"Why Do You Talk Like That?"

On Authenticity and Performance

Photo by Nycholas Benaia on Unsplash

There is a phenomenon I have noticed over the last few years studying and working in a Catholic institute of higher learning: the “pious voice.”

I first began to notice it when I took a preaching course along with several young religious brothers. It was fascinating and a bit unnerving, watching young men I had come to know pretty well over the course of countless conversations approach the ambo, open their mouths, and speak in a way so different than the way they spoke just minutes before. There was a certain softness, a slowness—as if they were trying not to frighten us. I wondered why they used this voice when proclaiming Scripture, or (perhaps to a lesser extent) when explaining it. What about this way of speaking—quiet, gentle—did they think communicated holiness or reverence?

Not every preacher I heard affected this “pious voice.” And to be clear, it was not the voice itself that was unpleasant. Far be it from me to criticize the surprising gentleness of a voice! What was unnerving was not the sound, but rather the noticeable shift—as if they thought their normal speaking voice was not good or holy enough. I could not help but reflect on authenticity and performance. Where was the unguarded friend I knew? Was this voice simply another aspect of them, revealed by the different context, or was it an inauthentic show, a kind of religious verbal mask to hide behind?

I began to notice a “pious voice” as well among cantors. While I had certainly heard skilled cantors whose voice seemed authentic, others affected a distracting softness and hesitancy, as if the notes came not from deep in their chest but somewhere in their throat, or just behind their front teeth. Some of this was nerves (especially among those conscripted into chanting, there was a stage fright that made their voices shrink and waver), but that did not seem to explain everything. There were cantors who did not lack confidence, but whose chanting felt not just different than, but also somehow dissonant with the voice they used outside of the Mass. I felt certain there was a chanting voice that was more natural for them, that was more authentic.

…

Some qualifications. As a gay man with a bit of a “gay voice,” I am probably over-sensitive to voices, the ways they can be shifted, and the reasons why people do so. And I recognize the flaw in my method: I cannot actually be certain whether those I observe are being authentic, because I have limited access to the contents of their minds and hearts. It is probably uncharitable of me to suspect my friends put on a “pious voice” to appear more devout, when in reality it is probably unconscious, due to nerves, or both. But I cannot shake the feeling that the observation of this vocal shift can reveal something about the relationship between authenticity and performance, between what comes without much effort and what requires practice. And so I want to use it as a jumping-off point for some philosophical reflection.

Imagine the same kind of scenario as mentioned above (a liturgical service, perhaps a Mass): involving performers (preachers or cantors), scripts (homily manuscripts or the words of Scripture), and performances (preaching or chanting). Most of us would recognize almost intuitively that a performer who has practiced more—that is, one who has become a more skilled performer—will be enabled to let more of their own personality shine through in their performance, while an unpracticed or unskilled performer will be prevented from expressing themselves as well. Again, nerves factor in here, but there is more: practicing enables a performer to shape their performance to let more of themselves shine through. Contrary to what many of us may say (and really believe!) otherwise, familiarity with the script can actually free the performer to be more themselves, not less.

If authenticity refers to this ability to encounter someone’s personality, then it seems that performance (and the practice it takes to perform well) can be an avenue, not an obstacle. Authenticity and performance are not necessarily a pair of opposites, or two poles on a single spectrum; they can actually be partners, not enemies. I have heard his process of practicing a script leading to greater authenticity called “making the words one’s own,” living them, or internalizing them. In other words, naturalness (in the sense of an activity requiring very little conscious effort) and authenticity (in the sense of letting a personality shine through) are not strictly synonyms; authenticity can be a project, a performance. And the reverse is also true: if authenticity can require much conscious effort, inauthenticity can come naturally to us.

…

Many years ago, a man on Twitter with whom I got into some sort of disagreement (I forget all the details) accused me of inauthenticity. He claimed that I had, months earlier, admitted to practicing my gay voice (I do not remember admitting this, but I do not consider it outside the realm of possibility that I did). And because this gay voice was a performance, his reasoning went, this voice was not an authentic revelation of my personality. It was a kind of verbal mask, a show, a charade I used to hide my true self and become accepted into a broader gay culture (this was, I assume, especially insidious to him because it was a gay performance—yuck!). Hopefully, you can see now how that argument is flawed: performance and practice do not preclude authenticity, but might actually make it more possible.

But his accusation was also a kind of distorted reversal of my closet experience. I remember when I was very young, standing in front of the mirror in my room, trying to adjust my posture and my gait to appear more “masculine” and become accepted by other young men my age. I also remember trying to lower my vocal register for the same reason: I was ashamed of the soft, gentle voice that came natural to me (the voice that I produced without much conscious effort), and strove to develop a different voice. At the time, I thought I was trying to change myself—but looking back, the voice was an obstacle, a screen I placed between my authentic self and my small town community. I was hiding. I was not shaping my voice in order to reveal myself more fully; I did it in order to lock myself away.

There is almost certainly an element of my gay voice that I learned from others, developed, practiced. And it almost certainly involved a long process of trial and error: putting on a certain affectation, discerning whether or not it allowed myself to shine through, assimilating it or discarding it, and trying another. I do not think this necessarily means that the voice I currently have is inauthentic. It simply means that a gay accent works like just about any other: it is a combination of biological givenness and imitation, naturalness and artificiality. It is a performance—but can be authentic.

…

After a late-night conversation puzzling through some of these things, one of my friends defined “authenticity” for me as “commitment to performance.”

We had been talking about drag, and how drag performers often describe their craft as enabling them to be more authentic, not less. By putting on a wig and makeup, slipping into a spectacular gown, and lip-syncing to a song from one of a number of pop divas, drag performers end up discovering aspects of themselves that they could not have accessed any other way. There is a kind of authentic freedom that comes with this disciplined effort.

Crafting a drag persona is a lot like that process I described earlier, of shaping one’s voice: trying on, discerning, assimilating or discarding, trying on again. Drag performers gather bits and pieces from here and there—outfits, songs, styles of makeup—and decide if that belongs to the persona, and maybe even if it allows their self to shine through somehow. There are probably some performers for whom drag is just an inauthentic show, a mask to hide behind, of course. But an especially artificial, curated performance can be part of a process of learning about oneself, becoming more authentic…

…and perhaps that is what my friends do when they adopt that “pious voice.” Maybe the “pious voice” is not so different from drag performance in this: what seems to be an inauthentic show can be a means of living authentically. Maybe the quietness, gentleness, and slowness of that “pious voice” can be a way of accessing the quietness, gentleness, and slowness buried within that can be revealed through practicing a script, through performance.

Maybe we are all performing, and yet we can still choose to be authentic.