Impossible Music

by Sean Williams

  Reading that Mahler score reminded me of Mum’s old music. The idea of structures from silence took on a new kind of profundity. Maybe, I thought, silence doesn’t have to be so empty after all.

  Except it is. Perceiving silence differently is the thing. It’s all internal. Reading Mahler was exactly like someone handing me a map and me imagining the journey as vividly as I could.

  Was that a real journey? Define journey. Define real.

  These thoughts kept me at least partially occupied for a full nine days, while I awaited the final diagnosis. When I wasn’t trying to remember what my last sounds were, or clutching for any new sounds that might be forthcoming. When I wasn’t arguing with my sister, or trying to understand what the specialists were telling me. When I wasn’t staring into the gaping empty horror-wardrobe of what life might be like if worse came to worst and my music was turned off forever.

  * * *

  “You can fix this, right?”

  We’ll fix it, promise. XX

  Sometimes a mother’s promise is not enough.

  Von Hatehoven

  December 23

  What Dad started with Mahler, I continue my own way: engaging with music, sound optional.

  My methods have changed over the months. For instance, when I got home from the concert that G bailed on, I plugged my guitar into my laptop and recorded an epic, thirty-minute solo to put me in the mood for sleep. It drew on some of the solos I had memorized before—​a bit of “Afterlife” here, some “Through the Fire and Flames” there—​but on the whole it was improvised, and it sounded pretty good in my head. That was one of the unexpected upsides of being a lead guitarist who can’t hear. There was no need for amps or pedals to achieve the ringing awesomeness my timeless licks demanded. Just a guitar in my hands, the unlimited budget of my imagination, and an opportunity to let rip.

  Maeve called it aural wankery—​and in my darkest hours, I wondered if she was right. What was the point of playing music if no one else experienced it? Mum’s hopeless quest to fix everything still went on, in her own way, but she was as out of her depth as I was. And Dad . . . well, there were times I wanted to smash his records and CDs and erase all his files so he’d know what it felt like to be me. Why should he have the chance to hear new music every day when I didn’t?

  Listen with your eyes, my first counselor told me once.

  Fine, I wanted to say, but how do I scream with my hands?

  The fact that my angst was profoundly selfish didn’t lessen its impact. It was lonely there, inside my silent world; all I had to think about was me and my pretend music and my inability to fix anything myself.

  After playing each solo, and there were many across those empty weeks, I would put the audio file of the recording in a folder with the others I had saved since losing my hearing. For weeks, I kept them all. It was hard to articulate why, even to myself. Maybe I still hoped that I would hear them one day. Maybe it was just force of momentum.

  Since earlier this week when I made G cry, though, I’ve started deleting them. I tell myself it’s a statement. Hey, see? I don’t care whether I hear it or not. It doesn’t matter to me.

  Except it does matter. It’s totally unfair that my brain will never hear anything ever again, when it still matters to me. Couldn’t the part that cares have been destroyed as well? Life would be so much easier if I didn’t care about music or uni or anything else I took for granted before . . . But would I still be me?

  That’s how I know I’m not really anything like Beethoven: if he wasn’t crazy when he died, he must’ve been when he wrote the Ninth Symphony. How awful to taunt yourself by writing something better than pretty good, something truly amazing that everyone but you will hear! That’s worse than not finishing something before you die, like Mahler did. To know that a work exists in its complete form, but that you will never experience it . . . What kind of person would willingly do that to themselves?

  If not even the composer can partake of the masterwork, there’s no point writing a single note.

  Is there?

  * * *

  You need to read the postmodernists, G tells me during one of my occasional rants on this subject, two days before Christmas. The audience creates its own experience blah blah.

  She’s the only person I can talk to about this: how music used to make me feel, how losing music makes me feel, and what steps I could take to get that feeling back. I’ve learned the hard way not to fake-perform it in front of her, though.

  I ask her to explain postmodernism in single-syllable words so I can understand what she’s talking about. It takes a while, and I’m still not sure I completely follow the argument.

  Something about art being defined by the audience, not the artist. Maybe?

  Close enough.

  Okay, but where does the audience’s “created experience” come from? If two people start with different materials, one sound and one the score, say, how can the different outcomes be considered remotely the same?

  I dunno, but if that really matters to you, there must be some way to engineer it in advance. You still remember what sound sounds like, right? Use your imagination.

  I already do that. How about people who are born deaf and have never heard a sound at all? What do they experience?

  Why are you worried about them all of a sudden?

  Because, I sign to myself. This is one of my favorite signs, which maybe says something about how my brain is working at this point. I have favorite signs. But what I am really trying to say is: Why should they miss out?

  Someone’s always going to miss out.

  Not if EVERYONE misses out.

  That’s when it hits me, the real reason why I’ve been deleting my solos.

  Not because I don’t care. Because it makes things even.

  A deleted solo disappears, unheard. No one benefits, no one loses—​neither composer nor audience. It’s like one of those subatomic particles that pops into existence out of nowhere, explodes into a cascade of smaller bits and bobs that combine and recombine into something very much like the original, and then vanishes back into nothingness. I remember hearing about them in physics and thinking it all sounded very deep.

  But it’s not. I see that now. It’s all actually about revenge.

  If I can’t hear the world’s music, then it in return won’t hear mine.

  Very noble, G says when I explain this to her. You’re my hero, Sadwig von Hatehoven.

  But I’m not really paying attention to her banter now. I’m wrapped up in an entirely new thought about music. Absence is a kind of experience. I’m certainly feeling something by being denied sound. So maybe the only musical experience a composer could create that can be shared equally by everyone . . . hearing and non-hearing alike . . . is one that’s impossible to hear.

  Not just recorded and deleted—​written and performed in such a way that no one could ever experience it the way music is normally experienced. Somehow. The details don’t matter right now. I’ll work them out. I’ll find the hidden shoals that Mr. Mackereth charted. The band will help, and Professor Dorn too—​at least, I hope they will. With or without them, I’ll bring my discovery up into the light, so no one will ever have to miss out on music—​real music—​ever again.

  Screw Beethoven, I tell her in a kind of ecstatic trance. I’m going to be the next John Cage.

  Good for you.

  It bothers me only slightly when she adds, John who?

  Part Two

  Sad Music Playing

  September 13

  I don’t remember much about the days following my final diagnosis, which was delivered to me during another impersonal, borderline-incomprehensible consultation with all the usual suspects present: Selwyn Floyd’s beard, Prameela Verma’s impassivity, Mum’s anxiety. The words hearing loss, total, and permanent were like cathedral bells ripped from their moorings, tumbling ponderously but silently in my head. There were no surgical options. No amount of therapy would bring my he
aring back. Music was fucking gone, and all that remained was me, an empty bell tower fit for pigeons to shit in.

  My obsession with the lost notes of my personal symphony came back as intensely as ever. What had I missed, that last night? What poignant fadeout into deathly silence? It killed me that this audience of one would never know.

  Maybe if lyrics had been my thing, I would have found a way to fill the void sooner, or at least to express the problem. But sadly, fitting words to music has never worked for me.

  Let’s talk about passion. What else are you passionate about? Just because music is gone, that doesn’t mean nothing’s left. Lots of people have more than one passion. Some people even have to choose, say, between being an Olympic athlete or a dancer, because either is a full-time commitment. You lived a rich and full life when you could hear, Simon. Your life can still be rich and full. It IS rich and full, even if you don’t see that right now.

  This important message was delivered by my first counselor, Sandra Mack, a stunningly beautiful woman with yellow streaks through white hair—​or perhaps the other way around—​a nose ring, and the upper tendrils of a vine tattoo showing above the front of her overalls. Her opening gambit was to ask me about my tatts. Are we bonding now? I wanted to type back, disliking her immediately.

  She continued, relentlessly:

  My dad is an artist, a painter. That’s not all he’s into, though. In fact, he says it’s not the work of other painters that inspires him. It’s books. I think art is like that, even if we’re not aware of it. Being inspired by what we produce is a bit like, well, cannibalism, or incest, if you don’t mind me being a bit gross. And there’s that awful line about infidelity: doesn’t matter where you get your appetite, as long as you eat at home. Whatever gets the juices flowing, right?

  So what else are you passionate about, Simon? That’s your path through this. Because “this” is not the end. It’s a new beginning. You’ll see that one day, trust me.

  What do you say in reply to this?

  Sandra and I communicated via our laptops in an office at Deaf Solutions, a community organization for people with hearing problems of all kinds, including those like me whose worlds are newly silent. Its headquarters are in a small office building refurbished with flashing-light doorbells, telephones, and other visual aids. I was introduced to Sandra as part of the next stage of my treatment, which was to get used to the fact that I would never hear again, something I was reluctant to deal with in the usual ways. Mum insisted I go, at Prameela’s suggestion, in order to find a way forward.

  We need our own way to talk, you and I, Sandra said in our first session. What would make you most comfortable?

  We settled on the laptops but not using email. Instead we accessed a shared document in the cloud that we both typed into. That way, I could follow her cursor on my screen and watch the platitudes flow magically from it without having to look at her at all.

  Dammit, she was beautiful. I couldn’t help wondering where the rest of that tattoo went, which distracted me from my misery, so that was something.

  Well, I used to be passionate about books too, I guess, when I was a kid. Since then I mainly watch movies and TV.

  Great! That’s something.

  But subtitles suck. And I really hate it when they say things like “sad music playing.” Why even bother? It’s futile. Like painting by numbers but without the paint, just the numbers.

  I understand.

  How can you? You’re not deaf.

  My parents are, and so’s my boyfriend. That’s why I became an interpreter and then a counselor. I know how hard it can be for the Deaf in a world built by and for hearing people . . . but that doesn’t mean only hearing people can live in it.

  What if I don’t want to?

  If you’re feeling depressed—​

  No, not that. Everywhere I look I’m reminded of what’s missing. People talking to each other with their voices, wearing headphones, answering doorbells, waking up to alarms . . . What if the world hurts too much? What if it’s easier to hide from it?

  There’s a thriving Deaf community all around you. You probably pass Deaf people every day, sit next to them on the bus, cross the road with them—​

  I just wish there was somewhere I could go to get away from it all. Be alone. Work this out by myself.

  I don’t think that would really help. You’re a smart guy, Simon. I feel like I can say this to you: your problem is a sense of disconnection from your life, because you can no longer hear. Being more disconnected will only make things worse. You tell me you feel like everything you ever knew is irrelevant—​or even worse, made painful because of the way things are now. There are reminders of music and sound all around you. But I want you to know that the way things are now doesn’t change everything. You’re still you, and your world is still there. It’s just different. In some ways, you’ll find it to be more exciting. Trust me.

  She kept saying that. Trust me. I didn’t listen. I couldn’t. Listening meant words and sounds, and they were lost to me. Reading text on a screen felt about as real as reading a score instead of listening to the symphony—​which was distracting for a while but ultimately unsatisfying. I was sick of the facsimile. I wanted the real thing, and she couldn’t give it to me.

  Blackmod

  December 26

  Sandra was right, though, on more levels than I was prepared to admit, then. To her, or to myself.

  I’d been seeing a girl called Shari on and off when I had my stroke. It was she who habituated me to using texts to communicate with hearing friends, although Shari would hate that this was her legacy, because, well, you know. Ultimately her text-talking trick was a quick fix that did nothing to address the actual problem. I wasn’t ready to give up the sounds of things just because there existed ways to get by without them. The smell of popcorn isn’t the same minus the sound of it popping. The feel of guitar strings under my fingertips is no substitute for the riff from “Black Dog.”

  Then there’s sex.

  If you’d asked me beforehand, I’d have said it’d be easy—​it’s all physical, right? Who needs words? But the whole thing is overwhelming without the other participant’s voice to bind it together. At least it was for me.

  This was something Shari never understood. Or maybe she just wasn’t the right person for me. The night she tried to shag me on the couch, while music videos screened in the background, was a disaster. I couldn’t deal with it—​didn’t know how loud we were being, who might overhear, how to ask her what she wanted, if she was even enjoying it . . .

  Turns out when gripped with uncertainty, you need words more than ever. Touch, taste, smell, and sight are all great, but I hadn’t learned yet how to properly manage them alone. Shari was a freight train bearing down on me in a dark tunnel, and I didn’t know which way to dodge. Talk about performance anxiety.

  There was no way we could text about this, certainly not during. We kept trying to make it work, though, thanks to hormones and habit. And maybe out of a sense of obligation. I certainly thought it was helping her, and she probably thought it was helping me. Turns out it wasn’t helping either of us, in the long run.

  * * *

  If intimacy is a problem, having a group chat with my two closest friends via social media feels just as authentic as ever. We’re all equal under the eyes of Twitter.

  After the obligatory Grandma-got-me-socks-for-Christmas conversation, I decide to present my big idea to them: music that no one can hear.

  You want to what now?

  You heard the man. Play music for the deaf.

  That’s not really what I meant.

  Don’t they already have music? If you turn it up loud enough?

  Yes, but that’s just doof doof doof, Alan. It’s like throwing out the food and licking an empty plate.

  What kind of food? Vegetarian could be an improvement.

  Come on, hear me out. The deaf AND hearing get the same experience. No one misses anything. Ev
eryone goes home happy.

  Can’t do it.

  Gotta try.

  It’ll be paintings for the blind next.

  Called sculpture, dude. Let the Drip finish before you cut him down. It’s only fair.

  I’ve known Roo and Sad Alan since primary school. They call me the Drip because of my surname, Rain. That’s what we tell people, anyway. Roo, supposedly short for Rooster, does have an amazing red quiff, and Alan the longest face I’ve ever seen, but the secret meanings of our nicknames are very different. And obscene.

  We went our separate ways for a bit, thanks to parents sending us to different high schools, but a love of music brought us back together once we started playing in earnest. Me, guitar and the occasional growl. Roo, bass and vocals. Sad Alan, drums.

  Together, Blackmod—​the latest of many band names.

  It wasn’t our intention to start a band at all, really. We just wanted to make loud noises together and get out of playing sports. We didn’t even perform original songs for a long time, unless you can call unstructured, aggressively incoherent improvisations “originals,” which I guess they did in the 1960s, when Dad was a kid. We practiced in our garage. Mum made us wear ear protection, because, although the space was lightly insulated to spare the rest of the world, the walls and ceiling were bare and the floor was concrete, so our sonic attacks returned on us largely unimpeded. These sessions left me feeling breathless, as though the sheer volume of our brilliance had shaken the oxygen right out of the air.

  I liked being in the garage, where no one could see us being our true selves. It was inevitable, though, that one of us would want to perform live, and that one was Sad Alan. He had a crush on a girl called Courtney, who liked live music. His plan was to get a gig, any gig, to increase his chances with her, and Roo was onboard with this plan. I was the one who had to be convinced. We would need a venue, for a start. Then a set list, not to mention at least one original song, preferably not comprised entirely of licks nicked from our favorite bands. A look. And hey, a name. Surely we’d need that!