Feel the Body Listen: The Power of a Whisper
It is strange that we whisper in someone’s ear, rather than at it or near it. In 1964, Yoko Ono published ‘Whisper Piece’, an instructional composition that consisted of a single word: “Whisper.” Initially, the piece was titled ‘Telephone Piece’ as some of the rendered performances involve a whisper shared across a large audience, similar to the game of telephone.
In 1966, Ono performed ‘Whisper Piece’ for the first time at the Destruction in Art Symposium in London. She whispered a word to an audience member, and as it was passed across the theater she watched it slowly get destroyed. The remarkably short piece captures the fragility of the voice and the delicate way a message can change through physical intimacy.
My first performance of ‘Whisper Piece’ occurs in the first class of my spring semester. I have been chosen to start a whisper chain in a room full of complete strangers. My task is to describe my hometown in a few words, and whisper it in the ear of the person to my left.
I take a deep breath and feel my chest expand. My shoulders relax and my heart beat slows. I cautiously angle my body toward the stranger next to me, my heart parallel with the line of their shoulder. Despite the fact I have nothing to hide, I bring my right hand up to my cheek to cup around my mouth. I hold my breath for just a moment, as to maintain control of my voice. The air spreads from my lungs, up my throat and into my mouth, slipping through my teeth. The air in my mouth is filled with sound, waiting to be released. In one motion, I release the air in the form of a whisper– “Deep dish pizza…” I feel my stomach sink inward and my lips purse to form an “ah” shape. There is a strange absence in my body, and I suddenly feel unsettled. I realize that there is no vibration in my voice as I whisper, despite feeling the air flow in and out of my throat. “And Lake Michigan” – as I continue to speak I feel the air escaping from my lungs like an emptied tank of gas. Air rushes to the front of my head and my chest tightens.
I begin to feel limited by my breath, and cannot determine if it is because of my asthma or discomfort in being so close to a stranger. When I release the last whisper, I feel as though a piece of me is still attached to it. This piece of me spirals through their eardrum and into their brain. I feel an intense connection to the stranger, as if I understand a piece of them that no one else does. That I can speak to them in a unique frequency. I recognize the vulnerability it takes to receive a whisper– the stranger has no choice but to listen.
I lean away from the stranger and return to my upright seated position. I watch each individual lean towards the person to their left and partake in the same process of physical intimacy. They take a deep breath in, raise their hand to their cheek, and release a slow whisper. The message continues to spread across the room, and I can occasionally hear the voiceless alveolar sounds of the whispers– sss, sh, sc.
Finally, the chain reaches the person to my right. It is my turn to listen. The stranger brings their left shoulder so that it lightly touches my right shoulder. They press their hand against their cheek, and release their slow whisper– “Fish pizza and Michigan.” A small giggle escapes my mouth, and my body responds to the unfamiliar sound with goosebumps that cover my forearms and legs. I feel squirmish, like I have been tickled in a spot that no human can reach.
I am submerged in the feeling of their whisper–it echoes against all the walls of my head and down into my chest. I try to focus on what the stranger said to me, but my attention is drawn to my ear. Suddenly I can feel every surface and sensation of my ear. I feel the peach fuzz on my earlobe and the sharp crease on the ridges. I can feel the cartilage that wraps around the side of my ear and the pounding of my eardrum. I can feel my body listening. My attention returns to the stranger that whispered to me. I do not know their name, their age, or where they live. I only know this person by their breath. I wonder if I would recognize the vibration of their voice, or the color of their eyes. Despite all I do not know about this person, I feel connected to them. Our bodies sit perpendicular to each other and both our heads tilt to meet the other’s, creating an unbreakable structure. It is a brief moment of unity through complete attention to one another.
When a room full of strangers whisper the same phrase in a chain, there is a mutual understanding that each experience is indescribably different from another. A whisper surpasses speech in the way that it is a form of physical intimacy. Despite the fact that the same phrase is repeated, each interaction consists of a unique tone, breath, and body position.
When I whisper to someone, I find connection through vulnerability. My whisper is a voice that very few people hear, it is a voice that implies seclusion and trust towards someone I know will listen. To whisper to a stranger means to put blind trust into their ability to listen to me. When I lean towards someone to hear them whisper, I acknowledge that what they have to say is important. I appreciate their vulnerability and trust in my ability to interpret their voice correctly.
Despite the fact that the message changes as it is whispered around the room, there is beauty in this distortion. It resembles the power that each nuanced experience has on the message. The significance of ‘Whisper Piece’ shifts the weight from the original intention of the message to the process by which it travels. The message may grow with insight just as it can just as well be destroyed and distorted. In some cases, both can occur simultaneously. It is this process of communication, of listening, that is art.
But what does a whisper become if no one is on the other side to listen?
I sit alone on a rusted park bench in Tompkin Square Park and frantically dart my eyes to each passerby. My heart beat pounds on my chest and through my entire body. I feel myself overwhelmed with emotion as a tornado of thoughts and questions violently spiral in my head. A pressure on my shoulders squeezes so tightly that I can feel the words rise out from my head and out of my mouth in the form of a whisper– why is my heart beating so fast? I suddenly have no control over the words that stream out of my mouth, but can feel my crowded headspace growing clearer. I hope I don’t forget my grandma’s birthday. I need to do my laundry. When am I working tomorrow? I should call my mom. I don’t really like the chicken at Sweetgreen. I’m scared I won’t have a job this summer. That dog is wearing a raincoat. Along with these words, a weight is released from my body. Almost as if the thoughts in my head have taken a new form in the physical world and now float with the leaves in the wind. My heart beat slows and my shoulders drop from their tensed position.
My experience at Tompkin Square Park is my second performance of the Whisper Piece. Despite the fact that I do not whisper directly to a human, my whispers interact with the natural world around me. My voice seeps through the gaps in the bench and to the pigeons perched on the metal gate behind me. It is absorbed by the thick bark of the elm trees that line the skate park. My whisper travels up through the serrated leaves on the branches and down through the deep, twisted roots of the elm trees. It scatters across the tired, dried out soil and renews it with life. I can feel the natural world listen to my soft voice.
When I listen closely, I can hear the life around me whisper back. I listen to the whisper of the leaves on the elm tree as they embrace each other in the wind. Rrwhooosh. A squirrel quietly scurries across the stone path and I hear the sharp whisper of its claws– scritch scratch scritch. It is impossible to interpret the meaning of the rustling leaves or scratching claws, almost as if the sounds speak in a frequency my ears cannot recognize.
Yet once again, the message is not as important as the process of communication. I felt all of us listening closely to each other. Similar to my first performance of ‘Whisper Piece’, our energies intertwined for a brief moment. I expressed vulnerability to the natural world through a whisper, and then allowed space for the natural world to whisper back. I acknowledged the equal importance of my own voice and those of the beings around me.
It is extraordinary that a mere whisper has the ability to connect two living beings through the act of listening. We feel our voice is listened to, but more importantly, we listen to the quiet voices that do not expect to be heard. It is easy to get lost in the vibration of my voice, using my own rhythms and tones to understand the world around me.
When I whisper, I feel the absence of vibration and a weight lifted from my physical body. Instead of the reverberation in my chest, I feel it in my head. A whisper fills my head with light and allows its release to be weightless. Like a thought that is eager to escape the bounds of my internal body, the words simply flow straight from my head and slip through my mouth. The floating nature of a whisper is what makes it so fragile. It is an incomplete message, charged with an energy of trust and security. A whisper is fulfilled when it is interacted with– a message to be nurtured, destroyed, rebuilt, and lost.
Works Cited
Ono, Yoko, and John Lennon. Grapefruit : A Book of Instruction and Drawings. Simon & Schuster, 2000.
Bocaro, Madeline. In Your Mind - the Infinite Univese of Yoko Ono. BookBaby, December 2021. https://inyourmindbook.com/
