Most of us take our voices for granted, but New Yorker writer John Colapinto got a scare several years ago when his failed him.

After working every day, mostly in silence, he damaged his vocal cords while singing with a rock band in the evenings after work.

“I would jump up at the end of the day, take the subway to our rehearsal space and then just start wailing over there, cranked up guitars and drums. I mean, zero to 60 with my voice, just crazy,” he says. “Anyone that knows anything about proper singing knows you don’t do that.”

Colapinto’s voice became raspy as a result of a polyp — a bump on the edge of his vocal cord. In his new book, This Is the Voice, he describes his own injury and journey exploring the complexity of human speech.

The term “vocal cord,” he learned, can be misleading.

“Our vocal cords don’t produce sound like a violin string or a guitar string,” he says. “In fact, it’s a valve at the top of our throat that, under pressure from the lungs, vibrates in this way that chops the air into these pulses.”

Colapinto says even the simplest of sentences — like “give me the salt” — also requires a complex set of the vocal “gymnastics” of the tongue and throat that relies on timing and gives rise to a sort of music that is human speech.