I was singing on the stage of the Musiktheater im Revier in Gelsenkirchen when it happened. It was the eighth song of the first act, and I was, thankfully, only singing as part of a chorus. It was the sixth night of the show, to an audience of around three hundred, and what happened was this:. Only, when I went to sing the first word of the verse, no sound came out.
It was the feeling of lying on your back with your ears submerged in water or wearing noise-cancelling headphones—although I knew I was singing, I could not hear any evidence of my own words. I could hear everything else—the other spirits, the strings and the woodwind, even the rustle of programs in the audience—just not myself. I kept mouthing along, waiting for my voice to come back, but it never did. At home, I binged on lozenges and lemon-ginger tea and lowered my face over bowls of hot water with a towel draped over my head.
Finally, I texted my parents, asking them to book me a one-way flight back to Sydney. When the lights dimmed on the plane after the dinner trays had been cleared, I cried. There was no need to muffle my sobs; they made no sound anyway. I was twenty-four and retired, going back to live with my parents as if the last six years of my life had never happened. Back home, my mother held me in an embrace before diagnosing me tenderly with depression.
I resented the inference—my voice had given up on me. Still, there was no way of pointing this out, so to fend off further criticisms, I started researching vocal specialists and found one in Mosman. Virginia was a tall, no-nonsense lady with a short grey bob. Do you think you are capable of that? You will have to get uncomfortable. You will have to really want it. So ask yourself—do you? I gave her my best incredulous look.
The consultation cost two hundred and thirty dollars. Friends who had been setting off on gap years with overloaded backpacks when I last saw them were now lawyers at high-rise firms in the city. Noni was a political adviser; Mish, a lesbian. The girl I used to catch the bus with to netball training on Wednesdays had published a non-fiction book on neoliberal street art.
