maiden voyage …
Yesterday was the first performance of Economic Engine. Not a bad first performance, and I hope that the piece will come together even more when we re-do it at the 798 Art Area in June. There are lots of thoughts and reflections brought away from this experience so far.
Talk about hearing first: there were real problems. As we were doing the sound check, I couldn’t tell that the erhu wasn’t coming through the speakers. The sound man insisted there was a problem with the erhu’s mic, and they even brought out another air mic to replace my expensive instrument-mounted mic. Of course, it turned out to be the cable which was flaky. But the real thing for me was that I couldn’t hear the problem. I could hear the erhu fine … but I guess I was hearing the acoustic sound. I couldn’t tell that it wasn’t coming from the speakers. I can’t tell where ANYTHING is coming from. That’s a real problem. I depended on other people to tell me about balance and mix levels. For me, everything acoustic and electronic mixes together. Makes balancing the amplification impossible. I don’t know what that’s going to mean going forward.
On the good side, I think I could hear the overall mix OK once I got help balancing. My friend Bruce Gremo asked if there was some processing which didn’t work, since he heard it mostly on the erhu. In fact, I think that most of the processing worked well, but it was mostly the erhu which got radical timbral change. The rest mostly had a variety of echo and flanging effects … including long tempo-locked delays which set up lengthy canons, particularly applied to the pipa and yangqin. There were a couple of things which I don’t think did work too well, particularly some of the short echoes which seemed to get lost. I need to make some time in the next couple of weeks to really listen to the recordings, and make necessary changes in my programming of the various effects, so that everything will be better in June.
An unexpected part of the event: we were censored. There were major problems getting the video to a point where it could be performed with the music. My collaborator, Cindy Ng Sio Ieng, hadn’t done this kind of performance before, and it was a challenge for her. But she kept at it and finally, in the hours before the gig, she got everything working and it looked great. Then we did a run through in the concert hall, and the person directing the event saw the videos. There are three video artists who do small pieces which comment on the topic of China’s economy. The first movement has an artist who eats small denominations of Chinese money, and then we see the money in his digestive tracks in X-rays. The second and third movements have an artist stringing together annotated red flags on an increasingly extended hand held flagpole. The fourth movement has an artist taping a 100RMB note to a wall at eye level, then trying to put his right foot on the bill, trying to get his right foot over this shoulder. He keeps falling over, getting up, trying again in a Sisyphisian gesture of futility. Oh yes, and he naked. That was the thing the administrator at the Conservatory saw. And he asked Cindy not to show that portion of the video. I didn’t feel comfortable resisting in China … I don’t know what the consequences for me or for Cindy might be. And given all the energy which we’d put into all of this, I couldn’t bring myself to say that I’d pull the piece if the final video was pulled. I haven’t spoken to Cindy since the concert, but will call her tomorrow and find out how she feels. I hope we won’t have any trouble showing this at the 798 Art Area, and I think we need to check sooner, rather than later.
I really don’t know if I did the right thing. In the US, I would have resisted pulling the video. It’s my favorite of the set, and I think it’s a wonderfully pregnant statement about the futility and obsession of economic growth and opportunity. But here, I just didn’t know. Would we have been shut down by police? Would the administrator have pulled the plug on the projector? Would we have been put in jail? I have no idea. And without knowing about the potential consequences, it felt impossible to know the right decision about acquiescing to the censorship.
Another interesting thing in the last week was the fact that I was very angry. I had quite a bit to be upset about: when I showed up for rehearsals the room was never set up, cables had not been collected, tables were not in place, music stands had not been collected, and I ended up having to do much of the work myself, over and over. Also, the commitment to rehearsal time and to the second performance seemed to be called into question over and over. The players who most needed the work suddenly told me they couldn’t make pre-planned rehearsal times. All of this seems unprofessional to me, and it’s not surprising that it upset me. However, I wasn’t just upset: I was furious. Over and over, I would catapult into screaming rages.
Anyone who knows me won’t recognize this description. I don’t do this. I used to: when I first put on concerts when I was in my late 20s I would often explode in a rage when things went wrong. But it’s been over 30 years since I developed other ways of dealing with these kinds of frustrations. I’m generally calm, collected, and able to deal with crises with a cool head and firm hand. Last night, after dinner with several people from the Conservatory, including Yuanyuan, the woman who had the misfortune to be assigned as my “handler” for this visit, she asked if I’d promise not to be angry at her anymore. Not an unreasonable request, since my frustration was justified, but my angry explosions were abusive.
So what’s up? Wendy commented that she had been surprised that the whole time I was on heavy dosages of steroids, I didn’t seem to exhibit the “steroid rages” we’d been warned about. But now that I’ve come off the drugs, I seem to have reverted to rages I haven’t experienced in 20-30 years. Maybe this is another drug related side effect, which is just taking more time to manifest itself. I certainly hope that I can get back to my normal self, and put these rages behind me.
the noisey erhu …
I’ve had 2 days of rehearsals for Economic Engine, and virtually all my extra time has been taken by efforts to get the video performance together. I’m not convinced that any of it will really work on Thursday. And here it is Tuesday. Tomorrow I rehearse video at noon, then the whole shebang at 7:30. Then we play Thursday at 4, with a final sound check/rehearsal at 2. Yikes.
The rehearsals have been interesting for me to hear. First, with fairly dense writing for all 8 instruments, it’s really difficult for me to hear the parts distinctly sometimes. It’s hard to know if that means the writing is too dense (quite possible) or if it’s my hearing (or maybe a combination). I have ideas about what I might change in two of the movements to make it all clearer, but won’t try to do it until I get back to NYC for the performance there. Dealing with players here is just too complicated, my printer is on the fritz, and I just don’t trust the players here to keep focused on making the piece sound good when they keep waffling about whether or not they’re going to meet their commitments to play. So I’ll see about thinning things out for the New York performance, and I’ll learn what I can from the performances here.
One thing I did notice in the rehearsals is the unusual (for me) nature of the processing I’ve designed for some of the instruments. Specifically, I’ve got sections with kind of shimmery & noisy effects on erhu & guzheng, and one movement where the erhu hovers in a cloud of ebbing and flowing noise.
What do they sound like? They sound pretty much like the white noise in my left ear, and the armies of kazoos which define loud noises for me now. The processing feels much nastier than what I think of as my normal use of digital processing, which I usually try to make as elegant, delicate and beautiful as possible. I’m not entirely sure what I think of these new sounds. Though I know I’m not very happy about the white noise. Why would I want to impose that on an audience? On the other hand, if I write what I hear, why should I be at all surprised that I’m turning the beautiful erhu melody into a gritty noisy crunch? I mean, that IS what I’m hearing. And certainly when I designed these processing settings I was freshly and painfully aware of my new hearing environment. Like the density of the writing, I think I’m going to need to just go with this for the performances here, and see what I think about it when I listen and take it back home. Too much to deal with here for me to make serious changes now.
After the rehearsals the last few days I realized that I didn’t spend much time looking at stereo panning and dispersal of the sounds. Of course, that’s because I can’t hear stereo. But I think stereo is something I do need to make sure that I pay attention to, even if I can’t hear it. I still remember stereo, and the exquisite definition of sound objects in space. Why should I remove that from my music just because I can’t hear it any more? Everyone else can hear it, and it’s not made any less beautiful by my lack of access to it.
I’ve used most of today to catch up on things which have fallen behind over the last month, including this blog entry. I’ll spend the last few hours of the afternoon practicing my part for the piece, then hope for the best as we rush on towards the concert. I’d really love for this to sound beautiful and moving. Don’t know if it will. But I’ve got to keep focused on getting there as best I can. Two and a half more days.
viva viag … oops!
OK. This is a bit embarrassing, but looks like I’ve got to go there. Being a young adult in the late 60s and early 70s, it was pretty hard to find a contemporary who didn’t experiment with drugs. And although I haven’t used any psychotropic drugs or alcohol for a couple of decades now, it’s probably safe to say that there aren’t a lot of American men of my generation who haven’t tried Viagra or one of the other “male enhancement” drugs. With all the advertisements, and the realities of getting older, it seems like a handy and harmless recreational toy.
Well, maybe not. My friend Todd Reynolds was talking to another musician about my condition, and that person said: “Neil’s 60, right? He should Google ‘viagra + hearing loss’.” Turns out that there were a flurry of articles in the press around Oct 18-22 of 2007 describing a study of men stating that 29 reported hearing loss after using viagra or one of the other related drugs on the market. Although I don’t honestly recall whether or not I used the drug within the month or so preceding my hearing loss, it’s possible that I did. The reports seem to suggest that sometimes the hearing loss is reported within hours or days of taking the drug. But sometimes not. In fact, there didn’t seem to be any hard evidence that the drugs caused the hearing loss in the study, but there was a strong indication that that might be the case.
So before coming to China, I called the various doctors I’d been seeing about this, to see if anything more was known. My internist, whom I see as my regular doctor, hadn’t heard about it, and did her own checking on the net. The ENT specialist did more in depth checking: she called the person who had done the initial tests, and also called Pfizer. Turns out Pfizer wasn’t so interested in giving information as in collecting data about me (which was given anonymously, I was told). The upshot is that both doctors were concerned about whether or not further use of these drugs might lead to the loss of hearing in my other ear. And, of course, no one knows. There are no reports of bi-lateral hearing loss related to this kind of drug use, nor is there any hard evidence to tie down any irrefutable causal relationship between the drugs and the problem, since the initial paper reported only of 29 cases, out of the millions of prescriptions for the drugs which Phizer has filled. None the less, my internist pointed out that it would be a pretty bad situation to become the first person to report bilateral hearing loss related to this.
So, that’s one more drug, along with the psychotropics and alcohol to scratch off my recreational list. I don’t imagine that I’ll ever know whether or not there was a causal relationship in my case between the hearing loss and the use of the drug. But it’s really creepy to think that something which I did as a kind of recreational kick or experiment might have caused the problem.
I said at the beginning of this post that I was deciding to write this despite it being a little embarrassing. Well, given the way that Pfizer and the other companies are promoting these drugs … with laughing middle aged men leaping for joy, and middle aged couples sneaking off for relationship renewing moments despite the trials and interruptions of normal life … it seems odd that there is such a potentially life-changing side effect that doesn’t really get mentioned or publicized. The ads do say “report any sudden loss of sight or hearing to your doctor.” They don’t say: “using this drug may cause you to become deaf in one ear or blind.”
If anyone else is reading this blog, it might be a worthwhile warning for them. And if the responses to the initial web articles are any indication, the problem may be real, and may be a lot more wide spread than those 29 cases. It makes you wonder how Phizer has managed to keep this out of the news since the initial reports last October, and whether the millions or billions they have made on the drugs might obligate them to do more energetic research about the related side effects, and to feature them more honestly in their advertisements. In fact, it makes me wonder why there are advertisements for drugs at all. If I have a medical problem which requires a doctor to prescribe a medication for me, why does the drug company need to whet my appetite for the medication with ad campaigns during the nightly news?
way east …
I’ve been in Beijing now for a few days. Three nights and two days, I think. No time to think, or sleep, much less blog. But right now I’ve got a few minutes.
On the plane I managed to sleep for some of the 13 hour trip, and my personal white noise blended pretty well with the general hum of the airplane. But for one quick scare. At one point I woke up from a period of sleep with absolute silence around me. No white noise. No airplane sound. Nothing. A quick moment of relief that I was free of the white noise. Then a moment of absolute panic that my hearing was completely gone. Then my normal hearing came back … white noise on the left, my normal aural environment on my right … . It was just a moment. I presume I was still asleep in my moment of silence. But I was really terrified of arriving in Beijing and dealing with no hearing at all. Just for that moment.
Now that I’ve had 2 heavy days of work here, it’s really not any different in terms of hearing than being in New York. I’ve had to tell several people to walk on my right side so that I can hear them. I continue to have kazoos mixed with the white noise on my left. And I continue to have to focus really hard to pick out individual voices and individual audio sources and events in a busy urban environment. And things are a bit more difficult because I’m surrounded by Mandarin, rather than English. And the aural environment in Beijing is quite different than in NY … a different sense of what urban means.
I’m staying in an apartment in a compound with maybe 30% foreigners, including other Asians, Africans, Europeans and Americans. The rest are Chinese. There are tons of people. I think 8 buildings, 30 stories each in the compound. And it’s surrounded by other similar compounds. All very cosmopolitan, and lots of families. The huge garden in the center of the compound is constantly crawling with people and lots of kids. Lots of Chinese babies in their little clothes with split bottom pants and no diapers. And lots of kids of different nationalities playing together, speaking Mandarin. All this activity early in the morning, and also when I’ve been coming home at 10 at night. Likewise, outside the compound the streets seem to always be busy, foot traffic everywhere, dodging the ubiquitous cars and taxis. Lots of street food and interesting hole in the wall restaurants and food stalls. There’s a stretch right down the street which seems to have lots of taxis parked in front at night, and lots of drivers eating at make-shift tables on the curb. I wonder if I’ll get up the nerve to try some of this in my month here.
Meanwhile, I’ve been meeting with the video artist and producers of my events for the last two days, and will work on the video for Economic Engine all day today. Tomorrow afternoon I start the rehearsals of Economic Engine. As usual I feel terribly unprepared, and terrified that it will blow up on me. And that my performance will be impacted by my lack of stereo, and the general compromise to my hearing. I guess I just need to go forward and show up and make it happen. I hope I’ll be able to take some time after my video session to really practice my own part in the processing for this piece before I have to take off to set up tomorrow around noon.
putting it all together, keeping it all together …
Yesterday I finished up the score for the final movement of the piece, Hutong to Highrise, extracted the parts, and put them all on the web for the players to download. Actually, last couple of days have been intensely focused on this. I still have big chunks of two earlier movements which I think need to be fixed up. Not sure if I’ll get to these in time for the players to get them ready for the performance … but if I do, I’ll have to do it in Beijing.
Hardly noticed the white noise in the left ear, except when I did notice it. It never goes away now, though. But being focused on getting the music down keeps me engaged on sounds in my imagination’s ear, less so than on the phony sounds my left ear thinks it hears.
Meanwhile, in the midst of writing I’ve been taking care of other things which have had to get done. Getting a supply of my various prescription meds to last me through the time I’ll be away, picking up a cheap unlocked quad-band phone to use a a local travel phone with a Chinese SIM card, finalizing rental on an apartment in Beijing, corresponding with the various presenters and producers and the video artist I’ll be working with, etc. And in a few minutes I’ll be off to Kinko’s to get my printed scores bound …
Pretty much as soon as I finished the score yesterday, I was off for a dinner with a big group of friends from the neighborhood. A big Cantonese banquet in Chinatown … very different from what I’ve eaten in China, where I’ve either had hot-pot type meals or dumplings or incredible Muslim meals from western China. All much spicier than what we did last night.
Being with a big group was interesting for hearing … and something I’m getting used to, and will need to deal with on a whole different level in China, I imagine. Basically, I’m just turning my head a lot, making sure my right ear is aimed at the person I want to listen to . Sometimes I tell people to get on my right side, and sometimes it’s just too much trouble and seems like it will interrupt the conversation too much. Listening to people across a big table is also a challenge. My friend Conrad commented that he has to work much harder than other people to hear in crowded rooms because of his hearing loss. I was really aware of that last night. And not just in the crowded room … but walking across Chinatown between the subway stop and the restaurant, and also in the subway.
It seems like a by product of this is that I’m forced to limit my focus. If I let myself listen to everything that comes into my right ear, it’s just too much for me to parse out. So I find myself really isolating the voice I want to pay attention to, and mentally filtering out everything else. The effect is to make everything else just fade into the background noise, while the voice I’m focusing on really comes to the foreground. Unlike the situation before this hearing problem, when this is happening I have absolutely no idea about the content of anything other than what I’m focusing on. On the subway and at the dinner table, there were lots of conversations happening around me simultaneously, but I just let everything but the one I was actively engage with fall away. Things I’ll never know.
A quick final note: yesterday morning I was awakened by my radio alarm at 7am. I woke up lying on my right side, with my right ear pressed to the pillow. I thought: I’m hearing the radio, my right ear is in the pillow, so that must mean I can hear with my left ear!! To test it out, I stuck my finger solidly in my right ear to see just how much I could hear with my left ear. The verdict: nothing. If I lay there and really concentrated, maybe I heard some kind of undifferentiated whisper. But maybe not. In any case, I couldn’t hear enough to know I heard anything. In the street and in crowded rooms I do hear a kazoo-rattle in my left ear when there are loud sounds being heard in my right ear. But laying in bed, listening to the radio with only my left ear, I hear nothing. So I either have a long way to go, or this is where I’ll be stuck. Time will tell.
what drives me …
So, as my time to leave for China approaches, what I mostly feel is terror … not about going to China, but about being prepared musically. Did I mention that in the midst of finishing up school last week, also while finishing changes to the Opaque Air movement of The Economic Engine, my computer died? And I needed to take a day (actually, only took an afternoon, in the end) to get a new mother board? And, surprise, a new mother board means that all my applications for music no longer know that they have been authorized to run on this computer! So, as I’ve been writing the 4th movement of the piece, Hutong to Highrise, I’ve had this thought in the back of my mind that I’d better try out all my music applications NOW, so that I don’t get to Beijing and discover that things don’t work!!
So yesterday I finished the short score of Hutong to Highrise, and this morning I had a number of simultaneous terrors to deal with: get the new piece orchestrated & posted for the players; try out the applications so that I know they’ll work; make sure my plans for bringing equipment will work with luggage restrictions; play through my solo pieces to make sure everything is working since I did them last; pick up an unlocked phone to use in Beijing. Too many things to deal with. Then there are other changes I’d like to make to the two other movements, which I just know I won’t get to before arriving in Beijing.
I guess the main thing is to just keep ticking things off my list. This morning I went through and did the preliminary work to get to the orchestration (went through and made sure I’ve looked at dynamics and phrasing), then have moved on the go through and open up all my applications. Good thing, too. Every one has needed to be re-authorized because the mother board has changed. And this is the preliminary step to actually being able to play through any of my solo stuff … not to mention being able to play through a mock up of Economic Engine. Again, it puts back the work on Hutong to Highrise, but it’s got to get done before I leave, and it’s been eating at the back of my mind.
… Now, about 12 hours after I started this post, I’ve authorized all the applications, made sure that all the pieces and improvisational set-ups I use are working. Also went out and got an inexpensive quad band unlocked cell phone to take with me, so I’ll have a local phone in Beijing. Clock is ticking. It’s after 1am, and I need to get to sleep so I can get up early and get H2H orchestrated & post the parts.
What drives me? Terror, and the fact that there’s so little time. In both the little sense, and the big sense. On some level, I guess I’m writing so much these days because at 60 I’m aware that there isn’t an infinite stretch of time ahead of me, and there’s an awful lot of music I have yet to write. I imagine that just as I won’t have everything I want done by the time I head to the airport on Monday, I won’t have everything done when my time runs out in the bigger sense. But hopefully, in both cases, I’ll have done enough of what’s necessary. Though, of course. nothing is really necessary. Beijing doesn’t really need my visit. And the world isn’t crying out for me to write more music … but it does feel necessary to me.
Finally … I think I’m hearing more in the left ear today. I can put a phone up to the ear and hear something. Pretty distorted, but it’s something. Meanwhile, the white noise persists. Always there. Always louder than anything else. Oh well.
what not to believe …
Writing, going to a couple of concerts, doctor appointments and trying to get ready to leave. Plus a few minutes with the grand babies. That’s all I’ve had time for since finishing grading for the semester and closing out school Friday night to Saturday wee hours.
Friday a new hearing test said I’d definitely improved to 36% speech intelligibility in the left ear. Sounded like chipmunks speaking, but in the previous test I didn’t understand anything at all in the left ear. 0% to 36% validated my perception that something was getting through, even if it was kazoos and chipmunks. So that seemed hopeful.
Today’s final meeting with the steroid-in-the ear doc was less encouraging. She said she didn’t believe the test, that I was probably just guessing at word identification (not entirely true). When I asked about hearing aides, she started talking about implanting a titanium plug in my skull to transmit sound from my left side to my (good) right ear. Which is one of her research projects. When I said I really was not interested in that, and that I’m most interested in using a prosthetic device to get back some sense of spacial location and stereo hearing, she just shook her head and said that won’t happen. Maybe, she said, if my hearing gets back up to something like 70% speech intelligibility a traditional hearing aide might work. But she thinks that’s unlikely.
So according to her, medical treatment has officially failed. I leave in exactly a week to a place where the kind of medical care I have here in NYC won’t be available. Where do I go from here?
First, it may or may not be true that no more improvement is possible, but I’m not ready to buy it at this point. I noticed the improvement from 0% to 36% over the last few weeks, so I’ll remain somewhat hopeful that there will be more improvement. Since the improvement seems to have begun as I came off both the oral and intra-timpanus steroids, maybe that has something to do with it. I’ll never know that one.
Being on, then coming off the steroids I’ve had lots of strange reactions. Headaches. The most noxious farts of my life. Skin that suddenly became very old and damaged looking. And weird rashes on my legs, neck, back. Thought I might have run into some fleas or bed bugs or something. I asked the shot-doc about the rash, and she said it couldn’t be the steroids, since you give steroids to get rid of rashes. So I saw my dermatologist today. She looked at the rash and said: it’s steroid acne. Then she told me a story in response to the shot-doc’s comments earlier in the day. She told me about a serious eye problem she’d had, which she’d been told was unlikely to be cured or respond to treatment. A prognosis which she refused to accept. A Google search uncovered the statistic that 25% of the cases like hers cured themselves spontaneously over time. Her doc dismissed it. She dismissed him, and found other docs. She said her reaction to his prognosis was: don’t take hope away from me. At least leave me with that. She then worked on it for a year, getting advice from the best docs she could find, and eventually it went away.
At the concert last night my friend Conrad Cummings gave me a rave review of his audiologist. And the otolaryngologist who referred me to the doc who administered the steroid shots-in-the-ear called last week and made me promise to get in touch and follow up with her when I get back in late June. So I think I’ll make an appointment now to see Conrad’s guy when I get back. And I’ll go back and see my original person … And I’ll follow up any other promising recommendations which come my way. Presumably I’ll have a new hearing test when I return to put some kind of metric on where I stand at that point. And then we’ll see. Maybe there will be some improvement over the next month and a half. Maybe one of the docs will have a strategy for going forward. Or maybe I’ll find that I just have to learn to live with what I’ve got now. But I certainly don’t have to believe someone who tells me things are hopeless.
Meanwhile today I need to get the fourth movement of Economic Engine down in a full sketch by the end of the day. Which ought to be possible, since at this point I’ve thought about it enough that I think I know how it goes. As I write this, about 10pm, I’m slowly getting it all down, maybe got a quarter or a third of it on paper. We’ll see how late I can push it, and whether or not I can make this happen.
changes …
It’s been a few days, sketching the new movement of Economic Engine and finishing up obligations and grading for the semester at school. Finally done with school and back to composing and preparing for the trip to China in a little more than a week.
As I was listening to student work the other day, using earbuds from my computer, I noticed that if I pushed the left earbud in a little I seemed to hear a little sound in the left ear. A first sensation of stereo possibilities again. I tried just putting in the left earbud, and didn’t hear much. But something. I thought of writing about it here, but was a little scared I’d jinx the possibility of change. But I also noticed that going into crowded and noisy spaces, something seemed to be coming from my left. Still pretty much kazoo-like sounds, but something.
Then yesterday, in the midst of things, I had another hearing test. I was definitely able to hear things yesterday I hadn’t heard two weeks ago. The technician who administered the test said there was definitely some improvement. Two weeks ago, I was able to understand exactly 0% of speech. Yesterday I seemed to be up to about 36%. When she spoke directly into an earbud in my left ear I could indeed hear and understand her if she spoke loud enough. She sounded very like a chipmonk, but I could understand her.
I was then full of questions: could I get a hearing aid if my hearing leveled off at this percentage of loss? She said I’d progressed from “profound” hearing loss to “severe” hearing loss. A hearing aid at this point would allow me to hear louder chipmunks. But within that context, it might permit me to hear in stereo (though, of course, it would be stereo chipmunks). I see the Doc again on Monday, but regardless of what she has to say, I think I just keep on with my preparations for my trip, and see how things develop by the time I’m back at the end of June. But I do have a little more hope now.
Meanwhile, there’s little time to think about it. I’ve got a ton of stuff to get written, things to set up on my computer for the solo gigs, and another new pianist I haven’t heard yet, playing Digits tonight in a concert in the City. Sort of funny that I haven’t had a chance to go out and hear any music in a couple of months, so tonight I get to go out and hear … my own music. While it’s great to have more people playing my stuff, I dearly wish for the time to go out and hear music as a listener … Oh well. I guess it’s pretty ungrateful of me to be complaining about people playing my music. Be careful what you wish for. Also: don’t waste time complaining when you need to be writing!
when to say something …
Yesterday I spent the day in end-of semester critiques for grad students at iEAR. Arrived a few minutes early, while people were milling around having coffee and breakfast. It was nearly impossible to hear anything, because most of what I heard was an undifferentiated din of kazoos in my left ear, combined with the white noise, Left me with just a confusion of noise, people moving their mouths, and me not understanding even half of what they said. Unless they were standing on my right side.
In the room where we actually had the crits it was much easier. One person speaking at a time, and with some close concentration I was able to hear and participate in the discussion with little problem. But … I was sitting with one of our visiting “critters,” composer Kitty Brazelton, sitting on my left. Through the first part of the day Kitty kept making sotto voce comments to me, and I kept turning my head 90+ degrees to aim my good ear at her, and saying “hunh?” Felt pretty stupid and like a real conversation stopper.
When we came back from lunch and took up our places, I asked Kitty to switch places with me so that she’d be on my right side, and talking into my good ear. The afternoon was much less problematic. She and I could exchange comments, and I was more able to focus on the student work, and less on my own hearing.
For dinner, a similar problem. I at first declined an invitation to joint the visitors and some faculty and student for dinner. In part because I had too much work to do, but also in part because I was a little scared of confronting a noise restaurant and a large group of diners. Too many potential kazoos. At the last minute I decided that it was foolish to be governed by my fears, and joined the group for diner.
Of course, it was even worse than I’d feared. Unless I directly aimed my right ear at the person I wanted to hear, it was all an undifferentiated mess of kazoos and white noise. Sitting next to a student (on my left side), after a few minutes of not hearing anything she said, I told her she had to speak to my right ear. Which she did, and then we had a good conversation, and i just had to keep my focus up to filter out the surrounding noise.
So … while I really don’t want to spend my life defining myself by my limitations, I also think I need to keep learning about when I need to make an intervention and direct conversations to minimize the impact of my hearing problems. I can certainly learn to deal with noise and aural chaos as long as I can keep the important information directed to my right ear. If I have to say something about my hearing, it’s worth it to make a momentary intervention which will then allow me to focus on what I want to hear, not on what I can’t hear.
thunder on the (inner) horizon …
So busy that there hasn’t been time to write here. Spent last day and a half at brain storming session with various presenters of experimental media from around the country. Then posting the materials I have ready for the players in Beijing, and figuring out how to get my visa for China. The brainstorming session included some interesting listening experiences.
Thursday evening we listened to some work by Maryanne Amacher in what I assume was a 360 degree immersive environment. As I’m now beginning to get used to, there’s no spacialization for me, and I need to listen more attentively than in the past to discern the detail and textural counterpoint of what I’m hearing. However, what I also noticed was that the kazoos in my left ear were making it difficult to hear and to concentrate at all. So, I stuck my finger in my left ear to keep the noise down, and it seemed to work wonders. Of course, the white noise was still there, but at least each sound in the right ear didn’t have a buzzing kazoo to go along with it.
This morning, woke up and was working early, and noticed a constant rumble. It’s kind of overcast and cloudy and chilly today, and our house is up on a hill above a shopping center. So I thought, maybe thrunder? Maybe trucks unloading in the shopping center? Maybe traffic sounds from the busy street on the other side of the shopping center are carrying over to our house?
Nope. The sound was me beathing. I guess my right ear was a little clogged up. Maybe some water in there from my morning shower? Whatever caused it, I was hearing my own breath, the air coming in and out of my nose, as hugely loud and reverberant. Then I was totally freaked out, wondering if this might mean I’m losing the other ear as well. Luckily, by about 11am, my right ear cleared out, and my over-amplified breathing seems to have gone back to normal. Not a nice scare, but I’m certainly glad I still have one ear.
