Is it cheating? Alice and I are in bed, warm. We’re both waiting for the voice. But I think she hears it differently. Or perhaps hears the same words, the same tones, but for me, different chemicals sizzle. Jimmy Carter decried the lust in his heart; I worry about the lust in my ears.
The anticipation might be as good as the actual coupling. There’s the buildup of the night before — tomorrow, we’ll meet! Then, because it’s been a week, when she speaks, it’s a breaking dam—ahhhh! Of course, we meet only in my mind, but isn’t that where all relationships begin?
This one, however, is a bit different, since she’s a voice on a meditation app.
In my quest for mindfulness, I’m practicing the meditation of the moonstruck. For over a year, I’ve reserved my Sunday mornings for the voice that gets under my skin, the woman who silkily instructs me to “feel it in your body.”
I don’t even know her name.
At times my voice-amour is like a hortatory gym coach or perhaps a “voice-inatrix.”
Before you dismiss me out of hand, the crackpot who suffers from smartphone-induced randiness, remember how relationships often begin. They say the biggest sex organ is the brain, but I suspect that it’s the ear whispering to that brain. When a fetching voice gets into your head, then goes away, you await its return. It’s like the early stages of a relationship, when you’re eagerly anticipating a call. Lucky for me, my smartphone app is only a button-caress away.
But let’s talk details. What makes one voice a trail of sweet gingerbread crumbs and another just a meditation mechanism? I meditate seven days a week, listening to various dulcet-toned practitioners inviting me to breathe. Why does one voice relax, the other besot? Why is one meditation and one infatuation?
Perhaps because of vocal variation. At times my voice-amour is like a hortatory gym coach or perhaps a “voice-inatrix.” She commands me to “have fun!” in the midst of the meditation. Other times, she sounds like a schoolmarm asking me to take out my number-two pencil for an exam. For some reason, I love the subtle chiding, the restrained exasperation in “OK, if you lose track of the breath, that’s OK.”
There’s a “you have to be there” factor here, since my listening visualizes a smart hippie chick in tight Levis, when perhaps she’s a theoretical physicist with a meditation voice-over penchant, or a grandmother of 11 who does voice-overs while she’s quilting. You often don’t get to choose the kindling in your fantasy campfires. But mystery is alluring—what does she look like? And no, I don’t automatically see Scarlett Johansson from Her, pillowy lips and all, purring in Joaquin Phoenix’s ear.
When those nows are a series of gentle invitations to breathe, and to note the sensations in your body, a body both relaxes and perks up.
Perhaps I should curtail all your dirty imaginings and tell you that I don’t deliberately get naked and listen to my meditation guide. It’s not like that. It’s more that my conscious (and conscience) defenses can’t work against something that sticks directly in my brain.
One major issue is that I meditate with Alice, my girlfriend of 25 years. Alice knows of my degenerate whimsy about our digital meditation guide — am I cheating on both? I supply Alice a source for eye rolling when I discuss it.
For a long time, when I suggest to Alice that it’s time to meditate, I say something like, “Let’s marinate now.” That’s a not-greatly-funny play on words, but there’s something relevant to the discussion here in the sense of marinating: there’s a soaking or a steeping in this meditation stuff, and the immersion puts one in an oddly receptive state, open to the noise and nuance of now. And then the now after the last now.
You make a conscious decision when you choose the voice for your GPS. Don’t pretend that one doesn’t give you a more pleasant turn than the others.
When those nows are a series of gentle invitations to breathe, and to note the sensations in your body, a body both relaxes and perks up. At least this one does.
Another seduction: There are a couple of long pauses between her voice-over guidance, opening a period of silent meditation — that’s the setup of the excitement of her being gone, and then the burst when she returns. Proust’s Madeleine works here—something bypasses conscious thinking. Or it’s hyper-consciousness. When you are locked into someone, you try to gauge what’s behind his or her slightest nuance of tone.
You scoffers out there, know this: you make a conscious decision when you choose the voice for your GPS. Don’t pretend that one doesn’t give you a more pleasant turn than the others. Are my musings here so far from that?
Besides, this voice passion isn’t abnormal — just quirky. There was a recent report from a 1,000-participant study of smartphone and Amazon Echo users — gender not specified — that a full quarter of them had fantasized about a little interlude with their voice assistant. See — totally normal. Or is it more that the digital world is unleashing all kinds of closet monsters?
But lately, in the last few meditations, something’s gone missing. The stirring is quiet. Yes, I’m still delighted to hear her voice, and gladly go deep into the mindful zone, but that little bit extra is no more. Maybe, like a joke dissected, I overanalyzed it, and thus it died.
What was so promising has turned out to be just a fling.
So I think I’ll just let it go and think of my mediation mistress as an old girlfriend who calls now and then, but it’s all aboveboard—no hidden agenda, no drawn curtains. She no longer casts a spell, but just invites me to sit, breathe and focus. We have a good thing going.
Hey! The Bold Italic recently launched a podcast, This Is Your Life in Silicon Valley. Check out the full season or listen to the episode below featuring Hunter Walk, investor and former head of product at YouTube. More coming soon, so stay tuned!
