Showing posts with label listening. Show all posts
Showing posts with label listening. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
It's About Total Communication
"Do you still use total communication?" an old friend of mine asked me this past week.
It'd been a while since I used the term, but I said (and signed), "Yes. Yes, I do." We sat down and proceeded to catch up over coffee, and it occurred to me that "total communication" is, in fact, the best way to describe the varied conversational strategies I seek and use in my daily life. It also occurred to me that I haven't blogged about it before, at least not beyond a passing remark or two.
The term total communication (it even has its own wikipedia page!) refers to an idea that tries to find a middleground between the long-fraught territories of oral versus sign language-based deaf education. It was in vogue during my stint at the New Mexico School for the Deaf in the early '90s, and I also remember it playing into the philosophy of the summer camp for the deaf I attended from ages nine through 14. (By the time I entered mainstreamed schools in elementary school and onwards, total communication had firmly ingrained itself into my family's lifestyle and there was no going back.) Many of the communication strategies I used in my younger years and continue to use today are closely tied to total communication, which seeks to offer deaf individuals with a range of communication tools and strategies, from sign language (ASL/SEE/pidgin/whatever) to oral and auditory skills, to lipreading to reading and writing, to visual aids and captioning and all the technology that's available at the moment. Even cued speech, too, which I personally don't know but have seen a few friends use. (It's wild.) Basically, any form of communication goes – when you're living with a profound hearing loss, you need to make use of all the tools you can. You need to be multidimensional!
I've been reflecting on this multidimensionality lately, as it continues to be very marked in my life. With the recent medical/treatment/education shift to cochlear implants and other advances in technology, my opinion is that total communication is no less important than it used to be. Deaf culture-based arguments aside, a cochlear implant is not a "fix." It does not completely "cure" a child of his or her deafness, or an adult for that matter. I'm still as deaf as ever once the device switches off. When it's on, it has placed a massive amount of sound waves in my possession, but the sound quality still doesn't equal natural hearing. I still reach for my bag of tricks. As I get older and settle into my new sense of identity with the CI, I find that I'm strangely fond of my ability to switch gears at will. Listening is coming, slowly. I can lipread. If I'm with another deaf person or with a close hearing friend who signs, I sign. I see it, understand it, use it, and find it useful. Otherwise, I speak and that works perfectly well. I watch for nonverbal cues. I dodge any complications with making phone calls by texting and emailing constantly. Depending on the situation and the person, I may find myself communicating in many different ways. Being flexible with communication has empowered me in many different ways, and I find that I'm fondest of the people who can be perceptive and flexible in their communication strategies as well. It's a useful skill.
I keep dwelling over the state of deaf education these days, hoping that the new focus on cochlear implants doesn't smother all the other strategies that can make a deaf individual successful. It scares me to think of dumping a deaf kid into everyday life armed with his or her CI alone. Heck, even if that deaf individual doesn't require sign language after receiving a CI, signing is still worthwhile. (Signing is worthwhile for hearing people too. If only because it's fun.) And, switching to the other hand while returning to the Deaf culture argument, a fiercely sign language-based lifestyle doesn't justify ignoring the prospects of communicating via listening, lipreading, or writing. It's not one thing or another: the more ammo you have in your arsenal, the better. I used to be ambivalent about this idea, as one might find looking back over the very first posts of this blog, but I'm not that way anymore.
I sat down with my friend this past week, as I've sat down with a few other longtime friends this summer. We both talked out loud, we signed, we probably found ourselves lipreading and watching each other closely. It made things easier for both of us. I walked out thinking of a multiple-choice exam in which the answer is "all of the above." Total communication. That's it. The best part was doing it so effortlessly.
One more scenario: this morning I went to drop off a big package at the post office. Standing in line, I grew distracted and didn't realize the clerk was calling me to the counter. Then I grew distracted again and needed to ask him to repeat what he said. These two things must have tipped him off. I saw his expression change a bit. He started speaking more clearly. Then when I was walking off, he raised his open palm to his chin, then extended it outward: clearly the sign for thank you. Once, at a different time in my life, I would have almost kicked myself. Had I been that obvious, made my disability that apparent? Had I failed to pass completely, to integrate myself seamlessly into hearing person land? (Passing is a topic I ought to blog about sometime.) This time, though, no matter. I grinned, somewhat nonsensically signed thank you back, then walked out thinking, I love it when random hearing people do things like that.
Total communication.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Listening is Language!
So my further posts on 2012 resolutions never materialized. To be continued, I guess.
For the moment, I'm just so astounded by how listening and language go hand-in-hand, at least at my current stage in the CI journey. Two auditory therapy sessions I've had in the last two weeks have hit it home for me just how much progress I've made in terms of piecing together sounds when those sounds come in the form of full sentences and phrases. That's the way listening is intended to be, right? Occasionally we hear and discern single words, but more often than not we are listening to the constant flow of the world around us. Sound doesn't happen in a bubble, a vacuum, in which individual words are discrete and isolated. And now I'm doing a better job of hearing that stream of speech and feeling comfortable with it, grabbing onto each piece as it comes, letting the whole thing fit together in my mind. Like magic, honestly.
Let me repeat that last bit: I'm hearing that stream and feeling comfortable with it. Haha! How amazing is that? I still clearly, clearly remember the days (not too long ago!) when the thought of listening to anything beyond one or two words terrified me. It felt impossible - really, it was impossible. During speech therapy in the first eighteen years of my life, my SLP and I would regularly do some base-level listening skills exercises, to develop and use the little hearing that I did have. These exercises came in the form of drills involving the same sets of words over and over again (baseball, bluebird, ice cream - anyone who has a hearing loss and has been subjected to these words in the auditory testing chamber can certainly relate!), some low-level questions about myself (what is your name? what is your address?), and some others that I can't remember, mostly because there wasn't much space to be creative. I never progressed too far beyond these exercises, which after a while we undertook mostly for maintenance and to pair speech development with some level of listening awareness. At that point, I couldn't imagine what the world of listening felt like beyond bluebird, bathtub, sailboat.
But now something ironic has happened. My brain, which already has its connections firing and ready to go with language (something that develops along with listening in hearing children - boy, has my own process taken a different path), is now jumping on that language/listening partnership with surprising gusto. When I drill minimal pair words, or any single words at all, I continue to feel less than confident. These words and drills do exist in a vacuum, a space in which the dynamic, interactive, problem-solving and language-using skills of my brain have no chance to strut their stuff. Single-word drill exercises rely heavily, if not quite solely, on my still underdeveloped capacity to hear something and have the appropriate neurons fire straight to an appreciable meaning. With one word and no linguistic context, that's a pretty hard thing to do. I overanalyze, return to thinking about phonemes and speech production, and end up feeling stuttering and paralyzed. So, instead, the exercises that I've done involving sentences or linguistic phrases (even when these fall into a wide-open set!) have recently become my favorites. They speak to what I already know how to do, but allow me to use my newfound listening skills to exhibit those existing grammatical and language-based proclivities.
A few examples. Exercises with my auditory therapist that involve sentences, stories, questions, and interactive language-based listening skills have recently become so, so much easier than they used to be. Instead of this unintelligible stream of sound that whizzes by too quickly for me to grasp, making my brain panic and scream and want to revert to single-word drills where I will at least have only a few phonemes to make sense of, I've somehow arrived at the point where I can proceed much more methodically. The words seem to go by slower instead of at warp speed, because I am able to make more sense of them when they do come. My grammatical sense kicks in: there's the subject, verb, pronoun, conjunction. If I miss one or another, I hold that spot in my mind until I have enough auditory information to go back and fill in the blanks, matching the rough sketch of what I might have heard with something more precise. And, in the process of filling in those blanks (something remarkably like lipreading! lifelong skills ftw!) I actually end up learning. The next time I hear that missed word, I jump on it much quicker. There are fewer gaps in general these days as I expand my auditory memory and become more skilled at grabbing words out of the air. The best days are when I don't need to think analytically at all, but when the words simply - come. Though I of course still get stuck, sentences like that are becoming more frequent.
All this auditory information would have been unfathomable to me a few months ago, let alone years. And in my daily interactions with people, I find that my mind latches onto phrases that others say to me at close range while passing. "Have a nice day," "see you later," "sounds good," "how are you?", and so forth are now old friends in my conversational listening world. I'd likely catch more than that if I tried, or had to, or put in the time to familiarize myself with these people's voices. I'm a little giddy just thinking of all this conversational speech. The new frontiers that have opened up, and the new and wonderful clarity that I'm discovering with the CI, where language just comes in and sounds and feels natural, like I've visually known it for years but yet never discovered in the specific mode of hearing.
I really can't describe this newfound liking for listening-cum-language skills or how much it means to me. Listening is language! Just like language on the page or signed in the air or anywhere else! Ahhh what a concept!
For the moment, I'm just so astounded by how listening and language go hand-in-hand, at least at my current stage in the CI journey. Two auditory therapy sessions I've had in the last two weeks have hit it home for me just how much progress I've made in terms of piecing together sounds when those sounds come in the form of full sentences and phrases. That's the way listening is intended to be, right? Occasionally we hear and discern single words, but more often than not we are listening to the constant flow of the world around us. Sound doesn't happen in a bubble, a vacuum, in which individual words are discrete and isolated. And now I'm doing a better job of hearing that stream of speech and feeling comfortable with it, grabbing onto each piece as it comes, letting the whole thing fit together in my mind. Like magic, honestly.
Let me repeat that last bit: I'm hearing that stream and feeling comfortable with it. Haha! How amazing is that? I still clearly, clearly remember the days (not too long ago!) when the thought of listening to anything beyond one or two words terrified me. It felt impossible - really, it was impossible. During speech therapy in the first eighteen years of my life, my SLP and I would regularly do some base-level listening skills exercises, to develop and use the little hearing that I did have. These exercises came in the form of drills involving the same sets of words over and over again (baseball, bluebird, ice cream - anyone who has a hearing loss and has been subjected to these words in the auditory testing chamber can certainly relate!), some low-level questions about myself (what is your name? what is your address?), and some others that I can't remember, mostly because there wasn't much space to be creative. I never progressed too far beyond these exercises, which after a while we undertook mostly for maintenance and to pair speech development with some level of listening awareness. At that point, I couldn't imagine what the world of listening felt like beyond bluebird, bathtub, sailboat.
But now something ironic has happened. My brain, which already has its connections firing and ready to go with language (something that develops along with listening in hearing children - boy, has my own process taken a different path), is now jumping on that language/listening partnership with surprising gusto. When I drill minimal pair words, or any single words at all, I continue to feel less than confident. These words and drills do exist in a vacuum, a space in which the dynamic, interactive, problem-solving and language-using skills of my brain have no chance to strut their stuff. Single-word drill exercises rely heavily, if not quite solely, on my still underdeveloped capacity to hear something and have the appropriate neurons fire straight to an appreciable meaning. With one word and no linguistic context, that's a pretty hard thing to do. I overanalyze, return to thinking about phonemes and speech production, and end up feeling stuttering and paralyzed. So, instead, the exercises that I've done involving sentences or linguistic phrases (even when these fall into a wide-open set!) have recently become my favorites. They speak to what I already know how to do, but allow me to use my newfound listening skills to exhibit those existing grammatical and language-based proclivities.
A few examples. Exercises with my auditory therapist that involve sentences, stories, questions, and interactive language-based listening skills have recently become so, so much easier than they used to be. Instead of this unintelligible stream of sound that whizzes by too quickly for me to grasp, making my brain panic and scream and want to revert to single-word drills where I will at least have only a few phonemes to make sense of, I've somehow arrived at the point where I can proceed much more methodically. The words seem to go by slower instead of at warp speed, because I am able to make more sense of them when they do come. My grammatical sense kicks in: there's the subject, verb, pronoun, conjunction. If I miss one or another, I hold that spot in my mind until I have enough auditory information to go back and fill in the blanks, matching the rough sketch of what I might have heard with something more precise. And, in the process of filling in those blanks (something remarkably like lipreading! lifelong skills ftw!) I actually end up learning. The next time I hear that missed word, I jump on it much quicker. There are fewer gaps in general these days as I expand my auditory memory and become more skilled at grabbing words out of the air. The best days are when I don't need to think analytically at all, but when the words simply - come. Though I of course still get stuck, sentences like that are becoming more frequent.
All this auditory information would have been unfathomable to me a few months ago, let alone years. And in my daily interactions with people, I find that my mind latches onto phrases that others say to me at close range while passing. "Have a nice day," "see you later," "sounds good," "how are you?", and so forth are now old friends in my conversational listening world. I'd likely catch more than that if I tried, or had to, or put in the time to familiarize myself with these people's voices. I'm a little giddy just thinking of all this conversational speech. The new frontiers that have opened up, and the new and wonderful clarity that I'm discovering with the CI, where language just comes in and sounds and feels natural, like I've visually known it for years but yet never discovered in the specific mode of hearing.
I really can't describe this newfound liking for listening-cum-language skills or how much it means to me. Listening is language! Just like language on the page or signed in the air or anywhere else! Ahhh what a concept!
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Resolutions, Part I: Listening as Habit
First post of 2012! This is a little strange, seeing as 2012 is going to be a banner year for a lot of things, and it's here already. College graduation, figuring out what to do with my life - compared with that, my two-year anniversary with the CI is exciting but a bit less prominent.
I've been reflecting on life during this holiday break, as I suppose many people tend to do at this time of year, and although much of it is too banal or confusing to put down in words, I've noticed two themes in my thoughts relevant to this blog. The two resolutions I'd like to make in 2012, pertaining to deafness/hearing loss/hearing, are to push myself and my hearing more, while also accepting and even embracing the things I cannot change, and to clearly ask more of other (hearing) people. Let me expand a bit on the first part. It's complex enough, and maybe my reflections on the other pieces will follow in future posts.
One and a half years later, my biggest challenge with the CI is the fact that my brain is still not accustomed to relying on hearing. I literally run into my issues of plasticity every day: it's struck me how much easier this would be to do as a child. Children who are implanted early and who know little of deafness do not approach the entire experience with any preconceived notions. Their brains are young, pliable, and willing to accept and integrate the presence of sound. Throughout this whole journey, my maturity (and admittedly my analytical mind) have been key assets in helping me progress, but those factors still aren't the same as a naive mind that embraces neural changes with arms wide open. Hearing, for me, is still stuck at the same phase as being a non-native learner of a foreign language. The sound enters my brain and I stop, suspended for a moment, translating it into intelligible thoughts, words, and associations. Gato is cat. Id est is that is. EeeEeerRRrerr is the vacuum cleaner, or a car, or someone's voice calling my name. (Okay, so this process is currently more tied into linguistic comprehension than environmental sounds. Those are coming more and more automatically.) Once I know what I've heard, or think I do, then I reenter real life. The problem is that oftentimes it's easy enough to dismiss those noises as they come in, simply because the process of cognitively figuring out what they are requires too much brainpower (or because I honestly don't know, and there's no one else around to ask, or I don't feel comfortable asking). Listening, really listening, is something I need to remind myself to do. It's still a translation. It doesn't always happen automatically.
I've been reminded of this time and time again while I've been home. I've already found that, when I'm at auditory therapy or otherwise focusing on listening for an extended period of time, it takes me a good ten to twenty minutes to really warm up and get into the groove of hearing. (And then I get tired. Of course. Shelf life of optimal auditory concentration is short.) While I've been home, my mother, crafty as she is, has taken to positioning herself so that I cannot see what she's saying. When I try to turn my head or motion for her to come where I can see her, she refuses. And then she speaks.
I stop. Sometimes I ask her to repeat, but not always. In silence, I stare ahead of me for so long that I wonder if I really understood anything. But the mental wheels are only turning, turning the words over like pebbles in my hand, experimenting with what they feel like. Sometimes I search my mental dictionary, grasp after context, try to intellectually work backwards and guess what she could have been talking about, but now more often than not I just let my unconscious work. It's an odd feeling, vacant but at the same time teeming with anticipation. And then - the words come. The entire sentence. Nearly ten or twenty seconds later - an eternity in conversational terms - I deliver what she said, and then come up with my own answer. "Yes, get me a glass of wine - white, please."
I can do it. The words are there. I almost never miss, within the space of one sentence. "You can do it," my mother tells me, poking my shoulder. So why aren't I hearing and grasping more things, more often? I still imagine what it would be like to overhear conversations, to constantly pick up on words I don't see.
It's a question of concentration, of mental resources, and most of all of habit. If I can see someone's face, or move so that I can see better, it's as if the newfound hearing-reliant part of my brain switches off. It does help out, but it's only the supporting actor. When I can't see, that supporting actor is too timid to assume the main role, or doesn't even think of jumping into the spotlight. And if I'm not given time to process, if I'm not speaking with a friendly and understanding close friend or family member, listening is a moot point anyway. Right now, I could probably have a decent base-level conversation in quiet with a familiar voice, but it'd take me a long time to think, translate, and then respond. Most conversations, unfortunately, are not like that. Most people want effective communication, something that at this point I can accomplish better by sight than by sound. (If they really cared about crossing over to my level, wouldn't more of them learn sign language?) And so my brain goes on relying mostly on seeing.
This is an interesting problem, and it's one that I'd like to continue to explore throughout the new year. Here's to listening, to learning to really listen, and to keeping close the kinds of people who will enable me to do that. And here's to that giddy rush I get when I sit there, inside my mind, and realize that I have understood.
I've been reflecting on life during this holiday break, as I suppose many people tend to do at this time of year, and although much of it is too banal or confusing to put down in words, I've noticed two themes in my thoughts relevant to this blog. The two resolutions I'd like to make in 2012, pertaining to deafness/hearing loss/hearing, are to push myself and my hearing more, while also accepting and even embracing the things I cannot change, and to clearly ask more of other (hearing) people. Let me expand a bit on the first part. It's complex enough, and maybe my reflections on the other pieces will follow in future posts.
One and a half years later, my biggest challenge with the CI is the fact that my brain is still not accustomed to relying on hearing. I literally run into my issues of plasticity every day: it's struck me how much easier this would be to do as a child. Children who are implanted early and who know little of deafness do not approach the entire experience with any preconceived notions. Their brains are young, pliable, and willing to accept and integrate the presence of sound. Throughout this whole journey, my maturity (and admittedly my analytical mind) have been key assets in helping me progress, but those factors still aren't the same as a naive mind that embraces neural changes with arms wide open. Hearing, for me, is still stuck at the same phase as being a non-native learner of a foreign language. The sound enters my brain and I stop, suspended for a moment, translating it into intelligible thoughts, words, and associations. Gato is cat. Id est is that is. EeeEeerRRrerr is the vacuum cleaner, or a car, or someone's voice calling my name. (Okay, so this process is currently more tied into linguistic comprehension than environmental sounds. Those are coming more and more automatically.) Once I know what I've heard, or think I do, then I reenter real life. The problem is that oftentimes it's easy enough to dismiss those noises as they come in, simply because the process of cognitively figuring out what they are requires too much brainpower (or because I honestly don't know, and there's no one else around to ask, or I don't feel comfortable asking). Listening, really listening, is something I need to remind myself to do. It's still a translation. It doesn't always happen automatically.
I've been reminded of this time and time again while I've been home. I've already found that, when I'm at auditory therapy or otherwise focusing on listening for an extended period of time, it takes me a good ten to twenty minutes to really warm up and get into the groove of hearing. (And then I get tired. Of course. Shelf life of optimal auditory concentration is short.) While I've been home, my mother, crafty as she is, has taken to positioning herself so that I cannot see what she's saying. When I try to turn my head or motion for her to come where I can see her, she refuses. And then she speaks.
I stop. Sometimes I ask her to repeat, but not always. In silence, I stare ahead of me for so long that I wonder if I really understood anything. But the mental wheels are only turning, turning the words over like pebbles in my hand, experimenting with what they feel like. Sometimes I search my mental dictionary, grasp after context, try to intellectually work backwards and guess what she could have been talking about, but now more often than not I just let my unconscious work. It's an odd feeling, vacant but at the same time teeming with anticipation. And then - the words come. The entire sentence. Nearly ten or twenty seconds later - an eternity in conversational terms - I deliver what she said, and then come up with my own answer. "Yes, get me a glass of wine - white, please."
I can do it. The words are there. I almost never miss, within the space of one sentence. "You can do it," my mother tells me, poking my shoulder. So why aren't I hearing and grasping more things, more often? I still imagine what it would be like to overhear conversations, to constantly pick up on words I don't see.
It's a question of concentration, of mental resources, and most of all of habit. If I can see someone's face, or move so that I can see better, it's as if the newfound hearing-reliant part of my brain switches off. It does help out, but it's only the supporting actor. When I can't see, that supporting actor is too timid to assume the main role, or doesn't even think of jumping into the spotlight. And if I'm not given time to process, if I'm not speaking with a friendly and understanding close friend or family member, listening is a moot point anyway. Right now, I could probably have a decent base-level conversation in quiet with a familiar voice, but it'd take me a long time to think, translate, and then respond. Most conversations, unfortunately, are not like that. Most people want effective communication, something that at this point I can accomplish better by sight than by sound. (If they really cared about crossing over to my level, wouldn't more of them learn sign language?) And so my brain goes on relying mostly on seeing.
This is an interesting problem, and it's one that I'd like to continue to explore throughout the new year. Here's to listening, to learning to really listen, and to keeping close the kinds of people who will enable me to do that. And here's to that giddy rush I get when I sit there, inside my mind, and realize that I have understood.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
From Lipreading to the Radio to Hearing
Earlier this fall, I was on the radio. Or, rather, my writing was! (Long story short: an essay I wrote appeared in an on-campus literary magazine, after which someone from the Stanford Storytelling Project, a radio show on the local KZSU station, approached me and asked if I'd be interested in reading it as part of an upcoming episode. Although I didn't want to read it myself - I didn't feel that my verbal reading skills would do it justice - I was flattered and more than happy to comply if someone else recorded.)
I shared the date and time of my radio appearance with my family and friends, but didn't actually listen myself. That is, until this week when a friend reminded me that my essay, now in MP3 format, did have a presence on the web archives. Here it is, at the bottom:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/shows/season3/209-episode-310-the-human-voice.html
(Text version searchable elsewhere.)
A few days ago I pressed "play" and sat in my room while it filled with the sound of my words, in someone else's voice. (With transcript on hand, of course. It may be my own writing, but my memory isn't perfect.) As I told my friend afterwards, it was neat but it was also strange.
One thing people have often commented on regarding my writing is its pacing and acoustic flow. They've asked me how I've come to understand the metrical rhythm that is inherent to language without ever having heard it. Or they ask me if I hear my own thoughts or words in my head like hearing people do. I'm not quite sure. I don't know what it feels like to be inside someone else's mind, so how would I answer? Writing for me has long been a matter of feel, or of seeing the visual balance of the words and their accompanying rhetorical devices on the page. Thinking about writing, or about words, likewise happens on that almost-unconscious level of feel. I touch words more than I hear them. I grasp their texture and their shape as they pass by, and although some of this might be related to sound it would be reductive to narrow that process to the physical property of hearing. I do gauge how my words unfold in terms of timing and rhythm, but on the whole rhythm isn't directly tied to sound. It's a more deeply-engrained property of the body, for me long associated with physicality.
Hearing all of these things, in the form of actual sound waves, was a remarkable experience. I won't say that listening to my essay made it feel more real to me, or anything like that. It didn't. Writing, for me, will always exist in the mind, in the life of the mind and its particular moods and flavors. But I still enjoyed accessing how the texture and affect of my prose translated into sound waves. And did experience a bit of a surreal moment, besides, when my mind made the leap from content to form: lipreading to the radio to hearing. It forms a nice little circle, doesn't it?
I shared the date and time of my radio appearance with my family and friends, but didn't actually listen myself. That is, until this week when a friend reminded me that my essay, now in MP3 format, did have a presence on the web archives. Here it is, at the bottom:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/shows/season3/209-episode-310-the-human-voice.html
(Text version searchable elsewhere.)
A few days ago I pressed "play" and sat in my room while it filled with the sound of my words, in someone else's voice. (With transcript on hand, of course. It may be my own writing, but my memory isn't perfect.) As I told my friend afterwards, it was neat but it was also strange.
One thing people have often commented on regarding my writing is its pacing and acoustic flow. They've asked me how I've come to understand the metrical rhythm that is inherent to language without ever having heard it. Or they ask me if I hear my own thoughts or words in my head like hearing people do. I'm not quite sure. I don't know what it feels like to be inside someone else's mind, so how would I answer? Writing for me has long been a matter of feel, or of seeing the visual balance of the words and their accompanying rhetorical devices on the page. Thinking about writing, or about words, likewise happens on that almost-unconscious level of feel. I touch words more than I hear them. I grasp their texture and their shape as they pass by, and although some of this might be related to sound it would be reductive to narrow that process to the physical property of hearing. I do gauge how my words unfold in terms of timing and rhythm, but on the whole rhythm isn't directly tied to sound. It's a more deeply-engrained property of the body, for me long associated with physicality.
Hearing all of these things, in the form of actual sound waves, was a remarkable experience. I won't say that listening to my essay made it feel more real to me, or anything like that. It didn't. Writing, for me, will always exist in the mind, in the life of the mind and its particular moods and flavors. But I still enjoyed accessing how the texture and affect of my prose translated into sound waves. And did experience a bit of a surreal moment, besides, when my mind made the leap from content to form: lipreading to the radio to hearing. It forms a nice little circle, doesn't it?
Friday, November 25, 2011
An Evening With David Sedaris
Another recent hearing experience I've been meaning to write about (though it's been several weeks now) is the chance I had to go see David Sedaris read on campus earlier this month. Hey, it's never too late for reflection, right?
As soon as I heard Sedaris was coming, I knew it was something I didn't want to pass up on. But, even as someone who's big on writing, I'm not the biggest fan of going to author readings. The auditory experience (of hearing what a piece of work sounds like, or what interpretation the writer casts on it via his/her style of reading) has never been there for me, and I'd rather read the short story/poem/essay/etc to myself. There are few things more frustrating, both for me and my ASL interpreters, than trying to fully access a piece of work when the writer is reading briskly from the page, complex metaphors and imagery and diction and all. Even the most skilled interpreter, without the chance to rehearse extensively, has to work very hard to deliver an accurate translation/transliteration of a written work. Without relapsing completely into the abstract grammar and conceptual structure of ASL, that is. I hate having crisp verbal concepts from written English get lost in translation that way - after all, isn't it the English version that I'm interested in, that I've come to the reading anticipating to contemplate? My interpreters know this, and I'm always impressed by how well they do in trying to satisfy my literalist, straight-from-the-page tendencies. Still, oftentimes the easiest solution for me (and them!) is to get my hands on a written transcript of what the writer is reading, and just access it that way. Even if this in itself raises complications: if I'm taking the time to attend a reading, only to look straight at the page instead of the verbal performance, is it worth it? Might I just as well read that material at home to myself?
Now, I'm not going to say David Sedaris's reading was a sudden breakthrough in my history with author readings. It wasn't. But it was a big enough event for me to put aside my usual misgivings and go. (I've been trying to do this more often in recent months. Maybe part of it is conceit. If I can't access the full impact of what David Sedaris or another big-name author was saying, and how, then at least I can say I've seen David Sedaris.) And, combined with the fact that Sedaris was my first experience with trying to listen to comedy, I walked away with some interesting insights.
It was a full house in the on-campus auditorium where Sedaris was speaking, and I arrived at my seats in the front row to find my interpreter team cramming over copies of his essays to be read that night. (Apparently one of them had gone up to get his autograph beforehand, and when she let it drop that she was an ASL interpreter, he promptly insisted on letting her read over his material, apologized for not knowing there would be interpreters and providing copies in advance, and promised not to make any cheap sign-related jokes. I've seen too many of those, so props to you, Mr. Sedaris.) Apparently the preparation helped, for both interpreters zipped through Sedaris's essays and off-the-cuff remarks without any problem. It helped that his speaking pace was moderate; never did he rush ahead or get lost in his own flurry. Even when the crowd was roaring with laughter, he'd only give a small grin at most, take a breath, and move on. His material was lively, his essays provocative, and I walked away having had a good time.
But... there was still something I didn't get. There was still a sense of personal distance that hovered over my entire experience of the night. I think most of it had to do with the fact that, regardless of how skilled my interpreters were, I was still the one watching.
"His voice is just funny," one of my interpreters slipped in as Sedaris started talking - one of those side comments that they sometimes give me, to help me access the full context of what is going on. As soon as she told me that, I tried to pay closer attention. I cranked my CI up. I watched the sign language streak by, but at the same time I tried to hang onto Sedaris's voice, to understand exactly what gave it its comic effect. And, although I was able to match what I heard with what I saw, it was still just a voice. What made it funny? "He sounds almost like a woman," my other interpreter said after the event was over.
"Is that what makes him so good?" I asked her. "Is it the way his voice sounds?"
"He has such a unique voice," she told me. "It's really weird. I can't describe it - it's just weird. It's a great radio voice. You hear it and you can't stop listening."
I still didn't get it. I have no conception of how someone's voice can be alluring, mesmerizing, funny, or any of those things. Or if I do, it's on a very superficial level. I've noticed that, in everyday life, there are some voices I like more than others, though I can't say why. I've started recognizing some people's voices, at least once I identify the speaker and confirm my own subconscious expectations. Regardless of whether I like a voice or not, however, that's all the subtext I ever associate with it: like or dislike. I understand the concept of inserting emotion into your voice when speaking. I do that myself - it's something I take some pride in, that even before the CI I understood how to inflect my voice when I asked questions, and how to express surprise and sarcasm and excitement and flatness at will. (Even if I'm just about the worst storyteller because of my inability to achieve them in more complex combination.) To be honest, though, I associate verbal nuances more with facial expression, body language, or other subjective context. They're not something I can discern from listening alone.
So, back to David Sedaris. Throughout the night, I would hear the crowd around me erupting at some remark he made. Afterwards I had a few friends tell me their sides hurt from laughing. But, other than a chuckle or two, I didn't laugh very much. First I'd hear the laughter - hold on, wait for it, something's funny. Then, after the slight time lag from the interpreter's end, my mind would race, converting the words from sign language to English. Finally, I would review what I'd just seen, and usually grasp what could have been interpreted as humorous in that sentence. But note the passive voice: I reviewed Sedaris's humor as an observer of that humor, not as a participant in it. The timing, for the most part, was lost on me. The words weren't uproariously funny in and of themselves, I wasn't hearing them, and my steps of mental translation seemed to whisk me out of the immediate moment in which comedy occurs.
This detachment doesn't happen to me as often when I watch movies or hold everyday conversations, in which more visual input accompanies the auditory. I left the reading distracted by the questions spinning through my mind. Yet again, what makes listening to someone funny? What's in a voice, anyway?
Only a few days later did one of my best friends give me an answer. "The read-out-loud aspect," she said, "is like being tickled. It strikes you differently when the timing and delivery are out of your control." Her simile made sense to me, at least cognitively. That's what I had been missing.
I still wonder what it would be like to hear it, I really do. Although I guess I'm not ticklish either...
As soon as I heard Sedaris was coming, I knew it was something I didn't want to pass up on. But, even as someone who's big on writing, I'm not the biggest fan of going to author readings. The auditory experience (of hearing what a piece of work sounds like, or what interpretation the writer casts on it via his/her style of reading) has never been there for me, and I'd rather read the short story/poem/essay/etc to myself. There are few things more frustrating, both for me and my ASL interpreters, than trying to fully access a piece of work when the writer is reading briskly from the page, complex metaphors and imagery and diction and all. Even the most skilled interpreter, without the chance to rehearse extensively, has to work very hard to deliver an accurate translation/transliteration of a written work. Without relapsing completely into the abstract grammar and conceptual structure of ASL, that is. I hate having crisp verbal concepts from written English get lost in translation that way - after all, isn't it the English version that I'm interested in, that I've come to the reading anticipating to contemplate? My interpreters know this, and I'm always impressed by how well they do in trying to satisfy my literalist, straight-from-the-page tendencies. Still, oftentimes the easiest solution for me (and them!) is to get my hands on a written transcript of what the writer is reading, and just access it that way. Even if this in itself raises complications: if I'm taking the time to attend a reading, only to look straight at the page instead of the verbal performance, is it worth it? Might I just as well read that material at home to myself?
Now, I'm not going to say David Sedaris's reading was a sudden breakthrough in my history with author readings. It wasn't. But it was a big enough event for me to put aside my usual misgivings and go. (I've been trying to do this more often in recent months. Maybe part of it is conceit. If I can't access the full impact of what David Sedaris or another big-name author was saying, and how, then at least I can say I've seen David Sedaris.) And, combined with the fact that Sedaris was my first experience with trying to listen to comedy, I walked away with some interesting insights.
It was a full house in the on-campus auditorium where Sedaris was speaking, and I arrived at my seats in the front row to find my interpreter team cramming over copies of his essays to be read that night. (Apparently one of them had gone up to get his autograph beforehand, and when she let it drop that she was an ASL interpreter, he promptly insisted on letting her read over his material, apologized for not knowing there would be interpreters and providing copies in advance, and promised not to make any cheap sign-related jokes. I've seen too many of those, so props to you, Mr. Sedaris.) Apparently the preparation helped, for both interpreters zipped through Sedaris's essays and off-the-cuff remarks without any problem. It helped that his speaking pace was moderate; never did he rush ahead or get lost in his own flurry. Even when the crowd was roaring with laughter, he'd only give a small grin at most, take a breath, and move on. His material was lively, his essays provocative, and I walked away having had a good time.
But... there was still something I didn't get. There was still a sense of personal distance that hovered over my entire experience of the night. I think most of it had to do with the fact that, regardless of how skilled my interpreters were, I was still the one watching.
"His voice is just funny," one of my interpreters slipped in as Sedaris started talking - one of those side comments that they sometimes give me, to help me access the full context of what is going on. As soon as she told me that, I tried to pay closer attention. I cranked my CI up. I watched the sign language streak by, but at the same time I tried to hang onto Sedaris's voice, to understand exactly what gave it its comic effect. And, although I was able to match what I heard with what I saw, it was still just a voice. What made it funny? "He sounds almost like a woman," my other interpreter said after the event was over.
"Is that what makes him so good?" I asked her. "Is it the way his voice sounds?"
"He has such a unique voice," she told me. "It's really weird. I can't describe it - it's just weird. It's a great radio voice. You hear it and you can't stop listening."
I still didn't get it. I have no conception of how someone's voice can be alluring, mesmerizing, funny, or any of those things. Or if I do, it's on a very superficial level. I've noticed that, in everyday life, there are some voices I like more than others, though I can't say why. I've started recognizing some people's voices, at least once I identify the speaker and confirm my own subconscious expectations. Regardless of whether I like a voice or not, however, that's all the subtext I ever associate with it: like or dislike. I understand the concept of inserting emotion into your voice when speaking. I do that myself - it's something I take some pride in, that even before the CI I understood how to inflect my voice when I asked questions, and how to express surprise and sarcasm and excitement and flatness at will. (Even if I'm just about the worst storyteller because of my inability to achieve them in more complex combination.) To be honest, though, I associate verbal nuances more with facial expression, body language, or other subjective context. They're not something I can discern from listening alone.
So, back to David Sedaris. Throughout the night, I would hear the crowd around me erupting at some remark he made. Afterwards I had a few friends tell me their sides hurt from laughing. But, other than a chuckle or two, I didn't laugh very much. First I'd hear the laughter - hold on, wait for it, something's funny. Then, after the slight time lag from the interpreter's end, my mind would race, converting the words from sign language to English. Finally, I would review what I'd just seen, and usually grasp what could have been interpreted as humorous in that sentence. But note the passive voice: I reviewed Sedaris's humor as an observer of that humor, not as a participant in it. The timing, for the most part, was lost on me. The words weren't uproariously funny in and of themselves, I wasn't hearing them, and my steps of mental translation seemed to whisk me out of the immediate moment in which comedy occurs.
This detachment doesn't happen to me as often when I watch movies or hold everyday conversations, in which more visual input accompanies the auditory. I left the reading distracted by the questions spinning through my mind. Yet again, what makes listening to someone funny? What's in a voice, anyway?
Only a few days later did one of my best friends give me an answer. "The read-out-loud aspect," she said, "is like being tickled. It strikes you differently when the timing and delivery are out of your control." Her simile made sense to me, at least cognitively. That's what I had been missing.
I still wonder what it would be like to hear it, I really do. Although I guess I'm not ticklish either...
Saturday, July 9, 2011
And the Horizons Creep Outward
Ahhh, there's nothing like a remapping to push one's boundaries. During the last week and a half, I've felt like someone who's been knocked slightly off balance, or who has found that the ground beneath her feet is shifting and undulating. But as I reorient myself to the changes in my auditory input, I find that my current sound quality is better than before. Sounds that had been driving me bonkers for months, or growing steadily more annoying, are much more manageable. And I've noticed new sounds, or continued to progress with new auditory developments that have emerged only in the past few weeks. Here are a couple:
When riding my bicycle or riding a horse or driving with the car window down or otherwise traveling at speed, I'm no longer distracted by the ROAR WHOOSH GRAWWLL ROAR RUSHHH of air blowing past. That sound is still there, but it's not as harsh or grating, and it doesn't drown out everything else. Thank goodness. I was starting to tilt my head when I rode my bike if only to avoid my ear facing directly into the jetstream!
In the absence of those air-blowing-past noises, I've noticed new sounds when I'm active or on the go. My bicycle chain clicks (okay, I should probably oil it). My brakes squeal. My backpack groans on my back, ice rattles in my water bottle in my bag. The car makes finer and more unique acceleration noises than I ever knew. My saddle creaks so, so loudly, and creaks in different ways and at different tempos depending on what gait my horse is traveling at - how did I never notice that before?
A few of my friends have car GPS navigation systems, and I've been amusing myself to no end listening to the robotic voices speak as we drive. "I recognized that street name!" I'll say, or "Turn left, turn left! It said turn left!" Earlier today I found it funny when the GPS kept crying, "Wrong turn. Wrong turn." Having that disembodied voice suddenly take on meaning was, for me, wondrous.
I've had the chance to visit the ocean twice in the last few weeks. While sitting on the shore, I've realized that this is the first time I've heard waves. I knew from reading books that they were supposed to roar, or crash, and admittedly I associated unpleasant things with those noises (or adjectives). But, in reality, when I looked out at the blue plain of the sea and saw the cresting foam and the receding swells, the accompanying sound was one of the most rhythmic and peaceful that I have heard. I could have listened to it all day, and I suddenly realized why people record the sound of the sea to play in their houses, or to lull themselves to sleep (that always seemed weird and fetish-like to me before). A friend and I jumped up and down, looking at each other and grinning, when we both realized that that sound I had been wondering about was the sea, and that it was completely unexpected and completely new.
People's voices seem louder than ever, even from far away. I keep noticing more often, with my back turned, when people whistle or grunt or exhale or sigh. It's startlingly invasive, startlingly intimate. And pretty awesome to note: I've been picking up, more regularly, greetings called to me when my back is turned. "Have a good day" or "see you later" - when people say these things to me as I'm walking out the door, without thinking that I'm not looking at them, I'm able to understand and reply, without looking over my shoulder. Every time I smother a grin and bask in a private sense of triumph. How much of this was lost on me before? Now, in such situations, how normal I must seem. Whoa. And while my speech comprehension skills continue to progress in quiet controlled situations, these sorts of real-world breakthroughs give me the hope that, someday, I will be able to broaden and apply those skills in a more general way.
Old sounds: these aren't quite unexpected or new, but they're different. When I inhale and exhale, it sounds gentler and smoother than before. Typing is more crisply defined (but not the dice-rolling-Las-Vegas-gambling-casino-annoying noise it was last summer). When I brush my teeth, I can hear the sound change based on which angle I'm directing my toothbrush - it's very dynamic. I can hear when I shift about in my chair, or when fabric slides against fabric, but again more gently and - I don't know - subtly. Plus there have been a few unidentified noises that have jumped out in my apartment in the last few weeks. Clicking and weird popping and such. I've tried to hunt them down, but to no avail. I need a hearing person with me at all times!
Finally, I feel like clarifying something that has been a common misconception among friends and other people who ask me about the CI. At this stage of my listening progress, when I go in for a remapping, I'm not just getting the volume turned up. Not exactly. The volume input I'm receiving right now is right around where we want it to be. It's stabilized. While I would theoretically be able to tolerate more, turning it up would interfere with clarity. So, when I go in for a remapping, it's literally giving my neurons a different "map," or balance, or picture of sound to work with. My brain is adjusting itself all the time, becoming gradually more familiar with noises and frequencies it never heard before. To keep this learning curve stabilized, it's necessary to go in and rebalance the frequencies my brain gets from the CI. That way, sound perception remains more accurate. It's not necessarily louder.
That's a rough layman's description, but it should do. I'm still learning about this entire process myself. Now, on to more noises and more practice!
When riding my bicycle or riding a horse or driving with the car window down or otherwise traveling at speed, I'm no longer distracted by the ROAR WHOOSH GRAWWLL ROAR RUSHHH of air blowing past. That sound is still there, but it's not as harsh or grating, and it doesn't drown out everything else. Thank goodness. I was starting to tilt my head when I rode my bike if only to avoid my ear facing directly into the jetstream!
In the absence of those air-blowing-past noises, I've noticed new sounds when I'm active or on the go. My bicycle chain clicks (okay, I should probably oil it). My brakes squeal. My backpack groans on my back, ice rattles in my water bottle in my bag. The car makes finer and more unique acceleration noises than I ever knew. My saddle creaks so, so loudly, and creaks in different ways and at different tempos depending on what gait my horse is traveling at - how did I never notice that before?
A few of my friends have car GPS navigation systems, and I've been amusing myself to no end listening to the robotic voices speak as we drive. "I recognized that street name!" I'll say, or "Turn left, turn left! It said turn left!" Earlier today I found it funny when the GPS kept crying, "Wrong turn. Wrong turn." Having that disembodied voice suddenly take on meaning was, for me, wondrous.
I've had the chance to visit the ocean twice in the last few weeks. While sitting on the shore, I've realized that this is the first time I've heard waves. I knew from reading books that they were supposed to roar, or crash, and admittedly I associated unpleasant things with those noises (or adjectives). But, in reality, when I looked out at the blue plain of the sea and saw the cresting foam and the receding swells, the accompanying sound was one of the most rhythmic and peaceful that I have heard. I could have listened to it all day, and I suddenly realized why people record the sound of the sea to play in their houses, or to lull themselves to sleep (that always seemed weird and fetish-like to me before). A friend and I jumped up and down, looking at each other and grinning, when we both realized that that sound I had been wondering about was the sea, and that it was completely unexpected and completely new.
People's voices seem louder than ever, even from far away. I keep noticing more often, with my back turned, when people whistle or grunt or exhale or sigh. It's startlingly invasive, startlingly intimate. And pretty awesome to note: I've been picking up, more regularly, greetings called to me when my back is turned. "Have a good day" or "see you later" - when people say these things to me as I'm walking out the door, without thinking that I'm not looking at them, I'm able to understand and reply, without looking over my shoulder. Every time I smother a grin and bask in a private sense of triumph. How much of this was lost on me before? Now, in such situations, how normal I must seem. Whoa. And while my speech comprehension skills continue to progress in quiet controlled situations, these sorts of real-world breakthroughs give me the hope that, someday, I will be able to broaden and apply those skills in a more general way.
Old sounds: these aren't quite unexpected or new, but they're different. When I inhale and exhale, it sounds gentler and smoother than before. Typing is more crisply defined (but not the dice-rolling-Las-Vegas-gambling-casino-annoying noise it was last summer). When I brush my teeth, I can hear the sound change based on which angle I'm directing my toothbrush - it's very dynamic. I can hear when I shift about in my chair, or when fabric slides against fabric, but again more gently and - I don't know - subtly. Plus there have been a few unidentified noises that have jumped out in my apartment in the last few weeks. Clicking and weird popping and such. I've tried to hunt them down, but to no avail. I need a hearing person with me at all times!
Finally, I feel like clarifying something that has been a common misconception among friends and other people who ask me about the CI. At this stage of my listening progress, when I go in for a remapping, I'm not just getting the volume turned up. Not exactly. The volume input I'm receiving right now is right around where we want it to be. It's stabilized. While I would theoretically be able to tolerate more, turning it up would interfere with clarity. So, when I go in for a remapping, it's literally giving my neurons a different "map," or balance, or picture of sound to work with. My brain is adjusting itself all the time, becoming gradually more familiar with noises and frequencies it never heard before. To keep this learning curve stabilized, it's necessary to go in and rebalance the frequencies my brain gets from the CI. That way, sound perception remains more accurate. It's not necessarily louder.
That's a rough layman's description, but it should do. I'm still learning about this entire process myself. Now, on to more noises and more practice!
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
One Year of Bionic
On this same Wednesday one year ago, I went through my last pre-op appointments, then sat and waited for the CI surgery that would take place the following morning. Killed time and waited. Went to dinner and waited. Made some nervous conversation. Went to bed and lay awake and waited. Couldn't sleep because of my mixed excitement and anxiety and dread. What was I getting myself into?
Today, after meeting with my auditory therapist, I walked out grinning. My one-year CI remapping will be in a few weeks, and although I've reached the point where I'm continually cranking the volume up on my processor, itching once again for more sound and more range, what I have to work with is pretty remarkable.
First exercise: open set of random sentences that I wasn't allowed to look at or study beforehand. I got half of them completely correct on the first try, and got large chunks of the rest (with some missed words or slight flubs on phonemes). My score: 75%, give or take, maybe even 80%.
Second exercise: minimal-pair drills with monosyllabic words, probably one of the hardest tasks for me since I'm literally listening for a difference of a single phoneme, while listening without any context. My score: 90%. Ninety freaking percent.
And the best part: while I felt confident enough throughout, I had one of those head-spinning moments afterwards when I saw the numbers. Why, hadn't I been guessing most of the time? Doesn't seem like it. My conscious mind keeps chugging along, but beneath the surface my brain is putting two and two together, all by itself.
I couldn't have asked for a better feeling compared to that nauseous sensation I had one year ago, while sitting in those hospital waiting rooms. It's been a steep learning curve, but with the CI my brain is clicking. It's starting to sprint along instead of stumbling. It's hearing!
Today, after meeting with my auditory therapist, I walked out grinning. My one-year CI remapping will be in a few weeks, and although I've reached the point where I'm continually cranking the volume up on my processor, itching once again for more sound and more range, what I have to work with is pretty remarkable.
First exercise: open set of random sentences that I wasn't allowed to look at or study beforehand. I got half of them completely correct on the first try, and got large chunks of the rest (with some missed words or slight flubs on phonemes). My score: 75%, give or take, maybe even 80%.
Second exercise: minimal-pair drills with monosyllabic words, probably one of the hardest tasks for me since I'm literally listening for a difference of a single phoneme, while listening without any context. My score: 90%. Ninety freaking percent.
And the best part: while I felt confident enough throughout, I had one of those head-spinning moments afterwards when I saw the numbers. Why, hadn't I been guessing most of the time? Doesn't seem like it. My conscious mind keeps chugging along, but beneath the surface my brain is putting two and two together, all by itself.
I couldn't have asked for a better feeling compared to that nauseous sensation I had one year ago, while sitting in those hospital waiting rooms. It's been a steep learning curve, but with the CI my brain is clicking. It's starting to sprint along instead of stumbling. It's hearing!
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
The Black Box, Revisited
This brain business is freaking me out. I’m wondering how much more complex my mind is than I consciously realize. Today I had another auditory therapy appointment, my first since last quarter, and while I walked away feeling excited, I also walked away feeling unsettled. What exactly is going on inside that black box that I don’t understand?
To offer a quick recap: my therapist and I sat down and discussed my progress over the last month or so, then proceeded to listening exercises that I’ve done a few times before. Throughout, she commented on my growing confidence and poise with listening, or at least my growing willingness to persevere with deciphering what I hear. To paraphrase her words, she told me: “Your entire life, you’ve had to hang back, to resign yourself and say, ‘I can’t do it, I can’t understand this.’ You’ve felt constantly unsure and you’ve grown used to being cautious as a result. Now you have this wonderful new tool that helps you engage better, and you’re learning how to overcome that hesitation that you’ve grown used to.”
How true, not only for me but for anyone else with a hearing loss. And how nice to have this perspective articulated so clearly. Disengagement has been a survival mechanism for me for so long that it’s hard for me to commit my brain to listening, to trying to piece the sounds together despite having less than ten months’ experience with this auditory mess. The words streak by, not making any sense at first, that old response kicks in and I think “I can’t do this! For heaven's sake, I’m deaf!” and then I get overwhelmed and implode and my mind switches off. I don’t do this intentionally, I don’t think. It’s not that I mean to give up. It’s that habit (by now, almost instinct) tells me that my efforts will be futile and that trying isn’t even an option. Spoken word gibberish soup, again. So much for that.
But when I do try, strange things happen. One of today’s exercises dealt with listening to a simple sentence involving two words: “Please pick up (food item) and (food item) from the store.” Old hat, this exercise, even while the words to engrain in my auditory memory seem limitless! Some of the food words, I’d heard often enough to get right away, such as hamburgers and French fries. Others were more unexpected, and when my auditory therapist saw that I wasn’t getting them she would switch to verbally describing them to give me clues, instead of either 1) repeating the word over and over again while I got progressively more frustrated, or 2) throwing in the towel and telling me the word outright. This backroads strategy is one that she’s used from the beginning, to force me to listen in the context of language. It’s also very hard for me right now. Remember, I’m listening to full-bodied descriptive sentences without lipreading. Talk about a jump up!
So, today I sat and listened to her describing this unknown word using other unknown words, the sounds piling up and toppling over and burying me in their rush, and while I couldn’t have told you what I was hearing I also wasn’t completely overwhelmed. This time was different. The words going by sounded like English words, they sounded like language. They sounded comfy, like they could have been my friends. Even if it was impossible for me to say exactly what they were, at least after the fact – I felt more like I was brushing each one of them as they passed, but not strongly enough to sink in my hook and reel them in. Once in a while, one or two would jump up and I would grasp a fleeting phrase, but then struggle to hold on as the stream continued. “This is a… breakfast… You use it to… and it… green…” Other times, I would rustle against individual sounds but couldn’t think fast enough to assemble them into words.
Yet, out of this ghostly, translucent chaos, some sort of picture emerged. The first time this happened, I listened to my therapist’s stream of speech, sat there subconsciously ruminating, and then said, “Yogurt.”
“Very good!” she told me.
“That’s really what it was? Yogurt?”
“Yes.”
How did I ever get that? All I’d heard, at least consciously, was something about flavors and strawberries. Impossible, for my brain to make the leap from that to “yogurt.”
But then it happened again. The word in question: zucchini. I listened, gathered that my therapist was talking about a long and green vegetable, but instead of searching through my mental food vocabulary to find something that fit the bill, the word popped up and came to me right then. I knew. It had been there all along, beneath the surface of my brain, but hesitating and not knowing how to fight its way into conscious articulation.
And again. Something about cutting and breakfast and sugar, only half-grasped and feeling like a murky dream: without a doubt, it must be grapefruit. I wasn’t assembling clues, because the clues themselves hardly made sense. Unless they were assembling subconsciously, just like everything else?
Whoa whoa whoa, wait. What the eff is going on? I don’t get this. How can I so definitively say something, based on so little (read: almost nonexistent) proof? Unless the proof is there in abundance, somewhere deep within that black box, and I’m not capable of realizing it? What determines whether the sounds click together to make a word or whether they don’t? How can all this be happening without the conscious input of my work ethic or deductive reasoning or problem-solving skills, but based only on my willingness to sit there and listen to and accept what seems like chaos? How can my brain be so resourceful, all by itself and seemingly without me?
And, at the same time, how amazing is that?!
To offer a quick recap: my therapist and I sat down and discussed my progress over the last month or so, then proceeded to listening exercises that I’ve done a few times before. Throughout, she commented on my growing confidence and poise with listening, or at least my growing willingness to persevere with deciphering what I hear. To paraphrase her words, she told me: “Your entire life, you’ve had to hang back, to resign yourself and say, ‘I can’t do it, I can’t understand this.’ You’ve felt constantly unsure and you’ve grown used to being cautious as a result. Now you have this wonderful new tool that helps you engage better, and you’re learning how to overcome that hesitation that you’ve grown used to.”
How true, not only for me but for anyone else with a hearing loss. And how nice to have this perspective articulated so clearly. Disengagement has been a survival mechanism for me for so long that it’s hard for me to commit my brain to listening, to trying to piece the sounds together despite having less than ten months’ experience with this auditory mess. The words streak by, not making any sense at first, that old response kicks in and I think “I can’t do this! For heaven's sake, I’m deaf!” and then I get overwhelmed and implode and my mind switches off. I don’t do this intentionally, I don’t think. It’s not that I mean to give up. It’s that habit (by now, almost instinct) tells me that my efforts will be futile and that trying isn’t even an option. Spoken word gibberish soup, again. So much for that.
But when I do try, strange things happen. One of today’s exercises dealt with listening to a simple sentence involving two words: “Please pick up (food item) and (food item) from the store.” Old hat, this exercise, even while the words to engrain in my auditory memory seem limitless! Some of the food words, I’d heard often enough to get right away, such as hamburgers and French fries. Others were more unexpected, and when my auditory therapist saw that I wasn’t getting them she would switch to verbally describing them to give me clues, instead of either 1) repeating the word over and over again while I got progressively more frustrated, or 2) throwing in the towel and telling me the word outright. This backroads strategy is one that she’s used from the beginning, to force me to listen in the context of language. It’s also very hard for me right now. Remember, I’m listening to full-bodied descriptive sentences without lipreading. Talk about a jump up!
So, today I sat and listened to her describing this unknown word using other unknown words, the sounds piling up and toppling over and burying me in their rush, and while I couldn’t have told you what I was hearing I also wasn’t completely overwhelmed. This time was different. The words going by sounded like English words, they sounded like language. They sounded comfy, like they could have been my friends. Even if it was impossible for me to say exactly what they were, at least after the fact – I felt more like I was brushing each one of them as they passed, but not strongly enough to sink in my hook and reel them in. Once in a while, one or two would jump up and I would grasp a fleeting phrase, but then struggle to hold on as the stream continued. “This is a… breakfast… You use it to… and it… green…” Other times, I would rustle against individual sounds but couldn’t think fast enough to assemble them into words.
Yet, out of this ghostly, translucent chaos, some sort of picture emerged. The first time this happened, I listened to my therapist’s stream of speech, sat there subconsciously ruminating, and then said, “Yogurt.”
“Very good!” she told me.
“That’s really what it was? Yogurt?”
“Yes.”
How did I ever get that? All I’d heard, at least consciously, was something about flavors and strawberries. Impossible, for my brain to make the leap from that to “yogurt.”
But then it happened again. The word in question: zucchini. I listened, gathered that my therapist was talking about a long and green vegetable, but instead of searching through my mental food vocabulary to find something that fit the bill, the word popped up and came to me right then. I knew. It had been there all along, beneath the surface of my brain, but hesitating and not knowing how to fight its way into conscious articulation.
And again. Something about cutting and breakfast and sugar, only half-grasped and feeling like a murky dream: without a doubt, it must be grapefruit. I wasn’t assembling clues, because the clues themselves hardly made sense. Unless they were assembling subconsciously, just like everything else?
Whoa whoa whoa, wait. What the eff is going on? I don’t get this. How can I so definitively say something, based on so little (read: almost nonexistent) proof? Unless the proof is there in abundance, somewhere deep within that black box, and I’m not capable of realizing it? What determines whether the sounds click together to make a word or whether they don’t? How can all this be happening without the conscious input of my work ethic or deductive reasoning or problem-solving skills, but based only on my willingness to sit there and listen to and accept what seems like chaos? How can my brain be so resourceful, all by itself and seemingly without me?
And, at the same time, how amazing is that?!
Monday, December 27, 2010
Input: Invalid
As of today, I've almost reached the six-month mark since I got my CI turned on (minus two days). I have my six-month remapping appointment later this week, and I'm excited to see what progress I've made and what the sound quality is like afterwards - especially since it's already so good.
But six months? Wow. My experience of the world has been transformed since those days in late June. My hearing aid sounds downright depressing now, and the dynamism of the CI is like being continually seduced. Let's face it: I'm addicted to sound. And whenever I'm feeling discouraged or just plain short-circuited (like when life starts sounding too chaotic - i.e., almost every day), I need only look back to that time to appreciate how far I've come. Six months: a heartbeat, and yet an immeasurably long stretch. It's impossible to compare my perceptions then to my perceptions now. My horizons have broadened, my sense of the possible has exploded. Yet, these days, I get the sense that I'm approaching a new threshold.
Let me expand: my brain, in its absorption and data-gathering over roughly 26 weeks, has reached the point where it can observe and interpret sound considerably well for where I started out. Except that relying on auditory information is not its natural instinct. Noise has never made sense to it before now, and so its innate tendency is to rely, as it always has, on sight. Since I've gotten home from being abroad, I've discovered that, when my parents or other family members intentionally speak to me from where I cannot lipread, I can understand them. I can do it! How astonishing. But this is only after much repetition, only after I forcibly shift gears and coerce that long-deafened brain of mine to listen. It can do it, it just believes that it can't - and, when lipreading is the faintest shadow of an option, it automatically seems to tune out noise and choose to watch instead. My mind is like a computer: in its long history of programming, sound input has been an invalid command. Now that the CI makes listening possible, the hardest part is going to be convincing my brain to trust what it hears, to actually use those long-neglected pathways.
So, I'm teetering on the brink of using my ears and not my eyes, and this process has been ridiculously difficult because it requires a literal reprogramming of my experience. But yet, the sensation of having a conversation (however predictable and simplified) and actually hearing and understanding has been... mind-boggling. In all senses of the word. I have to repeat what I've heard to myself as if to prove that it was real, that it sprang into being from a mind not my own, that it makes grammatical sense. It's happening! I just need to teach that brain of mine to believe in sound as clear, accessible, trustworthy - as much as sight. The ground is not going to crumble beneath its feet. This is an unprecedented challenge, and after twenty years it is is bound to be difficult - but here's to having arrived at the point of subtle mind games, rather than being-hit-over-the-head-by-a-blunt-object ones!
But six months? Wow. My experience of the world has been transformed since those days in late June. My hearing aid sounds downright depressing now, and the dynamism of the CI is like being continually seduced. Let's face it: I'm addicted to sound. And whenever I'm feeling discouraged or just plain short-circuited (like when life starts sounding too chaotic - i.e., almost every day), I need only look back to that time to appreciate how far I've come. Six months: a heartbeat, and yet an immeasurably long stretch. It's impossible to compare my perceptions then to my perceptions now. My horizons have broadened, my sense of the possible has exploded. Yet, these days, I get the sense that I'm approaching a new threshold.
Let me expand: my brain, in its absorption and data-gathering over roughly 26 weeks, has reached the point where it can observe and interpret sound considerably well for where I started out. Except that relying on auditory information is not its natural instinct. Noise has never made sense to it before now, and so its innate tendency is to rely, as it always has, on sight. Since I've gotten home from being abroad, I've discovered that, when my parents or other family members intentionally speak to me from where I cannot lipread, I can understand them. I can do it! How astonishing. But this is only after much repetition, only after I forcibly shift gears and coerce that long-deafened brain of mine to listen. It can do it, it just believes that it can't - and, when lipreading is the faintest shadow of an option, it automatically seems to tune out noise and choose to watch instead. My mind is like a computer: in its long history of programming, sound input has been an invalid command. Now that the CI makes listening possible, the hardest part is going to be convincing my brain to trust what it hears, to actually use those long-neglected pathways.
So, I'm teetering on the brink of using my ears and not my eyes, and this process has been ridiculously difficult because it requires a literal reprogramming of my experience. But yet, the sensation of having a conversation (however predictable and simplified) and actually hearing and understanding has been... mind-boggling. In all senses of the word. I have to repeat what I've heard to myself as if to prove that it was real, that it sprang into being from a mind not my own, that it makes grammatical sense. It's happening! I just need to teach that brain of mine to believe in sound as clear, accessible, trustworthy - as much as sight. The ground is not going to crumble beneath its feet. This is an unprecedented challenge, and after twenty years it is is bound to be difficult - but here's to having arrived at the point of subtle mind games, rather than being-hit-over-the-head-by-a-blunt-object ones!
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Unexpected Insight From George Eliot
"At first when I enter a room where the walls are covered with frescoes, or with rare pictures, I feel a kind of awe - like a child present at great ceremonies where there are great robes and processions; I feel myself in the presence of some higher life than my own. But when I begin to examine the pictures one by one, the life goes out of them, or else is something violent and strange to me. It must be my own dulness. I am seeing so much all at once, and not understanding half of it. That always makes one feel stupid. It is painful to be told that anything is very fine and not to be able to feel that it is fine - something like being blind, while people talk of the sky."
- Dorothea Brooke, in George Eliot's Middlemarch
Rereading Middlemarch this weekend, the above quote seemed to pop out and slap me across the face. Though Dorothea here is speaking to Will Ladislaw about paintings and art, I realized that this is exactly the way I've felt about sound since the CI. The things I'm hearing are so numerous and overwhelming, and I have so little knowledge with which to make sense of them. When I try, they slip out of my fingers. My appreciation of sound derives mainly from a sense of being overawed, as one present at an unprecedented spectacle, not from a true educated subtlety. That subtlety will come with time, but as of now the things I hear are indeed "violent and strange." Yet what an ineffable, seductive strangeness it is.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
The Extreme Usefulness of Computer-Generated Listening Exercises
Over the last few weeks and months, most of my concentrated listening practice, aside from reading audiobooks, has consisted in using a computer program from Cochlear. Called "Sound and Way Beyond," it has a fairly wide range of listening exercises, from background noise appreciation to voice differentiation and word/sentence recognition to music appreciation and pure-tone discrimination. All of these have been helpful tools for me to practice with, but honestly - whoever came up with this program had to be a bit odd, to say the least. I'd much rather sit down with a real person and try to listen in a real, applicable context, instead of putting up with some of the ludicrously random things the program throws at me. A few gems:
From the environmental sounds module:
- A snowboard. Maybe for an Olympic skier - but really, this noise is that important?
- A person saying, "Ouch." Thus enabling me to immediately recognize and help someone in need.
- An elephant trumpeting. Because, you know, in real life this might save me from being inadvertently trampled.
- A bat noise. Ditto; can't be too careful about those bats.
- Tree falling. Again, computer program is helping me avoid life-or-death situations.
- Dentist drill. This one isn't as ridiculous as the others, but it's a bit traumatizing.
From the word discrimination module:
- In the color category: amethyst, camel, garnet, ochre, vermilion. Because I use these words oh so often.
- In the family category: fraternal, heir, Dutch uncle. Creative.
- In the time category: everything from a mere "two o'clock" to sunset and Mountain Standard Time and the Ides of March. Try to take it all in, why don't you.
From the everyday sentences module (note emphasis on the word "everyday"):
- "A zestful food is the hot cross bun."
- "Dispense with a vest on a day like this." Yes, because everybody talks like that.
- "It's a dense crowd in two distinct ways."
- "The slang word for whiskey is booze." All right, so someone might say this to me in college.
- "Smile when you say nasty words."
- "Note closely the size of the gas tank." Hmmm, impending explosion?
- "Pluck the bright rose without leaves."
- "The rope will bind the seven books at once." This doesn't even make any sense.
- "Thieves who rob friends deserve jail."
- "Always close the barn door tight." Finally, something that almost relates to my life.
It's helpful in theory, but how on earth is some of this supposed to be practical? And shouldn't practicality be the main point right now? (Yes, at least the minds behind this program were creative. Props to them.)
From the environmental sounds module:
- A snowboard. Maybe for an Olympic skier - but really, this noise is that important?
- A person saying, "Ouch." Thus enabling me to immediately recognize and help someone in need.
- An elephant trumpeting. Because, you know, in real life this might save me from being inadvertently trampled.
- A bat noise. Ditto; can't be too careful about those bats.
- Tree falling. Again, computer program is helping me avoid life-or-death situations.
- Dentist drill. This one isn't as ridiculous as the others, but it's a bit traumatizing.
From the word discrimination module:
- In the color category: amethyst, camel, garnet, ochre, vermilion. Because I use these words oh so often.
- In the family category: fraternal, heir, Dutch uncle. Creative.
- In the time category: everything from a mere "two o'clock" to sunset and Mountain Standard Time and the Ides of March. Try to take it all in, why don't you.
From the everyday sentences module (note emphasis on the word "everyday"):
- "A zestful food is the hot cross bun."
- "Dispense with a vest on a day like this." Yes, because everybody talks like that.
- "It's a dense crowd in two distinct ways."
- "The slang word for whiskey is booze." All right, so someone might say this to me in college.
- "Smile when you say nasty words."
- "Note closely the size of the gas tank." Hmmm, impending explosion?
- "Pluck the bright rose without leaves."
- "The rope will bind the seven books at once." This doesn't even make any sense.
- "Thieves who rob friends deserve jail."
- "Always close the barn door tight." Finally, something that almost relates to my life.
It's helpful in theory, but how on earth is some of this supposed to be practical? And shouldn't practicality be the main point right now? (Yes, at least the minds behind this program were creative. Props to them.)
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