There are people whose voices are so distinctive that as soon as you are told to read something in their voice, you will find yourself reproducing their accent and inflections perfectly—in your head, at least. I’m a poor mimic and can’t imitate other people’s voices but I can ventriloquise them in my mind. We’ve lost two people recently whose unmistakeable voices were loved by millions: Dolly Parton and Sir Patrick Stewart. Their deaths were met with an outpouring of love from people from every point on the political spectrum.
When I log on to Twitter on such occasions, I feel united with all of humanity. A nineteen-year-old they/them with an anime avatar and a hammer and sickle and a Palestine flag in their handle made me cry with their tribute to Captain Picard. You can have a similar experience by going onto YouTube and searching for a clip from a long-running show or a classic song by a much-loved artist—here’s a personal favourite—and reading the comments. Art has the power to unite us because of a wonderful paradox: the more personal and intimate an expression of feeling is, the more universal it is. Just as, at a fundamental level, we are all composed of quarks and electrons, at a deep level, emotionally, with few exceptions, we are all the same. When an artist reaches inward, he reaches outward at the same time. If you go deep enough, you can access a network that links us all, a kind of London Underground of the soul.
Some actors are chameleons who can become almost unrecognisable in looks, voice and gesture if the role demands it. Others change little in their overall appearance and style of delivery. You recognise them instantly and with glee. I am about to rewatch the BBC classic I, Claudius and what I am looking forward to is not seeing how Patrick Stewart transforms himself into Sejanus but seeing Sejanus being transformed into Patrick Stewart.
A great actor is convincing in every role, but in every role, he is also himself. He subsumes all characters. In this, he shows us the breadth of human possibility. Patrick Stewart can be an ambitious, manipulative, amoral schemer like Sejanus because the potential to be a manipulative schemer is inherent in everyone. As Solzhenitsyn famously puts it, “The line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every man.” Patrick Stewart is convincing precisely because he is consistent: embodied by him, each character comes to life because he is always so vibrantly alive, so very much himself. Every line sounds more convincing when he speaks it; language sounds more eloquent in his mouth; speeches feel more meaningful; Star Trek attains a Shakespearian grandeur.
I’m using the present tense here because, while Sir Patrick Stewart is dead, Captain Picard is immortal.
Many people have rightly noted that Picard is a model of the masculine ideal: dignified but never self-important; authoritative when necessary but also able to change his mind and happy to admit he was wrong; willing to take advice but ready to follow his own judgement; calm in a crisis; adept at diplomacy but prepared to use violence when necessary. These are also the qualities of a leader.
I’ve always considered myself a follower. While I’ve become an increasingly conscientious person as I’ve got older, I enjoy having assigned tasks, knowing what I need to do and then getting on and doing it. Even in Argentine tango, I don’t want to lead. I want to be on the dance floor, in the arms or on the payroll of someone creative, competent and responsible. I often fantasise about being in Starfleet Academy and the appeal is not just the adventure of traversing the galaxy but the comfort of being part of a quasi-military organisation. And yet, what I’ve realised in the wake of Patrick Stewart’s death is that there is a way in which I could be a (very minor) leader, through my voice.
“Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.” These words, often attributed to Rumi, describe different forms of leadership. I am neither lifeboat, ladder nor shepherd, but perhaps I could be a lamp—in fact, perhaps, in a much smaller way than a luminary like Sir Pat, I already am. Patrick Stewart inspired people through his voice. The words he spoke were not his own—indeed, when he played Shakespeare, he recited lines that had been spoken an untold number of times before. But writers also say things that have been said before. Shakespeare himself famously stole most of his plot ideas from others. What’s important is how the words are said. As Alexander Pope puts it in An Essay on Criticism:
True Wit is Nature to advantage dress’d,
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d;
Something, whose truth convinc’d at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind.
I’ve always been unusually soft-spoken. I am unable to project my voice without straining. I cannot address a gathering without a microphone. I gave up on speed dating because by the end of an evening of multiple conversations in echoey rooms and bars with loud music, I am aphonic. A lot of people have complimented my voice, though: it’s breathy, sultry, sexy, I’ve been told. There’s a slight rasp to it as if I were a chanteuse delivering my songs with French insouciance and chain-smoking Gauloises between sets. But the flip side of this supposed sexiness is that when a camera probe painfully snaked its way up my right nostril and into the back of my throat, it revealed two tell-tale spots of chalk-white: vocal fold scarring. Now, I have to be careful how much I say, literally. I am masked up and nebulising several times a day, blowing bubbles through a straw and learning, I hope, how to use my voice more economically and effectively.
And that applies to my written voice, too. Writing can be hard: not many people want to put their words out there in public, especially now when they can simply let AI author things in their stead. The authentic voice is now rarer and more important than ever. I am determined to cultivate mine, to do my best to make a small number of people think ah, yes, that sounds like Iona; that’s an Iona way of expressing it.
This is what a writer can do: infuse things with meaning. Life is full of tea leaves and we have the kettle and the boiling water to extract their flavour. I can only aspire to have so much character and charisma that I can take three mundane words and make them evoke a universe of treasures to satisfy desires both subtle and gross.
Earl Grey. Hot.
RIP Sir Patrick Stewart, 1940–2026. Peerless actor, lighthouse, inspiration, benefactor to humanity.
Your memory will be a blessing.