LOST SOUNDS

Extraordinary Adventures in the world of Lost Sounds

A tale of ears and hearing.

I had been trying to write this as a tidy story and got horrendously stuck.   I lost track of what I was trying to say and why.  Then something happened to make me realise - this is no tidy story.   The wild adventure is just beginning.   

But first this: It was lunchtime on a weekday.   We were crunching on toast and slurping our vegetable soup.   Warm sunlight streamed through the windows, as the vrrrrrm vrrrmm vrmmm of chainsaws echoed all around (Antony, the tree surgeon and his team were chopping back the willow tree to make it safe.   A huge branch had fallen down with a whump, a week or so previously.)  Then there was the clink thump sound of a letter arriving through the letterbox.   ‘It’s for you,’ said Andrew ‘looks like it’s from the hospital’.  Then I read the words ‘Dear Mrs. Kay, …you have a brain tumour…’

I discovered later that it’s not a brain tumour.

What I do have is a benign tumour.   My friend, Janet, gave it the name of Cyril.   So now that is his name.   In short, Cyril is a Vestibular Schwannoma and is very small, but he is wrapped around three nerves behind my ear and he has mucked up my hearing in my right ear.   Sound is muffled.

I went to see a wonderful Ear Nose and Throat Consultant  (called Mr. Sam McKeith) at the Nuffield Hospital.   He told me the bottom line.   He gave me the full lowdown.   I so much appreciated him for that.   Here’s the gist of it:  One day, if Cyril decided to grow and get too big and it was needed to take him out, these nerves would have to be cut.   A hearing nerve; a balance nerve and one that controls muscles in the face.  The longer Cyril stays as he is, the better.   So far, he’s just hanging out there.   Long may that last.   If Cyril grows, I could lose my hearing.  If Cyril shrinks, I could lose my hearing.  

A small digression: The inner gyroscope. 

I read that Dune 45 in Soussvlei, Namibia is made of 5 million year old sand.   It’s a star dune tinged red and I had climbed half way up.   We were aiming to get to the top in time to watch the sunrise.    There was a narrow path to the top.   The path up and down was along one of the edges.   Sand swept downwards at a dizzying angle on either side of the path.   I was quite slow and Andrew has gone on ahead.   Then, just like that, I couldn’t tell which way was up.   Have you ever wondered how you know which way is up?   An inner gyroscope lets you know this.   I’d never really thought about that before.   I told myself ‘of course I know which way is up and which is down.’  ‘Nope,’ said my body.   I realised  I had a choice at that moment.   I could panic, which would likely make me very unsafe or I could sit down and wait.   I sat and relaxed as much as I could while people clambered over me.   The sun rose orange over the Namib desert and I sang a song of longing to the sunrise.     When Andrew came back, he helped me down.   Just one step at a time.   Later, I discovered, this happened because of Cyril.   The consultant told me I should avoid circumstances without a horizon.  Sea diving was probably not a great idea.  

In the meantime, I was very aware that my sense of the sound all around me was different.   It was all lopsided.   I felt like I was missing normal reception from a big chunk of the world.  The sense of grief was enormous.  

I embraced the technology to help me hear somewhat normally.   A hearing aid? Yes! Get it in that ear.   Equipment to help me perform?  Yes!   Buy that handy equipment.  When performing music, musicians usually use a monitor.   It’s a speaker that faces the musician rather than the audience, allowing the performer to hear what they are doing.   I need to be able to hear my drums clearly and in order to do that, I send my sounds directly to my ears.   I found a very neat piece of wireless equipment that lets me do this.  Then there’s another choice to make… earbuds or bone conduction earphones.   Yes, I say, Yes.  Let’s try them both.  In a fit of enthusiasm, I bought medical tape to stick the earphones down to my ears and stop them from slipping out.    I wanted to try two different kinds to see which would work and landed up buying two rather large boxes.    Tape anyone?   We have lots.   

Through all of this, there were all of my stories and songs zooming about in my brain.   Spilling out of those, their characters who have become an inextricable part of my life.  There’s the Riverhorse; the nightmare eater;   the clockwork grandma; the infinite library inside a coffee shop…

It’s always seemed like ultimately there’s never a choice but to share the stories.   No matter what.   

Here was a curious realisation.   My sound making was theoretically unchanged.  It’s my listening back or my feedback loop that had altered.  

I watched and listened to a few videos made by Dame Evelyn Glennie (the amazing Scottish percussionist, who also happens to be deaf.)   In one, she was talking about feeling sound and how she learned to feel sounds at a young age.    Her body had become intensely tuned to vibration and it was as if her whole body was one big ear.    It was heartening and amazing.   Sadly, I felt a little separated from her enthusiasm.   My rational mind intervened and worried that it was just too late for me.  It was just too late to learn such skills.  

In the meantime, I was stuck with writing this.   I wondered if it was time to give it up.   Then something happened.   A tiny strand of curiosity steered me again towards Evelyn Glennie’s video about feeling sound.   In the video she played a large drum.   This time, I listened, I really listened.  That’s when I heard the invitation.   It sounded like an invitation for me to feel the sound too.   I didn’t dismiss it.  My curiosity was piqued.   What would happen if I tried to feel the sound while playing the Rhodes electric piano.   I set it all up and sat quietly.   I shut my eyes, breathed slowly and played a few notes.   I noticed that my feet were vibrating and there was shimmering warmth moving up my legs.   It moved in my tummy and lower back.  My heart was vibrating and warm and there was a feeling of a kind of love.  I took the cover off the inner workings.    There’s wood and metal and parts that strike other parts and the metal (called tines) vibrates and sends a signal through an electromagnetic pickup.   As I played, I put my hands on the tines.   For the first time, I felt them vibrating, it wasn’t just something I knew intellectually,   I could feel it happening.  I felt the wooden harp vibrating.    I felt the vibrations in my fingertips as I played the notes.    I felt  how the whole instrument shimmered as I played, right down to its bones and I felt that I was shimmering too.   Right down to my bones.  

In that moment, I was reminded of what I had temporarily forgotten about singing.  When I sing, my whole body sings.    Could it be true also, that when I sing, my whole body listens?   How about, when I sing my whole body hears? My whole body ears?   Why not?

That was when I returned to writing this.

A door has opened and it has opened very wide.  I know that my singing has just opened up to a whole new world too.   I’m not in a rush.   I don’t want to preempt or anticipate how that will go by writing anything more now.   This will come in time.  

To say I’m feeling excited, is an understatement.  

The world of feeling sound.  What an adventure this is going to be.    I’m diving in.