Muted

In the years of my youth I was acquainted with a boy who could not, or would not, speak. His facial expressions were the closest thing to a language, through which I understood him in flourishing gestures, though even then there were more than two ways to interpret a mere shrug or the slightest smirk. As my familiarity with him became more defined, this boy revealed to me that he possessed a particular passion for writing. I begged him, grant me some transcript to peruse, but was promptly refused. Everything he wrote must first go through his sister, whom he trusted as his editor and sole confidant, that what filled the page may be readable. I searched for his sister, hoping she might be better inclined to satiate my interest.

She was. The girl was less worried about betraying her brother’s confidence; rather she delighted in showing just how incompetent his skill. I read his rough draft thoroughly. It wasn’t bad, a few grammatical errors, wanting some intellectual polishing here and there, but she showed no mercy.

“See, look at that!” she would wail. “I always tell him, you’ve got to stay awake and listening, awake and operating deliberately on codes of better conduct!” I didn’t quite understand what she was saying, but the lamented passage was one I, too, found fault with, but only in a few places; she crossed out the entire block and began scribbling her own trail of thought. I protested, insisting it to no longer her brother’s work, but she ignored me.

“He has to learn to be both well-spoken and well-heard. If he doesn’t pay attention to whom his audience is, no one will read it. Worse, he’ll look insensitive for being so wrong.” I tried to explain that not everyone looked through the same lenses, that there would be people with his same frame of mind, and that she ought to listen to and negotiate with his side before writing the contrary behind his back. I also proposed her to consider writing her own material, but she stopped paying attention by this point, avoiding a response that I would have perceived as angry. This supposed intellectual was not interested in crossing boundaries through “voicing” her complaints, but ignored her brother’s voice to fill in her own when he was powerless to contest. I left her in her brooding irritation.

I found a few of my friend’s papers later on, after they were published. He was congratulated, but soon forgotten, as the steady stream of ideas similar to his sister’s remained unopposed. My guess is, writers of different experiences felt invalidated and remained silent. But that’s no excuse. My friend did not choose to be unable to speak, not at all; but it is no one’s fault but his own that he has remained without a voice.