The Voice

The phone rings…a number I do not recognize. 

I pick up the receiver reluctantly, for reasons I don’t yet understand.

It is the filmmaker again….this time calling from Germany. 

He still surfaces from time to time.  His last call had come from South America.

Japan before that.  Prior to that, England, Saudi Arabia, India, Bali and other exotic places.
    

He calls to hear my voice, he says.  It sends him into a kind of ecstasy. 

If I will only stay on the line with him a little longer, he begs each time...

He even tried to meet me once.  He asked to interview me for his next documentary.

I hesitated, yet was intrigued, not so much by him, but by his subject. 

He was passionately devoted to exploring the ancient practices of Tantra.

I had my own deep-rooted fascination with Tantra.  This man had devoted much of his life

to seeking out and filming the authentic and secret practitioners of Tantric rites. 

I wanted to learn all I could about what he had seen and experienced in India. 

This was a truly unique and rare opportunity to meet with a documentary filmmaker 

who had captured material that would never be available to a western audience.

We agreed to meet finally, but once the plan was set in motion, I had a sense

that he wanted more than a meeting.  He was seeking an experience. 

That was out of bounds for me.  I had made that abundantly clear.

We came from different worlds.  Still, I was intrigued.  

As the day approached, I felt an increasingly strong energetic connection with this stranger. 

I began to receive impressions that were not mine.

It was as if something was bearing down on me. 

At the very least, he was meditating for me and I was coming under his influence. 

He was far more experienced than I was.  These are potent forces with ancient roots.

That power can be misused...  

He was not the first one to recognize something in my voice, but he was the most persistent.  
 

When I told him I lived in a small town in Indiana and that it would be considerably

out of his way to come for a face to face meeting, he was not the least deterred. 

He flew from India to NYC and then to Indianapolis, where he rented a car for the last leg of the journey.

I was becoming more uneasy, but could not find a way to cancel the meeting. 

He was so insistent that we meet.  By this time, I knew something of the depth of his involvement

in his research of tantric devotees.  Too deep for me…possibly too dark, as well.  

Whatever it was that he recognized in me, he wanted it badly enough to come all this way. 

I had to be more careful…more awake and alert. 

He now had more the air of a predator….not an initiator…least of all, a researcher. 

He was trying to make a connection on a deep psychic level. 

I could feel the seduction and the struggle. 
  

It took a concerted effort from a friend who urged me to see things from a different perspective

to break the spell and give him the slip at the last minute.  I came out of it just in time to flee out the back door as he was knocking on the front door.  My friend and I slipped out to watch him from across the street.  He was frantic.  He called repeatedly.  My friend took the call for me. 

She was right all along.  He offered to meet with her…and for sex from the sound of it.

He finally left with an air of hurt and resignation.  He continued to call a few times a year

for several more years…just to listen to my voice. 

I always cut the calls short or challenged him about why he persisted. 

Every conversation was a ruse to keep contact with my voice. 

What was it that he found in my voice?  What was he so aware of?

Why would he fly halfway around the world to hear it in person? 

*****

This is a bit of a phenomenon that I have encountered down through the years.

Perfect strangers will call again and again just to hear my voice. 
It effects them in unexpected ways. 
There is something happening...or someone, perhaps...
They are hungry for it on a deep level.

I know that there are times when something
wonderful flows in alongside my own voice.  
I am not always aware of it at first.  It becomes so apparent that it almost takes over.
There is an incredibly gracious quality in my voice that reaches deep into a person’s soul. 

It is doing something more than I have intended…and it is quite beautiful. 

It just slips in alongside…

*****

Perhaps my most startling story about these events happened many years ago in Japan. 

At that time, I had a fragrance company and was in Japan to find buyers for our products. 

I was in Tokyo for an important business meeting.  It was a new experience for me. 

Doing business in Japan requires a specific etiquette and I was trying my best to do things properly. 
When it was time to meet, I was ushered into a large well-appointed corporate meeting room. 

I sat on one side of the table with a young man who was to be our interpreter. 

Arrayed across from us was the President of the company flanked by 6 department heads

on either side.   It was an imposing scene. 
After our introductions, I nervously took my seat. 

The owner started to ask questions about our company and its products through the interpreter.
I answered carefully and the interpreter relayed my remarks. 

A few minutes into the interview, however, there was a sudden sense of upset.

My interpreter beckoned for me to be quiet in mid-sentence. 

I wondered what I had done wrong.  I had made the dreaded faux pas, perhaps, 

but I could not for the life of me figure out what I said wrong. 

The tension escalated in the room rather dramatically. 
The department heads were visibly upset now.  
My interpreter was now frantically trying to shut me up and I just wasn’t ‘getting it’ fast enough. 
 

Finally I felt a strong hand gripping my arm.  I looked up and saw that it was the President
of the company!   What on earth was happening?!  
He was so upset, my interpreter was beside himself and the other men were horrified. 

His face was red, his eyes were swollen and I looked up to see  tears streaming down his face. 

He was weeping uncontrollably.  Such a show of emotion in Japan was so unexpected. 

For this to happen in a corporate boardroom in front of the other men was unprecedented. 

He was that overcome…   Everyone was in a kind of shock.

Finally the President found a few words of English.
Choking back tears, in halting English, he begged me to be still...
“Stop…please stop…speaking! 

Your voice…your voice… It’s melting my heart.”

Mixing Medicines