Vocal Training

Had my first appointment with the speech therapy people today.

Was just an assessment really.

He learned more about me and what I wanted, then I was hooked up to a throat mic and we did some measurement of my modal pitch.


Now, if I have understood this right, my pitch is almost female and almost certainly in the higher end of gender neutral.

Trouble is, speech is a complex thing and my problem is resonance and the way I speak. Apparently, I clip my vowels and have a rapid pattern of speech.

So, I need to bring my voice off my chest and into my face. Yeah, up into my face is what he said!! I also have to learn not to clip my vowels!

So, basically undoing almost 28 years of habitual speaking!!

Please, excuse me whilst I get on with my exercises.

*starts to hum*

Friendship..........

What does the word friend mean to you?


I have something on my mind and it bothers me. Friends. I have a few friends. Some are great friends, friends that I'd gladly put my life on the line for and I have some friends that have been merely a passing ship that have dropped anchor on the island of my life.

I blame social networking for the dilution of the word friend. So easy to be someone's friend simply because you think they have a nice ass or maybe they post a silly picture or two of a cat doing something cute.

But proper friends. Those friends that have seen you bleed, emotionally. Those friends that pick you up, patch you up and send you on your way knowing all is well. They are rare.

I make connections easily with people despite being usually socially awkward and I have a tangled, disjointed memory of a lot of people over the years. People I have only met once, briefly over coffee and people who I have spent a considerable amount of time with too.

But I'm a poor maintainer! I lay the blame squarely at my feet. I'm a poor communicator of sorts.

And now I feel the tendrils of another friend slipping out my grasp. I've probably only maintained this particular friendship because we spent a good few years in each others company, in the company of others. But as our party disbanded, we drifted. We went our separate ways to do our own thing. We maintained our friendship merely because we are united by a common bond and a mutual interest.

But I feel that even this friendship is slipping out my grasp and I blame myself. Like so many of my promised friendships, I fear this one too will become another memory.

Of course I can fight it. I can try to strengthen the bond but I'm a mess when it comes to fabric of friends. I don't know what I'm doing. I know how to listen, but useless with soft words. I will step out in front of a car for you, but I couldn't tend your wounds. I would travel the world to be by your side to comfort you, if it was in my power but I can't pick up the phone to see how your day has been.

I am a pitiful person. And I am destined to travel alone with my memories, with only hitch-hikers for the occasional company.