The vast voice rings from above, enshawling our arms in auricular safety. The physicality of sound is intended to contain and expand simultaneously.

Is there anything better?

My father had a unique voice when he read to us. Softer, lighter, a questioning of things. He must have read us hundreds of books, but the ones I remember are by Thornton W. Burgess, a New England author, and conservationist who wrote about forest animals with names like ‘Reddy’ Fox and ‘Buster’ Bear. Dad’s usually definitive voice became light, tickling the words in wonder and merriment, nurturing our delight in nature. His “reading voice.”

American novelist Marilynne Robinson encapsulates the importance of reading:

The frontiers of the unsayable, and the avenues of approach to those frontiers, have been opened for me by every book I have ever read that was in any degree ambitions, earnest, or imaginative; by every good teacher I have had; by music and painting; by conversation that was in any way interesting, even conversation overheard as it passed between strangers.
From Marilynne Robinson’s When I Was A Child I Read Books

Language has tremendous power, doesn’t it? Especially when woven into a narrative and carried to us through voice.

Indian/Canadian poet Rupi Kaur sanded to a distinctive grain. Her words are elegant: nothing is present that isn’t necessary, and nothing essential is omitted. From Kaur’s “The Perfect Date”:

nothing is safer
than the sound of you
reading out loud to me
From Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey

It is safety. Comfort.

Dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp once wrote that she preferred her studio to be warm when preparing a dance. “There’s also a psychological component to hear: It calls up the warmth of the hearth and home.”

Safety. Comfort. Something we crave and remember about childhood (whether it was true or not). And there is the warmth too—parents hold their children on their laps, in their arms.

That feeling of being read to is like being led into a world and shown all its intimacies and close-kept secrets. Described perfectly by Rachel Carson, a natural teacher, and caretaker, in her book The Sense of Wonder:

It is hard to find adults to read to us when we are adults ourselves. But there are exceptions.

Stephen Fry has admitted that he wrote his collection of Greek myths in an avuncular tone to make the reader feel we are being read to.

I spent most of my time in graduate school listening to the marvelous Flo Gibson—her voice is like syrup passing through marbles—reading the collected works of Charles Dickens. (British literature has always held some nostalgic escapism for me.) Gibson put dance in the word “Twist,” and when she said “Mr. Bumble the Beadle” – as Dickens made her do quite often because he knew how funny it sounded – it was like the name was tumbling downstairs only to arrive fully standing at the bottom.

But my favorite authorial voice is British actor Martin Jarvis reading P.G. Wodehouse’s Blandings Castle series. It is wondrous from word one. An English countryside, a different era, the kind of escapism one gets from gardening or petting a purring cat.

I bought a few Wodehouse hardbacks recently at Hatchards Bookshop (they have an entire wall devoted to him), and I was delighted to find a staff member who loved Wodehouse and the Jarvis recordings. (The only thing better than reading Wodehouse is finding another person who also reads Wodehouse and then talking about how you both read Wodehouse. Should I ever casually encounter Stephen Fry. I intend to speak about Wodehouse.)

David Sedaris once noted his favorite “reading” was Elaine Stritch's reading Dorothy Parker. Many people have read Dorothy Parker—her words bounce into our ears. Stritch is singularly good at it. Her voice is not dissimilar to that of Flo Gibson.

Poetry is best when well-read aloud (although it is also enjoyed in quiet) when humans can add a pause, breath, and intonation. The human voice turns heavy mist into high cumulus.

As adults, the joy of being read expands beyond feeling safe to feeling enlightened, elated, and interested.

It is not easy to be in wonder these days. Not only do we not have time, but it requires denuding our fragile egos. It is a state of not knowing. Of being affected. Deferring. The older we become, the more threatening this position feels. And with good reason—we’re taught to be in charge, responsible, and accountable. We abandon our instinct to listen, learn, and defer. To care.

Every human will long for comfort at one time or another. Being read to is feeling comforted.

A few years ago, I was caught in a windstorm while hiking in the Virginia woods, the tail end of an off-coast hurricane. Branches, even trees, were falling. It was the closest I’ve been to death. Falling trees, suffocating darkness, water that wanted into my blood. And I walked twelve miles down the mountain to civilization, all the while listening to Edward Herrmann reading David McCullough’s book about the Panama Canal. Falling trees, suffocating darkness, water that wanted to run away with my blood: I remember nothing about the Panama Canal, but I will never forget that voice.

I cannot express it well, so instead, I’ll pull in Durga Chew-Bose’s simple lines. Her energy and power are infectious.

When I hear a recording of Frank O’Hara reciting ‘Having a Coke with You,’ gleefully anticipating him saying yoghurt, saying flu-o-rescent orange tulips. I listen..

to him and I would rather listen to him than all the poets in the world except possibly for Dorothy Parker occasionally
and anyway, she’d hate that.
From Durga Chew-Bose’s Too Much and Not the Mood

I wonder if Chew-Bose has heard Elaine Stritch read Dorothy Parker.

I hope so.

The feelings of comfort hold us fast like rotund arms. But comfort doesn’t live our life, it doesn’t extend us into the world. For that, we need wonder. Wonder propels us into the world traipsing like children and back into forests. We need both comfort and wonder.