This is proving an incredibly hard post to write. In becoming a regular pursuit, I’m increasingly aware that music is placing me at risk of alienating deaf followers who might not share my newfound enthusiasm for it (not necessarily out of choice, you understand – sometimes it just doesn’t feature in their lives in the same way that visual art, or theatre, or sport, might not feature in yours).
On the other hand, hearing peers probably wouldn’t be able to relate to my reasons for making it so – which leaves me, and probably others like me, in a rather peculiar situation.
Recently I saw my SALT, who remarked on my improved confidence. She’d set me some lipreading exercises previously but, instead of trying them out I’d stuck to watching music videos most nights. I guess subconsciously my reasoning was, why bother going back to school when I could simply listen to pop and rock vocals?
Earlier that day I also had a CI tuning session, which at last gave me the layered sounds I’d been hoping for, rather than the initial head-splitting frequencies that my audiologist usually gave me a couple of minutes to get used to. Or was it my brain adjusting more easily than it did before? I think I’d have to have lost my hearing later in life to know the difference.
Either way, I am certainly hearing people more clearly these days. Miles says conversations between us flow more smoothly than they did when I first quit my digital hearing aid. I know when Ben starts protesting for milk, a nappy change or a nap, and when Issy starts laughing (inexplicably) at some trivial action I’ve just done – like typing on my iPhone.
Almost without looking, I can tell when Miles places the telly on mute so he can watch his favorite Pixies track on his laptop next to me (our sofa is a generous two-seater built for four), and when Ben’s own favorite tune comes on on his light-and-sound drum (he has to bang it a few times to get that particular tune just so he can start bobbing from his sit-me-up cosy). And I know, pretty much, how to mimic both children’s vocalisations.
Were it not for my growing awareness of how limited my musical choices now were, it would have ended there. Having gone right off Madonna and Bowie, I was getting into the Beatles and Elvis, but vocal sweetness aside, most of the time I found (to my irritation) the lo-fi, primitive recording obstructive.
Watching them on YouTube didn’t make any difference. Elvis hardly moved his succulent lips – and in the best clip I could find, of course his microphone, the superimposed visuals, and that pesky high collar got in the way.
When I told her about this, my SALT suggested Johnny Cash. We had a go with Walk The Line on YouTube, which at first, I liked purely for reasons of clarity. Following a couple of listens, though, I realised I simply couldn’t relate to him. Morose was the last thing I wanted to feel when I was thriving on a cochlear implant.
Not having taken much notice of music in my life before my CI, I couldn’t think of what else to try, except for those pieces of pop or rock music I’d stumbled across before, either on television, via YouTube or elsewhere. Once, during the signing of the register at a friend’s wedding last week, I saw someone press ‘Play’ on an instrumental track on her iPod, place it on a podium, and walk up to face the audience from the stage. That iPod not being on sub-wolfers, her voice projected across the whole room perfectly sonorous and clear as a bell:
The first time
Ever I saw your face
I thought the sun
Rose in your eyes
She needed no microphone to make me cry. I could have listened to her forever, tears flooding my cheeks.
But it was her voice – and those visemes – resonating above the music, rather than the ballad, that I loved. I understand that there were no vocal acrobatics in its originator Roberta Flack‘s appearance on Top of The Pops in 1973, but that didn’t discount her knack of producing lip-reading gymnastics. She was hell to make out visually.
Of course, I expected no miracles from my CI. While it has certainly transformed my life – and I have no regrets about having it done – I knew that it would never change who I am fundamentally. I was just interested in how far I could push my listening and lip-reading skills with it.
It’s still part and parcel of my deafness for me to not ‘get’ a song or piece of music, forego certain genres or sub-genres for reasons of clarity rather than taste, and to rely on a combination of moving visuals – ideally of a well-lit face with clear visemes – subtitles (or at least a good memory of the lyrics) and a super-crisp recording that allows the vocals to emerge, rather than obfuscate them. For me it is enough that I can make out the chorus at least.
For now – until someone finds a better way of remastering the sound – I’m going to have to give a lot of videos from the ’70s or earlier a miss. Apart, that is, from the Bee Gees, whose substantial back catalog leaves me spoilt for choice. Surely, a dance track that subsides at key points so Barry Gibb can emit his falsetto again just cannot be resisted.
Related post:
- How Chris Martin cut through the mechanics (themostynthomasjournal.com)
