Even with the CI, I keep running into the differences that I feel between my interests/pastimes and hearing culture. A lot of this might be more personality than deafness-related, but the fact is that being deaf has shaped my personality in one way or another. And even now that I'm hearing more, those deep-engrained preferences are still just there. They're not good or bad; they just are.
Take, for instance, music. I still remember seeing a deaf friend not long after I got the CI and having her tell me that she'd come to appreciate music more since getting her own CIs, but that she still wouldn't call music an active pleasure in her life. She didn't mind it if it was on, could even enjoy it sometimes, but she didn't actively seek it out. "I wouldn't waste the energy to get up and walk across the room and turn the stereo on, if you know what I mean," was what she told me. "Having it be quiet is fine by me, and honestly a lot of the time I prefer the silence." I remember having that conversation (it was about a year ago) while I was still in more flux between the deaf and the hearing worlds, still not quite knowing what would be possible for me with the CI or how it would change me. What! No! Music is cool! It has rhythm and pitch and complexity and whatever else - and I can hear it now! This is finally something to share with my hearing friends!
A year later, I think I've learned not to force things. I've ended up at a similar place as my friend. I'm grateful for the opportunity to experience music in my life, and when I find it playing in the background I can appreciate it much more than I used to, but... that's it. My brain hasn't made enough sense of it to be in awe, or addicted, or whatever hearing people feel when they listen to a song they like. Music isn't at the core of my being, and never will be. It's a roadside attraction when I happen to pass it by, but not something I pursue. I realize that some hearing friends might read this and find it sad, or pity me for missing out, but I don't feel any of those things. There might have been a point, immediately post-CI, where I was anxious for the device to do for and instill everything in me, when I would have viewed this relative apathy as a failure. But it's not. It's something like a hearing sighted person who isn't all that into art, but who will go to a museum from time to time with friends, nod appreciatively, and then leave. And I know several hearing people who are that way about music - my parents, for instance. I never had a very musical household growing up, my sister excluded. My parents like music when it tumbles into their lives. But they don't go out of their way for it. And neither, it turns out, do I.
This past weekend I was roadtripping back from an event with some teammates when they jacked someone's iPhone into the car, worked their way through a playlist of songs (what kinds of songs? I wish I could say), and all sang along for a good hour or so. The volume was amped up, the car was shaking, I was in the front passenger seat listening to them sing. There might have been a time in which a scene like that would have left me browbeating myself, feeling miserable, drowning in my own isolation. Obviously I couldn't sing along. I didn't know what song it was. I hardly knew anything about the music at all, save that I could hear it. Our worlds were leagues apart. Theirs - the world of music videos, of concerts, of karaoke, of singalongs. Mine - of thoughts, books, visual culture, and none of those auditory-based things. But the fact that I could be there with them, hearing if not quite sharing in the same experience or feelings, but still tapping somewhat vicariously into their car-ride singalong, was enough. They got something more complex out of the music than I did, but my own thoughts did get the opportunity to fly off unhindered. I found myself looking at that space between us, understanding what it was, and feeling more at peace with it than ever before. Maybe part of me even enjoyed it. To each his own.
And, honestly, this example sums up something I've been feeling lately - that, even though I am not a hearing person and cannot (or do not care to) participate in all of the facets of hearing culture, my own experience is so unique that I cannot dismiss it. This isn't a justification for exclusion or insensitivity, nor is it allotting certain things to the hearing that the deaf cannot or should not do. It's more of a commentary on myself, and on discovering personal preferences. My deafness has shaped me, for one end or another. Now that I can hear music and experience other things, I take the taste of it, smile, and feel appreciative. Then I realize even more strongly what I truly do love to do - for myself. Not for the sake of fitting in, but for my own abilities and passions, and for no other reason.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Deaf Dining: Mozzeria
Today marked probably one of the most unique and interesting restaurant experiences that I've had. A friend of mine had seen the following article about Mozzeria, a new pizza restaurant in San Francisco's Mission district, and, along with another friend, today we decided to go:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/04/FD2U1MKA7S.DTL
The cool thing about Mozzeria is that it's owned by a deaf couple, most of the employees are deaf themselves, and nearly all of them sign. The two friends I went with today are both hearing, but both sign rather well (both have been former roommates of mine :) ), and I think the three of us were all excited to see what a signing dining environment would be like.
I admit, walking into this restaurant and immediately having the hostess sign to us, then raise a printed paper in case we were hearing non-signers and hadn't understood, was a pretty amazing moment for me personally. I felt myself shedding much of the communication anxiety I have when I go out in public, especially out to eat when I know I will need to interact with a waiter. Talking with hearing waiters is usually fine for me, and I've done it for years, but I do miss things they say - when they go on about the special of the day or ask other unexpected questions, I'm thrown off and rely on my hearing friends to fill in for me and/or translate. Today I was pleased to discover how reassuring that added measure of communicative clarity felt with sign. Is this the way the world feels for the hearing, so much more open and empowering?
Our brunch/lunch at Mozzeria was in many ways a typical eating-out experience: we took our menus, ordered, ate, and paid the bill amidst our own conversation, interactions with the waiter, etc. But the fresh surprise I felt, despite myself, every time a waiter or other employee reappeared and started signing to me - signing! - made me feel more alive to, as well as relaxed in, my surroundings than usual. Even though I've long detached myself from the Deaf world for a variety of reasons, the truth is that I never feel more at home than when the people around me are signing. I saw busboys and chefs walk by signing across the room to each other. A few of them had hearing aids. Several of the tables were filled with deaf people, and one older lady waved over and started a conversation. I can't remember the last time I interacted casually with other diners at a restaurant. I don't know if it's at all typical for hearing people (minus a very odd extended conversation my family once had with a total stranger in a Chinese restaurant in DC), but for me chance interactions with hearing strangers in public places are rare. At one point, the deaf group left and a hearing party came in to replace them at the table beside ours, and the three of us joked that now it was they who were out of place. Not that Mozzeria did not cater to non-signing hearing people - our waiter was hearing and spoke as well as signed, and the restaurant ran just like any other. But the vibe itself was different.
All of the above points were reiterated for me when, after our stint at Mozzeria, we decided to head over to another place for dessert. This was in some ways another highlight of the day (since after all the dessert was composed of New Mexico-style green chile apple pie! in San Francisco!), but ordering from the hearing woman behind the counter, zoning in on her face and nevertheless suffering a bit of a communicative bobble when she asked if I wanted my pie a la mode, showed me how nice it had been to go to a restaurant so centered around sign. If only once.
Now I hope I can go back sometime - and maybe take another hearing friend or two :)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/04/FD2U1MKA7S.DTL
The cool thing about Mozzeria is that it's owned by a deaf couple, most of the employees are deaf themselves, and nearly all of them sign. The two friends I went with today are both hearing, but both sign rather well (both have been former roommates of mine :) ), and I think the three of us were all excited to see what a signing dining environment would be like.
I admit, walking into this restaurant and immediately having the hostess sign to us, then raise a printed paper in case we were hearing non-signers and hadn't understood, was a pretty amazing moment for me personally. I felt myself shedding much of the communication anxiety I have when I go out in public, especially out to eat when I know I will need to interact with a waiter. Talking with hearing waiters is usually fine for me, and I've done it for years, but I do miss things they say - when they go on about the special of the day or ask other unexpected questions, I'm thrown off and rely on my hearing friends to fill in for me and/or translate. Today I was pleased to discover how reassuring that added measure of communicative clarity felt with sign. Is this the way the world feels for the hearing, so much more open and empowering?
Our brunch/lunch at Mozzeria was in many ways a typical eating-out experience: we took our menus, ordered, ate, and paid the bill amidst our own conversation, interactions with the waiter, etc. But the fresh surprise I felt, despite myself, every time a waiter or other employee reappeared and started signing to me - signing! - made me feel more alive to, as well as relaxed in, my surroundings than usual. Even though I've long detached myself from the Deaf world for a variety of reasons, the truth is that I never feel more at home than when the people around me are signing. I saw busboys and chefs walk by signing across the room to each other. A few of them had hearing aids. Several of the tables were filled with deaf people, and one older lady waved over and started a conversation. I can't remember the last time I interacted casually with other diners at a restaurant. I don't know if it's at all typical for hearing people (minus a very odd extended conversation my family once had with a total stranger in a Chinese restaurant in DC), but for me chance interactions with hearing strangers in public places are rare. At one point, the deaf group left and a hearing party came in to replace them at the table beside ours, and the three of us joked that now it was they who were out of place. Not that Mozzeria did not cater to non-signing hearing people - our waiter was hearing and spoke as well as signed, and the restaurant ran just like any other. But the vibe itself was different.
All of the above points were reiterated for me when, after our stint at Mozzeria, we decided to head over to another place for dessert. This was in some ways another highlight of the day (since after all the dessert was composed of New Mexico-style green chile apple pie! in San Francisco!), but ordering from the hearing woman behind the counter, zoning in on her face and nevertheless suffering a bit of a communicative bobble when she asked if I wanted my pie a la mode, showed me how nice it had been to go to a restaurant so centered around sign. If only once.
Now I hope I can go back sometime - and maybe take another hearing friend or two :)
Thursday, January 26, 2012
It Is What It Is
It's funny, right after posting about that forwarded petition on audism (which left me brooding over the whole idea of Deaf isolation/hearing-world immersion), I got myself dressed up and headed over to a networking event on campus. It was hosted by a women's group that I'm involved with, and although I'm never quite excited to go to those things, I figured I'd resort to the old standby: suck it up, go and be seen, and try to handle it all as graciously as possible. But when I got there I quickly found that it wasn't going to be my kind of night. The room was loud and crowded, full of strangers talking in groups, many of them too difficult to lipread even if I could focus amidst the noise. The CI was more of a distraction than a help. On top of that, I was informed that there would be an assortment of activities and guest speakers for a fair deal of the time - not something I was prepared to handle at that time of night without an interpreter. A bit deflated but not exactly surprised, I left early. My night did go on to better and more useful things, but the thought racing through my mind as I walked back to my room was, No wonder it's so easy to retreat into Deaf culture.
Not that that's an option for me. It isn't, nor would I want it to be. Still, I do have my moments when it seems that the hearing world isn't at all made for me - a sentiment that I know resonates with other deaf and hard-of-hearing people. As I've gotten older, I've gotten better at maneuvering through these disconnected moments and figuring out how to avoid them. A lot of that involves advance planning (for interpreters and other accommodations), some self-advocacy, and sheer self-knowledge. The unexpected does come up, regardless, the moments in which I find myself stuck and really not able to communicate as I'd like to. And, as uncomfortable as the entire rhetoric of Deaf culture can make me, I'll be honest in admitting that during those moments it can be easy to think of groups of D/deaf people with more fondness than groups of hard-to-understand hearing people, at least in the abstract. It's easy to want to be isolationist. It's easy to be hurt and angry simultaneously at everyone and at no one in particular. It's easy to want to reject the system that seems not to care about your needs, much less provide for them. It's easy to want to band together with someone - anyone - in defiance of the linguistic and communicative barrier that accompanies hearing loss.
All of this makes sense to me in one tumultuous, emotionally chaotic moment. And then I take a deep breath, count my blessings (of which there are many!), and engage in some form of the serenity prayer. This does not define me. There are ways around the barrier, just as there have been scores of times before. And, sometimes, it just is what it is.
Not that that's an option for me. It isn't, nor would I want it to be. Still, I do have my moments when it seems that the hearing world isn't at all made for me - a sentiment that I know resonates with other deaf and hard-of-hearing people. As I've gotten older, I've gotten better at maneuvering through these disconnected moments and figuring out how to avoid them. A lot of that involves advance planning (for interpreters and other accommodations), some self-advocacy, and sheer self-knowledge. The unexpected does come up, regardless, the moments in which I find myself stuck and really not able to communicate as I'd like to. And, as uncomfortable as the entire rhetoric of Deaf culture can make me, I'll be honest in admitting that during those moments it can be easy to think of groups of D/deaf people with more fondness than groups of hard-to-understand hearing people, at least in the abstract. It's easy to want to be isolationist. It's easy to be hurt and angry simultaneously at everyone and at no one in particular. It's easy to want to reject the system that seems not to care about your needs, much less provide for them. It's easy to want to band together with someone - anyone - in defiance of the linguistic and communicative barrier that accompanies hearing loss.
All of this makes sense to me in one tumultuous, emotionally chaotic moment. And then I take a deep breath, count my blessings (of which there are many!), and engage in some form of the serenity prayer. This does not define me. There are ways around the barrier, just as there have been scores of times before. And, sometimes, it just is what it is.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Audism? Not Really.
I just got the following Moveon.org petition message in a forwarded email from an on-campus disability awareness group I'm involved with. It's a pretty biased look at some (in my view) exciting strides in hearing-loss research, but it's a typical enough response from Deaf advocates that I thought I'd post it here. Just for the record, I generally don't agree with the big-D deaf community's views on "audism," maybe because I'm not culturally Deaf myself. Audism, if you want to use that word, does exist in the forms of deaf people not being given the consideration and opportunities that hearing people have, but honestly research such as the following is intended to help, not harm. I'm all for stem cell research - I think it's beyond amazing. And, once again, hearing is a wonderful thing too. And, yet once again, it doesn't have to be either-or.
Although this raises the question all over again of whether deaf people should choose between being deaf and being hearing. Jury's out on that one. I've written about it on this blog before, but honestly whenever I return to this issue I get a little tired of thinking about it in such polarized, dogmatic terms.
Any thoughts or responses, bring them on.
Stop Stem Cell Experiment on Deaf Babies
Sign The Petition to Stop FDA's Audism
The FDA has recently approved stem cell experimentation on Deaf infants at the Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston, Texas. The experiment is to include up to 10 Deaf newborns and infants (6 weeks to 18 months old) to eradicate their being Deaf. The FDA's approval promotes the hidden cultural and linguistic genocide on the Deaf infants and is part of the eugenics to wipe out the Deaf community and our beautiful and precious American Sign Language, which is used by the ASL Deaf community and is one of the top languages studied in the USA.
The Deaf infants are human beings and have their human rights to be created, accepted, loved and supported. The FDA approved experiment will include repeated MRI screenings, possible sedation, injection of untested stem cells for that age population - all which carry long lasting risks and implications. All of this will be done in the name of CURING the infants of a "condition" of which is an ethnicity. (See Lane, Pillard, and Hedeberg)
Being Deaf is not a life-threatening condition and does not cause premature death nor does it bring immeasurable suffering. In fact it does the opposite. Many Deaf people who have American Sign Language and English as part of their life attest to being happy. If the collaborators of the study want a cure - the FDA, the Blood Cord Registry, and the Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital need look no further than ensuring that the infant has access to ASL, English, and Deaf culture. Audism (the belief that to be hearing and/or behave as a hearing person is superior to being Deaf) is the problem, not being Deaf. It is similar to the attitudes that affect minorities like Hispanic people, African-American people, like that of the "Stepford Wives" syndrome -- creating the perfect white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, hearing baby.
It is imperative that the collaborators of this study (which all stand to have monetary gains from this experiment) be held accountable and that the funding and future profits behind this unethical and inhumane study be fully disclosed and examined.
Sign this petition to tell the President and your Congressional Representatives to stop this horrific experiment. http://signon.org/sign/stop-stem-cells-experiment
NOTE: This petition is set up through Signon.org, which is a part of Moveon.org. By signing this petition, you will be added to Moveon.org's e-mail list which you can unsubscribe. Our Alert is not an endorsement of Moveon.org, we are promoting this petition to fight Audism.
Although this raises the question all over again of whether deaf people should choose between being deaf and being hearing. Jury's out on that one. I've written about it on this blog before, but honestly whenever I return to this issue I get a little tired of thinking about it in such polarized, dogmatic terms.
Any thoughts or responses, bring them on.
Stop Stem Cell Experiment on Deaf Babies
Sign The Petition to Stop FDA's Audism
The FDA has recently approved stem cell experimentation on Deaf infants at the Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston, Texas. The experiment is to include up to 10 Deaf newborns and infants (6 weeks to 18 months old) to eradicate their being Deaf. The FDA's approval promotes the hidden cultural and linguistic genocide on the Deaf infants and is part of the eugenics to wipe out the Deaf community and our beautiful and precious American Sign Language, which is used by the ASL Deaf community and is one of the top languages studied in the USA.
The Deaf infants are human beings and have their human rights to be created, accepted, loved and supported. The FDA approved experiment will include repeated MRI screenings, possible sedation, injection of untested stem cells for that age population - all which carry long lasting risks and implications. All of this will be done in the name of CURING the infants of a "condition" of which is an ethnicity. (See Lane, Pillard, and Hedeberg)
Being Deaf is not a life-threatening condition and does not cause premature death nor does it bring immeasurable suffering. In fact it does the opposite. Many Deaf people who have American Sign Language and English as part of their life attest to being happy. If the collaborators of the study want a cure - the FDA, the Blood Cord Registry, and the Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital need look no further than ensuring that the infant has access to ASL, English, and Deaf culture. Audism (the belief that to be hearing and/or behave as a hearing person is superior to being Deaf) is the problem, not being Deaf. It is similar to the attitudes that affect minorities like Hispanic people, African-American people, like that of the "Stepford Wives" syndrome -- creating the perfect white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, hearing baby.
It is imperative that the collaborators of this study (which all stand to have monetary gains from this experiment) be held accountable and that the funding and future profits behind this unethical and inhumane study be fully disclosed and examined.
Sign this petition to tell the President and your Congressional Representatives to stop this horrific experiment. http://signon.org/sign/stop-stem-cells-experiment
NOTE: This petition is set up through Signon.org, which is a part of Moveon.org. By signing this petition, you will be added to Moveon.org's e-mail list which you can unsubscribe. Our Alert is not an endorsement of Moveon.org, we are promoting this petition to fight Audism.
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?
Monday, December 12, 2011
Mass-Generated Mumbo-Jumbo
The long-engrained habits of my own brain, as well as the challenges that those habits create in structuring a new auditory model of the world, is something I've been meaning to write about on this blog. (In a nutshell, it's the story of my current stage of listening.) But it's also something that I've written about before, so in favor of a different topic that strikes me as more immediately interesting, I'll bypass it for another time.
I had someone ask me earlier this week about the CI: my progress, whether I'm still happy with the decision, etc., but also about my recent ability in social situations. That last one was the trickiest for me to answer. While my level of environmental awareness and, subsequently, the sensory richness of my world are unbelievable, I still can't help but wish that that impression of auditory texture translated better into the specific fine-tuned connections that would help me more with human speech. Don't get me wrong: my brain is figuring it out. With a single speaker in a quiet location, I'm often surprised and gratified at my ear's ability to fill in the gaps, ease the pressure from lipreading, understand, and, well, listen. But, unfortunately, the world does not operate according to the norm of a single speaker, speaking one at a time, in a quiet location.
As a full-time student, I've reached the point in the academic term when my energy reserves are rather low. Those reserves are already reluctant enough to contribute themselves to (my admitted phobia of) group interaction, but in recent weeks they've been all but shot. And, today, I was wishing that I had a mental typewriter to record the verbal nonsense that my brain sees/hears/juggles on a regular basis. It, reconstructed, goes something like this.
A: Yeah, you know, I was thinking eoriwudn seriuesof ghjldf eirojdf. And it's problem sets and papers and erieosf reuesonf eruelsgh.
B: That sounds really tough. Eeriosdncs eoirslfn and you know vneowri but erouewo it's not so bad boerusor.
C: Askrjejf sdifuseorjf sdfiusd at three o'clock. Ersdnvfoer eruilsbr one of my friends said that eriowehjf qweurs but then I told her erous erwyn oweur. She wasn't very happy.
A: Twoeru sdfbero this afternoon eoriueo and oweur.
C: Awwww.
....
A: Dsfkjfls the Fiesta Bowl? Erwoeiur seruhesf vnvlee.
B: No, I'm not going.
C: I am.
D: Dfskj sieru stijsjf sdfjsldfj!
A: Where are you staying? I was thinking I would sdklfjs pfgoihf seriulkj ofgihfjdfh. And then fly back seriuoenf drtiurd fly out of zeiruoes portiren before coming back to school.
D: Yeah. Eroewur sdfbe that sounds like a good idea. Have you heard of erouwel seruro vboer?
....
C: One time kweridsf dfguorgj eriuefmdl I was on a plane, and eriouwefj sdhfdnf piruoe guy checked my luggage, and then - and then -
B and D: laughing
C: Yeah, I know right, eriweuor vwryeiwnf this stewardess was just srehyweknf ierwekfn and then I got home and my mom looked at me and said seriouewlf fdghdorgn esrueyifhn upoertjlnwe.
A: I did that one time. It was when xerieuosf erouewly eriejof roriuweon.
D: Rwriuweaolf qoweui sdfnselr but he said sadfnsoer rsoweroj.
Me: silence
[Chewing, mumbling, accelerated speech, overlapping conversation interspersed throughout]
Is it any wonder, sometimes, that I just walk away? (I need an iPhone autocorrect to revise all these jumbled words.) Even if they all spoke perfectly in turn, the flow would still be challenging. Whatever my discoveries with the CI, the reality is still a little bit sobering regarding social interaction.
I'm looking forward to some good old-fashioned sign language conversations over the holidays. Or at least some familiar voices to listen to and challenge my ear with - in quiet houses and living rooms, at that!
I had someone ask me earlier this week about the CI: my progress, whether I'm still happy with the decision, etc., but also about my recent ability in social situations. That last one was the trickiest for me to answer. While my level of environmental awareness and, subsequently, the sensory richness of my world are unbelievable, I still can't help but wish that that impression of auditory texture translated better into the specific fine-tuned connections that would help me more with human speech. Don't get me wrong: my brain is figuring it out. With a single speaker in a quiet location, I'm often surprised and gratified at my ear's ability to fill in the gaps, ease the pressure from lipreading, understand, and, well, listen. But, unfortunately, the world does not operate according to the norm of a single speaker, speaking one at a time, in a quiet location.
As a full-time student, I've reached the point in the academic term when my energy reserves are rather low. Those reserves are already reluctant enough to contribute themselves to (my admitted phobia of) group interaction, but in recent weeks they've been all but shot. And, today, I was wishing that I had a mental typewriter to record the verbal nonsense that my brain sees/hears/juggles on a regular basis. It, reconstructed, goes something like this.
A: Yeah, you know, I was thinking eoriwudn seriuesof ghjldf eirojdf. And it's problem sets and papers and erieosf reuesonf eruelsgh.
B: That sounds really tough. Eeriosdncs eoirslfn and you know vneowri but erouewo it's not so bad boerusor.
C: Askrjejf sdifuseorjf sdfiusd at three o'clock. Ersdnvfoer eruilsbr one of my friends said that eriowehjf qweurs but then I told her erous erwyn oweur. She wasn't very happy.
A: Twoeru sdfbero this afternoon eoriueo and oweur.
C: Awwww.
....
A: Dsfkjfls the Fiesta Bowl? Erwoeiur seruhesf vnvlee.
B: No, I'm not going.
C: I am.
D: Dfskj sieru stijsjf sdfjsldfj!
A: Where are you staying? I was thinking I would sdklfjs pfgoihf seriulkj ofgihfjdfh. And then fly back seriuoenf drtiurd fly out of zeiruoes portiren before coming back to school.
D: Yeah. Eroewur sdfbe that sounds like a good idea. Have you heard of erouwel seruro vboer?
....
C: One time kweridsf dfguorgj eriuefmdl I was on a plane, and eriouwefj sdhfdnf piruoe guy checked my luggage, and then - and then -
B and D: laughing
C: Yeah, I know right, eriweuor vwryeiwnf this stewardess was just srehyweknf ierwekfn and then I got home and my mom looked at me and said seriouewlf fdghdorgn esrueyifhn upoertjlnwe.
A: I did that one time. It was when xerieuosf erouewly eriejof roriuweon.
D: Rwriuweaolf qoweui sdfnselr but he said sadfnsoer rsoweroj.
Me: silence
[Chewing, mumbling, accelerated speech, overlapping conversation interspersed throughout]
Is it any wonder, sometimes, that I just walk away? (I need an iPhone autocorrect to revise all these jumbled words.) Even if they all spoke perfectly in turn, the flow would still be challenging. Whatever my discoveries with the CI, the reality is still a little bit sobering regarding social interaction.
I'm looking forward to some good old-fashioned sign language conversations over the holidays. Or at least some familiar voices to listen to and challenge my ear with - in quiet houses and living rooms, at that!
Friday, December 2, 2011
World's First Waterproof Sound Processor
Advanced Bionics just issued a press release about its new waterproof Neptune sound processor.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/waterproof-neptune-sound-processor-from-advanced-bionics-approved-in-united-states-and-canada-134834503.html
Since the days when I was a kid and communication really didn't matter in the face of fun and games, I've disliked swimming and hanging out in water (at least, with people who don't sign) because the knowledge that I will be totally deaf while in the pool, playing at the beach, etc. is just uncomfortable. If there's the slightest risk that I'll get my CI or hearing aid wet, I just go without - meaning forfeit my hearing. To this day, I have absolutely no concept of how things sound underwater or in watery environments. (I still have memories of being coerced into playing "Marco Polo" in the fifth grade. The other kids loved it because I of course took forever being the one underwater. To this day the notion that I even participated seems laughable.)
And having the option of not wearing the processor behind the ear - how wild. Except maybe a few rare days of being sick in bed, I've never gone a day in my life (since way back when I was diagnosed with my hearing loss) without some hearing device perched on my ears. I feel naked without one.
The design does look strange (a disembodied, futuristic-looking box instead of something clearly designed for ears), and I've been perfectly happy with my Harmony processor, but for me the concept of the Neptune is intriguing. And so, so cool. And common sense. I'm happy that AB is taking steps toward solving real technological barriers that have existed for deaf people for decades.
In a nutshell: even though I'm not a poolside kiddie anymore, I want one. Sort of.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/waterproof-neptune-sound-processor-from-advanced-bionics-approved-in-united-states-and-canada-134834503.html
Since the days when I was a kid and communication really didn't matter in the face of fun and games, I've disliked swimming and hanging out in water (at least, with people who don't sign) because the knowledge that I will be totally deaf while in the pool, playing at the beach, etc. is just uncomfortable. If there's the slightest risk that I'll get my CI or hearing aid wet, I just go without - meaning forfeit my hearing. To this day, I have absolutely no concept of how things sound underwater or in watery environments. (I still have memories of being coerced into playing "Marco Polo" in the fifth grade. The other kids loved it because I of course took forever being the one underwater. To this day the notion that I even participated seems laughable.)
And having the option of not wearing the processor behind the ear - how wild. Except maybe a few rare days of being sick in bed, I've never gone a day in my life (since way back when I was diagnosed with my hearing loss) without some hearing device perched on my ears. I feel naked without one.
The design does look strange (a disembodied, futuristic-looking box instead of something clearly designed for ears), and I've been perfectly happy with my Harmony processor, but for me the concept of the Neptune is intriguing. And so, so cool. And common sense. I'm happy that AB is taking steps toward solving real technological barriers that have existed for deaf people for decades.
In a nutshell: even though I'm not a poolside kiddie anymore, I want one. Sort of.
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...
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