vanguards of the voice note
alt title: you used to call me on my cellphone
On Wednesday morning, I received an email from a friend in Taipei. I can’t quite recall when or how, but a while ago we agreed that we’d primarily communicate via email. She isn’t a fan of digital noise, writing off social media, along with the usual forms of instant messaging. Her email felt like a whisper from the time when we lived just 15 minutes apart; her iconic catchphrase, even when typed, retained its quirky effect — heartwarming.
When I first moved to Taipei, one of my best friends in the UK and I also relied on email for most of our communication. We were two young babes with an ocean between us and a lot of “big life things” rapidly unfolding. Again, I have no idea how this came to be, but we started emailing each other weekly-ish updates of our lives. The updates weren’t text messages that we’d simply chosen to email, they were 2-3 paged meticulously penned Word Docs splattered with detailed anecdotes and dramatic verbatim quotes; we were storytellers. When an email from Rumana landed in my inbox, I’d ingest it like some kind of engrossing TV drama, remembering the events from the previous episode and who’d said what. Writing to her was cathartic, virtual therapy in many ways, and though I cringe at the thought of going back and reading my early emails, I light up thinking about these unjaded 22-year-olds writing interminably about post-uni life, friendships, and convoluted love triangles. The commitment we shared in writing out the details of our lives later pivoted when I finally sorted out my SIM card and could access WhatsApp again.
Enter Phase Two: The Voice Note Era
There’s an art to voice noting that I believe she and I have perfected. Well-detailed, (sometimes) live updates, allowing space for either venting, advice or just spiralling a little. What I value the most about these exchanges, especially when living in different countries, is the ability to vocalise feelings in the moment, bypassing waiting for the next opportune window to call. I can recall late-night walks after a hard day (the kind where you think your brain is going to implode) and recording my racing thoughts to send her, or sitting by the river after a bike ride and an epiphany of some sort, holding down the green microphone widget and prefacing with “OK, I know this might sound crazy but.”
Sharing unhinged insights or seemingly insignificant details with friends is something I value a lot; in an era where time is money and everyone’s busy, it seems most courteous to get straight to the point. There’s something sweet about being 3 minutes into a voice note and hearing “Wait, I haven’t even got to the point yet.” To me, voice notes feel like a close imitation of being right beside a person in a way that a phone call sometimes doesn’t capture. Without concern for wasting the other’s time, the sender is free to ramble to their heart’s content against the soundscape of a knife routinely hitting a chopping board or the softly syncopated inner rumble of a car in a traffic jam.
When I first visited Rumana in her new city, she turned to me as she drove us along winding roads and said, “Do you want to see where I work?”, I lit up, “Some people would find that weird but I feel like you won’t”, she was correct. These are the little idiosyncratic insights that I find so valuable when piecing people together; sometimes it’s a live narration of breakfast being made, or it’s the slightly slowed speech and measured breaths hissing through the phone as they mount the hill that leads to their home.
This level of candidness is often reserved for the people we’re dating, the “wyd?” message which then receives a quadruple text thread detailing my inner debate about if I want to go the gym in the morning because it’s more peaceful or in the evening because I weirdly feed off the energy of clanging weights and yelling PTs. Within the small details lie hidden pathways lined with windows and mirrors reflecting resonant facets of ourselves and offering us clear insights into the people we care about – all that is being asked is that we look and listen.
Stories give us a huge in on the lives, minds, and souls of those we love. It recently occurred that I’d shortsighted something within one of my most cherished relationships. Having met in school at 13-years-old, we’ve pretty much grown up together, having lived life alongside one another ever since. While the past 14 years have been filled with growth and mischievous antics that are fun to recall, it recently dawned on me that some stories had never been uttered.
A few weeks ago, after driving me home, Ekua and I sat in her car outside my house – reaching the destination doesn’t mean the hang has ended; an unwitting cultural nod to our parents’ generation who’d say their goodbyes and then stand in the doorway chatting for another 20 minutes. Seated, I casually referred to something somewhat significant in passing, she followed up with questions about this incident making it clear she had no idea what I was talking about. It was then I realised that there were stories predating our teenage meeting we’d never shared – not intentionally, just delving into stories about our childhoods feels very now, not the kind of thing you do while hanging out after school. Such a shortcoming is often curtailed in newer adult relationships where we intentionally, albeit progressively, lay the foundations of who we are, is it real if they don’t know your lore?
Retroactively developing proximity can sometimes look like a bad first date* — strings of mundane questions about siblings or childhood neighborhoods. However, these simple enquiries hold the key to understanding one another. I vividly recall the moment a friend I’d made in my early 20s revealed that they’d moved schools at least 10 times while growing up; that is major intel. The calculator in my brain whirred; processing equations about this friend, making sense of how they were a natural when thrown into any social setting. Having lasting friendships from my childhood means being fortunate enough to be familiar with their families, another rarity in adult friendships. It’s a gift to be able to chime in on an unexpected sibling Facetime call and be met with warmth and jokes, that’s our little sister on the line.
We’re going to end with a series of questions that you should ask your friends, not in the heartfelt “we’re not really strangers” way, more of a five-year-old making friends at the park kind of way:
How many siblings do you have? What are they like? Are you close?
What do you eat for breakfast?
Where is your favourite place in the world?
What do you watch on YouTube?
What was the last dream you had?
And of course, what is your favourite colour? Why?
Spirit 2.0 - Sampha
*depending on who you ask