those who didn’t ask for it. I would do this alone, or all five of us would do this while cleaning up dinner or at any other moment it seemed appropriate (many, many moments).

I also took advantage of trips in the car, alone or otherwise, to sing at the top of my lungs. I even have a Spotify playlist for this sole purpose, called “Singin’ In The Car.” Now, I have no need for a car, and there are no roadtrips in my future. I mainly travel by subway, and I keep my mouth shut down there for fear of getting a fist in the face, feces in the face, salad in the face, you name it. Anything is possible.

I worry that I am forgetting how to do this, how to sing without care of who can hear. I fear that along the way I am losing the little bit of skill that I had. Maybe I shouldn’t care so much. Maybe I should let them hear me and complain or hear me and laugh. But I have not naturally been able to break this mental barrier.

Not only do I not want to subject my neighbors to whatever I decide is the selection of the day (or more likely the hour, as I usually have about ten songs stuck in my head at once), but I also worry that should they hear me and come complaining, I will lose all sense of hope that true apartment singing is possible. For a city that never ceases to make noise at all hours of the day and night, it has done quick work of silencing me.

There must be people out there who get away with solo apartment concerts. If you are one of these people, please contact me and let me know how you’ve denied an ear to your internal protestations and just let it go.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I don’t know if anyone else shares my frustration, but I am not sure there is a cure for this silence. I think maybe for now, the salve can be a few K-Town karaoke sessions. Any stifled songbird is welcome to join me.