Addled by Arias

I haven't written on this blog in forever. And some people (friends and loyal readers) have been asking me about it and about the CI. What's new? Yes, I'm still hearing. I'm still progressing. The time is overdue for an update.

Honestly, there are a number of things I've intended to reflect on for several weeks. All those reflections need is time. I'm at the stage in my listening journey where things are a little different. The mood has changed, and no longer am I suspended in tension and rapid-fire auditory discovery. I don't feel like my head spins in astonishment anymore as I walk through the world. All this has become, dare I say it, normalized. Or almost. I still have my moments, but the fact that I'm taking more and more things for granted is a mark of success in itself, isn't it? I don't think my progress has slowed, exactly. It's more that I've reached a place where I no longer have so much novelty to reflect on from day to day. The learning curve seems to have gone underground. Most of what I'm learning is unconscious. It's a much better place to be, really, but it does have its hazards.

More reflection to come soon, but for now I wanted to take the time to recount something more immediate. This past Wednesday I went to the opera! I put an exclamation point there because whenever I do hearing-person things like this I just smirk. Up to San Francisco we went, dressed up and ready to see Bizet's Carmen, and inside my head I kept laughing. Don't you see, I wanted to say to my peers (this was a dorm-organized trip). A deaf person is going to the opera with you! This didn't seem to strike any of them as odd (of course), and when we reached our seats way up in the nosebleed section I was just another one of the group. Now, my thoughts about opera now are less extensive than the first time I experienced it last summer, but here's what I walked away with:

1. Operas are long. Duh. But, more than being long, they draw on in seeming pursuit of the suspension of a moment, the definition of a mood through setting and music. It's an almost nostalgic form, in that you can see the present (and its accompanying cause and effect) slipping away from you even in the course of its happening, and even despite its elongation. Even if, after a few hours, all you want to do is truncate that elongation and have it be over.

2. Following the above observation: I'm an English major in college, which means that on a regular basis I spend too much time thinking about words and verbal narrative. The overall narrative structure of the opera bored me a bit, because honestly its complexity and its pacing seemed pared down. But here's what I wondered: is the operatic format one that seeks to augment this storytelling structure with the presence of music? Is music, and not character or plot or language, the main point of the opera? Probably.

3. I've enjoyed symphonic music in the past, and I still do, but I had a difficult time maintaining my interest in that music while also following a storyline. My mind wanted one or the other: give me a novel or a story or a play, or give me a symphony to listen to. I couldn't seem to find a comfortable place to settle in between. Also troublesome was the fact that of course Carmen was sung in French, but the supertitles were in English. I experience a strange sort of auditory disconnect when what I'm hearing doesn't line up with what I'm seeing. Sight is still by far my dominant sense, and when I don't encounter sound as an affirmation or a reward, that sound tends to become less interesting to me. I oftentimes end up ignoring it, to be honest.

4. I would have seriously loved someone there to explain the mechanics of the operatic sounds/music/singing/etc. to me, or at least to pinpoint its intention and mood. I'm still not very good at understanding the "feel" of a particular piece of music (mostly because, probably illogically, I want to know what it means) and I wondered what I was missing in terms of tone and ambiance. It sounded nice, and some arias sent chills down my spine, but... well, on my own I'm woefully incapable of saying anything else.

Overall, at the end of the night I walked out having enjoyed myself, happy that I'd had the experience, smug that I'd heard it and hadn't been bored out of my mind, but still feeling uncertain of what it was I'd witnessed/heard and its significance. Maybe it's that I was out of my element musically, but I think it bothered me that I couldn't say whether Carmen had been good or not. The story? Not so much, in my opinion. Too little pacing and too little solid character and too long to get through it all. But it had to be more than that; the overall performance wasn't just about what happened on stage. And my judgment, my listening, and my knowledge was way too insufficient to gauge that.

This last point hit home for me yesterday afternoon, when I ran into a friend on campus who asked me if I'd gone to see Carmen on Wednesday. (She'd heard about the dorm trip.) "Well, how was the performance?" she asked. "I was thinking of going."

"It was good," I said. And... that was all. I honestly couldn't say anything else. Going beyond that would have delved into the realm of I-was-hearing-this-for-the-first-time and this-was-my-first-real-opera and it-sounded-good-but-I-don't-really-know and... argh. A typical hearing-person answer, I imagined, would have been something like, "The symphonic accompaniment was really top-notch and the sopranos gave a stellar performance, especially what's-her-name who played so-and-so and has such-and-such kind of voice, although the tenors were a bit creaky, and I really loved so-and-so's expressiveness and vocal power as Don Jose." But what do I know. This was my first moment of being asked to judge something acoustically and totally laughably failing. Which, hey, is to be expected. It just made me feel unsettled and inadequate.

So, the real question: do I like opera? In bits and pieces, yes. The purity and drama (or whatever it is) of the sound appeals to me. But my overwhelming sense of not being able to understand it at all, and wondering if the essence of the performance is beyond my comprehension even with a CI, lingers with me. I'll need to chew this one over.

Written While Procrastinating

It's amazing how, even on a gloomy overcast day that's robbed me of an hour's sleep, I'm able to sit listening to this solo piano station on Pandora and automatically feel energized.

It's amazing how, on the good songs, the notes shoot up and something in me rises too, like muscles heaving as I inhale sweet clear air and turn back to my textbooks with greater gusto.

It's amazing how much of this I don't understand, yet how I still gravitate to something just because it "sounds good."

It's even amazing how my sister laughs at me and says, "You used to hate music!"

So "hate" probably isn't the most accurate word to use here. But point conceded. Very, very gladly conceded.

On Noises That Ruin My Concentration

Oh, there's a noise over there? Really? Okay, let's look. Oh, another noise? Wait, that one was only the door closing, not that important. Thank you for being so attentive, but let's concentrate now... I said let's concentrate! Yes, I know something else just happened in the corner, but it's not important either - are you listening to me? I said, are you listening? Come back over here! No, I don't know what that noise was, but I don't care - stop! We have more important things to do! All right. Thank you. Sit down. We are reading this book right now, and - yes, I know someone just coughed. At least, I think it was a cough - no, we are not looking! We are focusing! Hey, come back and sit down!

This is the way my CI makes me feel in the library. After four months, the noises that most fascinate my brain are the small ones, the rustlings in the corners and the muttered conversations far away - just the noises that, unfortunately, most distract my studies.

I used to think libraries were quiet places. Wrong. In principle everyone is working to keep the silence, but that doesn't stop the constant influx of sudden noises: floorboards creaking, doors clicking shut, pages rustling, people coughing. Aaargh! How am I supposed to think like this? My brain becomes hyperalert, my thought processes shatter. Never, never has studying been like this. In desperation to shut out all the clutter, I'm driven to music - which in itself can be distracting. (The other day I sat staring out the window and listening to Ravel's "Bolero" for ten minutes before I realized I wasn't reading.)

Forget the library! I'll try other places instead. But, even in my room, the sounds of the house creep in. The heaters and pipes and fans, plus who knows what else. Last week I went nuts for several minutes before realizing that the voices I was hearing (which I'd been worried I was imagining) were in fact wafting up through a crack in my window from the patio outside. There, when I looked, two people were talking in normal voices twenty feet below. Wow, and I heard that?

Even in a public place like a bus or a train, my mind is not completely my own. It keeps cavorting off to investigate murmured conversation many feet away, or the sounds of people heaving sighs and shifting in their seats. I'm reminded, moment by moment, that I am not alone or in isolation, but surrounded by others who are as functioning and alive as me. That's reassuring, in a way. But... but I like cutting the world off sometimes and sitting inside my own mind!

Too bad. Everything that moves makes a sound. That's been the rule from day one. Now - focus, focus, focus!

Reversals

The odd part is that I decided to get an implant at all.

I had dinner with a friend last week, and when I told her about my CI, she laughed and said, "You? I'm shocked." But, really, if you had told me one year ago that I would do this, I would have been shocked too.

Until this past October, I insisted to my family, friends, and anyone who knew me that I would never be implanted. It simply was not an option. It would destroy the residual hearing that I did have left - and then, if by some mistake the internal processor did not work, what would happen? I would be stuck in silence, forever. Because of the nature of surgical modification, there would be no test trial. No going back. I regarded the prospect with sinking horror. With hearing aids, I may not hear much, but I do hear. Every morning when I turn them on and shake my brain out of silence, I walk around half-muttering to myself, as if gaining reassurance from the sound of my own voice. It gives me equilibrium. Before this year, I valued that precious hearing too much to give it up, even if with a CI I stood the chance to gain far more. Psychological researchers say that people, as a general trait, are risk-averse. I suppose that's exactly how to describe me.

Besides, even though it's been over twenty-five years since the technology was first introduced, cochlear implants are still controversial in the deaf community. The sign for "cochlear implant" represents a viper's fangs sinking into the side of the skull. This, other deaf people have told me, is not positive. Essentially, some of them believe, receiving a CI is somehow akin to being bitten by a viper. The internal processor is a foreign device imposed on the deaf by the hearing world, by well-meaning but ignorant people who think that being deaf is a tragic disability that needs to be "fixed." (Deaf people, in general, rebel against any suggestion that our hearing loss reflects negatively on our abilities or self-worth.) The external processor, in its unwieldiness, only adds to the stigma.

Before I go any further, perhaps I should make a distinction between deaf and Deaf. Little-d deaf people are generally people who lose their hearing later in life, or who disengage completely from the Deaf world. I consider myself deaf, because even though I have a congenital hearing loss, I live and function predominantly in the hearing world. I have few remaining ties to Deaf culture - for, with rare exceptions, all of my friends are hearing. Of these hearing friends, only a handful sign more than a small assortment of random words and phrases, and most do not sign at all. Considering my level of hearing loss, I would like to think that I cope very well. I speak and lipread, striving to function as much like a hearing person as I can.

On the other hand, I think of the term Deaf as embodying an attitude and a cultural outlook more than a physical characteristic. For Deaf people, being Deaf is something to be proud of, just like being French or Italian. There is likely no other disabled group in the world that bands together in this way. Blind people don't, wheelchair-bound people don't, learning-disabled people don't. These groups may share common experiences or sentiments, but there is no such thing as, say, Blind culture. The reason that Deaf culture exists, I am sure, is sign language. Because deafness is, at its heart, an inability to communicate normally with other people, it is something that requires a visual language to surpass the barrier. As any linguist will tell you, along with language arises culture. For big-D Deaf people, deafness is not a disability at all, but a rich and vibrant lifestyle. The tradition of Deaf people encompasses everything from not speaking and exclusively using ASL to going to Deaf schools and interacting predominantly with other Deaf people. The Deaf community is very small, and because Deaf people tend to have a harder time in the hearing world, they sometimes disdain any efforts to fully "assimilate" with the other side. Assimilation, of course, includes cochlear implants. (A note: I am somewhat oversimplifying this divide: there is a spectrum between deaf and Deaf, and many people are accepting of both the oral and the sign language traditions.)

Although I was mainstreamed from kindergarten on, I went to a Deaf preschool and still had regular, though infrequent, contact with other Deaf people through my childhood and early adolescent years. This contact, mainly through scattered friends and a camp for the Deaf I attended every summer, kept Deaf culture constantly with me. That outlook may not have defined my identity, but it contributed to my perception of myself. Although I did not always agree with Deaf viewpoints, I understood their mindset regarding CIs. Being deaf, I felt, ought to be something I accepted about myself. It ought to be something I could cope with without resorting to outright surgical alteration. Surgery meant there was something to be fixed, something about me that could never be good enough. Getting a CI skewed the focus: it made it all about hearing, about not accepting myself as I was, about trying to fix what was wrong with me.

So what caused me to reverse my viewpoint? I think the answer, in a word, is college. Before I graduated high school and left home to attend a university a thousand miles away, I had always had the support of my family and close friends. No matter what happened, I knew I could come home and communicate with someone. But when I started college, at a university where I was the only deaf undergraduate, all of this changed. I was surrounded by people I did not know, people who in turn knew nothing about communicating with a deaf person. Instead of a confined sphere in which I could feel comfortable, I had thrown myself into the full-fledged college lifestyle, a place of constant interaction with different professors and students, a place of crowded parties and large social groups and scattered conversation. This transition is difficult for anyone, but for me it was terrifying. I felt the full extent of my isolation. I felt as if I had plunged into a vast world that had not been designed for me. Although I had sign language interpreters for my classes and extracurricular activities, the rest of the time I was on my own. Lipreading, I soon found, was never enough. Some wonderful friends made efforts to include me, but many days I felt like I could barely cope. Although it ended up being a beneficial and stimulating time, in truth freshman year was an ordeal. I loved my university, but I did not love myself. And I realized that this was only the beginning of real life, of a world filled with sound. I had chosen to take this path. And I was left asking, How can I ever do this?

After spending the summer at home with family, I fell back into my old relaxation and rhythm. I again felt like myself, like Rachel. Most of the time, the word "deaf" was removed from the equation. Hence my culture shock when I returned to college in the fall of my sophomore year. I was prepared for it this time, and I knew that I could survive (after all, hadn't I survived before?), but this somehow did not make it easier. I interacted with old friends and made new ones. More and more of the people I knew expressed an interest in sign language. Overall, I felt more assured and self-confident. But, in certain moments, I was just as isolated as before. It was neither my own fault nor the fault of the hearing friends I had; it was just a fact of being deaf. Accept it, I told myself. You can't change it. Be content. I had come to view my circumstances as a test of strength and will, but this perception often crumbled in the face of despair. Increasingly, I came to resent the idea that I did not have a choice.

I remember, a few nights in early October, still at the beginning of the academic quarter, lying in bed at night thinking exactly that. I wanted a way out. I could not do this for myself, could not break through the wall of my silence to live the rich life that I wanted. Already an introverted person, in some ways I had become even more reclusive since coming to college. I resented this, just as I resented thinking of my situation as inevitable. I wanted to change something - but wasn't I already doing as much as I could?

The thought came to me: No. I was not. It wasn't inevitable. I had more to offer. And there was another option, an option that I had never allowed myself to consider. I did not want to think of it as a silver bullet or magic cure, for I already knew it was not. But it could help, if only I put aside my fears and my pride. It needed not be a political decision at all, but a way of pursuing the human connection I longed for. It need not degrade my dignity as a deaf person, but increase it.

That's when I first considered getting a cochlear implant.