Voice. Its dwells quietly in us and plays joyfully from our lips. Voice’s significance is echoed in Porter’s “Essay on the Radio Essay” where its power is illustrated in the human voice (Porter 186). The essayist and the voice work in close quarters to bring together the body of the essay: the objective, the universal, and the personal. As Porter puts it, the voice of the narrator shares the personal with a “close up intimacy” (Porter 188). The universal is brought to life from Philip Roth’s characterization of the narrator as the “image of the national character inscribed in sound” (Porter 188). Objectivity is read as the radio voice of the late 1930’s with its “promise of authenticity” (Porter 188).
With the art that came from audio essays, it is to no surprise that voice is not simply just the act of pronouncing words. It is the collection of what Porter deems “words, sound, voice, aurality” (Porter 191). The voice is the medium for thought‘s attempt at communication. There is a technique to audio, there is a drive to lead words with conviction and a drive to leave the imagination to wonder when the voice goes silent.
In Sarah Vowell’s “NRA vs. NEA”, she uses her quirky voice layered with old Western music to draw up the image of her gun loving dad, Mr. Second Amendment-NRA. She has an awkward voice, a high pitch tone combined with a nervousness of a kid with braces and a pimple on picture day. If there were a dual in congress televised on C-span set to John Wayne music, it would be a backdrop to her childhood. She leads the charge with the “house divided;” her vs. her dad vs. the gun (Vowell, 1997, 4:40). The dual Western music comes into play a few minutes in, and she intertwines it with her first time holding a gun. The gun is personified then demonized as she references its “evil presence” and the dark music hovers over her words (7:34). The music then gets lighter and the Western adventure music fills the airwaves as she discusses her adult years and her trip to go see her father shoot off his cannon.
This could easily be a silly childhood anecdote but it conjures up much more with the commitment that “words, sound, voice, aurality” make. The universal, the objective, and the personal are embodied in her voice. Most children have had that moment where they’ve succumb to fascination with their parents’ fascinations. We try to rational our parent’s convictions, though they seem illogical and benevolent. What she touches us is that differences lead to intrigue, and intrigue brings about that “shared close intimacy” similar in fashion to the audio essay. Though the drawbacks of audio can be seen in how the voice is the higher power that projects itself onto the listener, leaving little room for different interpretations, that power is used to mirror the significance of words and language, its screams, its whispers.
