Ever since younghood, we are taught that sound is intangible. It is a disturbance in the air, a vibration of molecules, a wave that travels from a source to our ears and is then processed by the brain. We are taught that it is massless, ethereal, a ghost in the machine of the physical world.

This is a lie, without any cookies to boot.

A voice has weight. A voice has mass. I know this because I live in a world where I am perpetually being struck or lifted by the voices of others. When sight is removed from the equation, the other senses don't just get sharper, much to sighted people's amusement, they are re-contextualized. And the human voice becomes the primary tool for navigating the emotional landscape of the world. It's not just a carrier of words; it's a physical force.

Think of the last time someone spoke to you with genuine, uncomplicated cruelty. Not with anger, which is a hot, explosive force that dissipates quickly, but with the cold, deliberate intention to wound. The words themselves are only the blueprint for the weapon. The true damage is in the delivery, in the sound itself. That voice has the density of lead shot. The words leave the speaker’s mouth and travel through the air not as waves, but as projectiles. They don’t just enter your ear. They land.

A cruel voice can have the sharp, serrated edge of broken glass. It seeks out the softest parts of you and twists. It leaves splinters of doubt and self-loathing behind that you will be picking out of your soul for weeks, months, sometimes years. It can be a low, guttural thing, a voice coated in gravel, designed to scrape you raw. Or it can be thin and sharp like a needle, a precise injection of poison that goes straight to the heart. I felt words land on my skin with the chilling finality of a slap. I felt the air leave my lungs as if from a physical blow to the stomach, all from a single, perfectly weighted phrase. You reel. You stagger. And the speaker never has to lift a hand.

But if a voice can be a bludgeon, it can also be a gun. If a voice can have the weight of a stone, it can also have the weight of a warm, heavy blanket on a cold night.

A kind voice carries a different kind of mass. It is a positive, supportive pressure. It is the feeling of a steady hand on your back, guiding you through a crowded room. It is the solid, reassuring weight of a palm on your shoulder that says, I am here. You are not alone. When someone speaks to you with true warmth, with a voice that is full and resonant and utterly sincere, it can feel like a physical lift. It is a hand under your elbow, helping you to your feet when you have fallen. It is an act of construction. It builds you up. It reinforces the parts of you that have been chipped away by the stones and the shards.

And like any physical object, voices have texture. It's the first thing I notice about a person. It tells me more than their words ever could.

Some voices are like worn, soft flannel. They are comfortable, familiar, and deeply soothing. They wrap around you and offer a simple, uncomplicated warmth. You can rest in a voice like that. Other voices are like silk-smooth, cool, and elegant, but sometimes you feel them sliding right off you, offering no real purchase.

I heard voices that feel like rough, unfinished sandpaper, catching on everything, leaving irritation in their wake. And I heard voices like cool, clear water, refreshing and life-giving. There are voices that are thick and slow like warm honey, coating everything with a gentle sweetness, and voices that are brittle like autumn leaves, threatening to crumble into dust at the slightest pressure.

And then there are the textures that are histories in themselves, the ones the fools of the world, the ones with ears of tin and hearts of stone, mistake for flaws. I’m talking about accents and dialects. To demand that someone shed their accent is an act of violence; it is asking them to sand down the beautiful, intricate grain of their own history into a flat, characterless plank. The gorgeous, rolling cadence of dialects is not broken English; it is a living river of a culture with its own deep grammar, a melody forged in fire and steeped in a soulfulness that carries the weight of both profound sorrow and unconquerable joy. The lilt of an accent from across an ocean is not a mistake to be corrected; it is a map of a life, a tapestry woven with the threads of a different sun and a different soil. To hear these voices is to be offered a gift—a piece of the world, a note of a song you wouldn't have heard otherwise. The flat, sterile monotone of hate that demands conformity is the truly ugly sound. These rich, varied voices are music, and to try and silence them is to prefer the sound of a dial tone to a symphony.

We pay so much attention to what people say, to the vocabulary and the grammar. But the truth of a person, the core of their intention, is rarely in the words. It is in the sound. It is in the weight, the texture, the temperature of the voice they choose to use. It is the music, not the lyrics.

Even silence has weight. There is the crushing, heavy silence of contempt, a void that sucks all the air and warmth from a room. It's an active, malevolent force. And then there is the comfortable, shared silence between two people who need no words. It is a silence with the light, airy mass of a held breath, full of unspoken understanding. It is a silence that buoys you up.

We're all sculptors of the air. With every word we speak, we are either building people up or tearing them down. We are handing them a stone or offering them a hand. We are either wrapping them in flannel or scraping them with sandpaper. We are all walking through the world, constantly being shaped by the physical force of a million different voices.

Listen. Not to the words. Listen to the sound. What is it doing to you? Is it lifting you? Or is it pressing you down into the earth? A voice is never just a voice. It is an act of creation or an act of destruction, and we are all, every day, choosing which one to be.

If you enjoyed this essay, you might enjoy reading, Real Life by Brandon Taylor.