I spoke for my brother when he was too afraid to answer – now he speaks in melodies, and I learned to listen to | Jessie Cole

ahsan65@gmail.comJuly 7, 2025

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I spoke for my brother when he was too afraid to answer – now he speaks in melodies, and I learned to listen to | Jessie Cole

WPoule my brother was small, he was barely spoke and certainly never spoke around foreigners. He could Talk, there was no development delay, he especially chose not to do so. We were close to age, less than two years old and – in the world – I spoke for him. It may be a common dynamic: big talkative sister, quiet little brother.

I was sometimes reprimanded by well -intentioned foreigners. “Stop talking about your brother,” they hung. ‘I asked him A question. And I would calm down, ashamed. My brother looks like nothing, but begged me scared to intervene.

In small children, I felt that my brother was talking without a tongue. I heard his voice in my head and I thought I was his translator. For me, it seemed natural. It is easy to make fun – the delusions of childhood – but as toddlers, we read everything around us. Thanks to the immersion in the family, we acquire the language.

Maybe my brother’s non-verbal clues seemed to me to be a language. A large part of what is communicated between people implies a history, a subtle reading of emotional states, micro-expressions and non-verbal clues. Maybe I hadn’t learned to distinguish. Associated, I read it as if he were talking.

We had always been close, but in adolescence, our world was engulfed by sorrow. We have lost my sister and my father to suicide, six years apart, while we have tense towards adulthood. I became quieter, but my brother was almost silent. Meanwhile, he learned the guitar and his music increased to fill the space. The language of loss, the language of desire. So applicant, so expressive. There are other ways to speak.

Unlike me, my brother does not remember much about our childhood.

The trauma has erased him, as it sometimes seems to do. He has no memory of our sister, whom we lost at the age of 10. In this, we are opposed. For years, I write on what happened in my family – in memory, in fiction, in the tests. Each memory shines like a pearl on a chain. Sometimes I cry that he lost the memory of his worship. Little brother, shelter with scheme eyes, boy of a few words. Always the easiest of humans to love. When he read my memories, StayHe said, “You gave me back my childhood”. I am not so deceived that I do not see that I only gave it mine.

Nowadays, my brother is a man who leaves space for silence. If you want to hear him speak, you have to learn to be silent. I learned to bite my tongue. And there is always music. Joy, wonder, melancholy, sadness, drama, so much drama. Tension, release, surprise, fear. My brother’s music moves through many moods. In song, his vocabulary is vast, her unique history. All instrumental, he talks about many influences. The sounds of our childhood. Dylan, Tom Waits, Randy Newman, Neil Young, CNSY, Joe Cocker, Tim Buckley, Roy Harper, Bruce Springsteen, Billie Holiday, First Pre-Disco Bee Gees, The Beatles, Bob Marley, Early Paul Kelly, Paul Simon, Judy Garland, John Lennon, Prince, Peter Gabriel, Sade and Sting. By listening, you can catch clues of all this, as well as the intensity of an inner world rarely expressed verbally. It’s alive, he pulse. The whole story, all the feeling. In books, I gave him my childhood. In music, he gives me his.

Here I am, I always speak for him! I hear these well -intentioned adults from our childhood: “I asked him A question. Go! Go listen to her songs!