In Harmony

Here's something I wish I'd known sooner in my life: my voice is powerful and worth listening to exactly the way it is. Even in typing these words, my fingers hesitate above each key, as though claiming and owning the beauty and weight of my own voice is embarrassing and not worth mentioning. Can you feel that too? If you listen carefully, can you hear my voice quaver through these written words?

Maybe your relationship to your own voice is also a challenging one– how do you honestly feel when you hear an audio recording of yourself played back? If you’re anything like me, hearing your own voice isn’t a straightforward experience. For my whole life, it's been a vulnerable journey to grow a close and loving relationship with the way I sound, but I feel inspired to share with you what I've learned along the way, and hope you can hear the beauty in your own voice a little clearer after I'm done.

From the very beginning, I was made to believe that my voice was a disadvantage. A high-arched palate meant I couldn't make most speech sounds without slurring or lisping, and the sports-obsessed, male-dominated culture around me made it crystal clear that those speech differences would only fuel bullies' mockery. Granted, it was the early 90s, and queer acceptance hadn’t yet taken hold in the mainstream. Still, that doesn’t ease the sting when I recall how persistently the men in my family-of-origin mocked the way I sounded. Over and over, the message was clear: my voice was laughable and not worth listening to.

Deep in my heart, however, I knew that I had a way of expressing that was entirely my own, and I sought to develop skills that would move my inner world outward: piano lessons, art classes, and choir rehearsals after school all felt like safe havens in an otherwise tumultuous sea. On the playground at school, I found solace among the girls who loved the Spice Girls and Sailor Moon. It was a shameful secret that I didn't have many close male friends, and my birthday parties always seemed like a strange misrepresentation of who was important in my life– each year's list of invitees performatively male, designed by me to quell the storm of mockery on the homefront.

Naturally, I came to revere my elementary school music teacher for his creative focus and sensitive energy, which made it that much harder when he instructed me to lip-sync the words at my grade seven choir concert. Or, as is forever etched in my memory, when he cast me in a non-singing role in the school musical stating to my mother as explanation, "there are two things that drop for a young boy in puberty– his voice, and 'something else'. For Parker, it's been neither."

Even though my body experienced a huge growth spurt just a year later, I continued believing that music teacher's words well after my voice dropped (along with 'something else', I'll have you know). My voice is not worth hearing. My voice is embarrassing. My voice sounds like a girl's. I shouldn't sing in public. I shouldn't sing in private. These, and so many others, were the overtones that dominated my inner world for the entire chapter of my life before I moved out from home to go to university.

Leaving home didn’t just mean stepping into a new chapter; it meant leaving behind years of internalized silence. When I got to UBC at the age of seventeen, it was 2005 and I'd matriculated into the engineering department because I'd gotten good grades and it seemed like a badge of honour to be able to get into the faculty at all. Almost immediately, I sensed that the 'different' part of me needed a more diverse and accepting environment to unfold its wings within. I transferred into the Faculty of Arts, and ultimately focused my studies on a dual major between human geography and phonology. More than anything else in the world, I was fascinated by how communities of difference cultivated belonging for themselves in the physical realm and how their unique speech patterns influenced their perceived sense of safety.

To be candid, those four years of undergraduate studies are a blur of clove cigarettes, basement apartments and botched first-dates. That said, late in my final year at UBC, fate stepped in when my phonology professor suggested that I participate as a research subject in a department-wide survey of Canadian Pronunciation. I'll never forget how validated I was by her suggestion, or how vulnerable I felt at the prospect of my range of phonemes (that is, sounds I could pronounce) getting recorded and then indexed by a stranger. Even though I never followed through on her invitation to participate in the study, her belief in my voice's noteworthiness still brings tears to my eyes, even now.

A few years after university, a couple friends of mine founded Vancouver Femme Choir, which I was a proud member of for two entire seasons even though I was the only cis-male in the entire 40-person group. Sure, my voice was far deeper than anybody else's and yes, the musical balance was completely askew but the context closely resembled what I'd understood acceptance to be from an early age: a community of sensitive, tolerant women* who saw beyond my differences, celebrated my softness and welcomed me as the sole man among them.

Looking back, I may have been just beginning to understand the beauty of standing out. At the time, though, I couldn’t bring myself to embrace it. After a couple concerts trying to fit in, I felt overwhelmed by the perceived tension between myself and those around me, and quietly ducked out the side door without properly saying goodbye to the community I'd earnestly worked to become a part of.

A few years later in 2019, after entering my thirties and setting some big professional goals for myself that included public speaking, I sought the help of an Alexander Technique practitioner to unlock the tension around my throat and voice box. He was a friend-of-a-friend, and I felt hopeful that with his help I'd tap into a bigger, bolder voice. However, in a moment that I'll never stop replaying, he molested me on his massage table, covering my mouth with his hand while touching parts of me that hadn’t been discussed beforehand. After lying powerless and silenced on his table, he leaned over and whispered, ‘Don’t tell anybody.’ What had begun as a step toward vocal empowerment quickly became a jarring shove in the other direction.

Though the experience shattered my trust, it became a profound catalyst for seeking healing and reclaiming my voice. The late Leonard Cohen sang, "there is a crack [in] everything, that's how the light gets in," and for me, the experience of moving through trauma in a conspicuously silenced context was the biggest crack I could have asked for. While certainly among the most challenging periods of my life, it also ushered in a new sense of resilience where I asked for the help I needed, began seeing a counsellor, and ultimately started smoothing out the relationship I had with myself.

Over the following few years, I unpicked the parts of me that are authentic and truly my own from the snarled mess of adaptations I'd made to survive my early life at home. I began expressing myself more creatively and took any opportunity to push my own limits. I remember at the height of C-19, challenging myself to sing an entire song from my balcony in earshot of the handful of people gathered on picnic blankets in the park across the street. Even that was too much at first, but with practice and devoted belief in my own inner strength, I got better and more confident.

I started sharing amateur recordings of myself singing Buddy Holly covers, reciting Mary Oliver poems, or sharing whatever hot-take came to mind that day. I began regularly practicing Kirtan, a Vedic mantra-singing tradition that helps me notice where my vocal character melds with others and where it stands out. Whatever I could do to use my authentic voice in view of others, I did; at a deeply spiritual level, I was learning to trust the world around me to hear my voice with love and acceptance. More than that, I was learning to love my voice myself.

As I've explored the bass registers of my voice with more intention and practice, I've learned something about my vocal capacity that I had never considered before. When I sing a low note, the listener hears not just the pitch but a symphony of ‘overtones’— harmonies resonating from every part of my nasal and oral cavities. Taken together, these make a stronger, more impactful sound. Similarly, the ways I've grown to own and use my own voice with conviction and confidence have been a result of my noticing and then integrating all of these stories and life-experiences together. I am more powerful because of the ways I've been quiet; I'm more connective because of the ways I felt alone.

These last few months, it's been a revelatory pleasure to join Vancouver's Queer, Trans & Allied Choir "Out in Harmony," a heart-centred organization that meets weekly to learn challenging repertoire and grow community among members. Under the sensitive and profoundly caring guidance of our choir director, each participant is encouraged to tap into their voice’s unique character without auditions or musical gatekeeping. I can't tell you how amazing it feels to be celebrated for the ways I sound, and to be given a shot at taking vocal leadership among my peers. In short, I feel whole after a life of wondering if I'd ever even be half.

I'm in tears as I write this, because I genuinely feel joy and relief to have arrived here, not a moment too soon, in an acceptant and loving relationship with my voice. By learning to honour the experiences I've had and ultimately sing in harmony with each of them, my voice is only getting louder, brighter, and ultimately more my own. It brings me so much pride and fulfillment to share that in just a few days, on the afternoon of January 25th, I'll be performing in my first concert with Out in Harmony. It’s taken me thirty-seven years to reach this moment, and I couldn’t be more excited to share my voice with everyone who comes to listen—myself first among them.