Impossible Music

by Sean Williams

In the middle of October, Deaf Solutions assigned me another counselor, who picked up where we had left off, talking entirely via the cloud. An older Asian guy, he too explored the depths of my unhappiness by means of platitudes, with occasional all caps.

  . . . UNLESS you factor in suicide.

  After the maddening Sandra Mack, I found his bullshit refreshingly blunt. He could be funny, too. His name was Killian Ollerenshaw, which he immediately admitted was too much of a handful to sign. Instead, people called him KO.

  Like that old song: “Total KO! To-kyo Go!” You know it?

  Oh yeah.

  What was the band? Context?

  Contact.

  THAT’S RIGHT! I used to have their poster on my bedroom wall. That probably seems totally uncool now.

  So then I had to confess about Dad, and then Mum, and then everything else. If it was a deliberate ploy, much respect. But I reckon it was just a lucky accident. For him, I mean. I didn’t really want to talk about what had happened in the previous days. I’d had enough time to realize I was being selfish for expecting everyone around me, who had battles of their own to get on with, to stand about waving banners for me. (No point blowing trumpets.)

  It’s hard not to be selfish, though, when you’re trapped behind the veil of silence. No—​a one-way mirror, because I can communicate easily enough with hearing people. It’s the other way that’s hard. When you’re give, give, give all the time, is it wrong to expect something in return? Wasn’t I permitted to be a shit at least part-time?

  . . . suicide.

  * * *

  Standing by G’s bed at the end of the year, KO’s stark pronouncement comes back to me. G is undergoing some kind of treatment, a cure for the noise that plagues her, drowning out the world. But it doesn’t work, and . . .

  If she really doesn’t want to come back, Aunty Lou said. She wasn’t talking about going on vacation.

  I know I’m being selfish again, trying to find a way to process what’s happening to G through the filter of my own experiences, but how else am I supposed to do it?

  By trying on one of G’s filters. That’s the straw I clutch at. I still have the sheaf of letters in my hand, and I begin to read them more closely. The first thing I see is an acronym, VNS. Then another, TR-MDD. The language is technical and hard to follow. I feel like I’m reading something in French or Italian: the letters are the same, but the words make no sense to me. Something about nerves and electrical signals. Implants and computer-aided therapy. Neuromodulators and transmitters.

  If I squint, I could almost be reading a manual for one of Dad’s synths.

  Which is a stupid, stupid thought. G doesn’t have a manual, and neither does her condition. I’m chasing something that doesn’t exist. Is it any wonder that the words in front of me are utterly removed from their meaning?

  Aunty Lou is trying to tell me something. I look up from the page, and she hands me a note.

  Take it. Read it. We have another copy.

  Her offer feels like a dismissal, but maybe I’m ready to go now. Not understanding makes me an outsider, and while G’s eyes are closed, I can’t ask her questions.

  But am I offering silent support just by being here? What message would I send if I left now?

  I sit in the visitor’s chair. My hands are shaking. I don’t really see the words on the pages anymore. My insides are an eel that’s squeezing tighter with every breath. Part of me needs to flee, but I know I have to stay. I want to stay. I want to know how to make a difference.

  Phrases like this don’t help: Cortical Map Plasticity as a Function of Vagus Nerve Stimulation.

  All I see are three potential song titles.

  * * *

  Take a word and its meaning. Separate the two—​and you’re left with noise. But I don’t believe in “noise.” If every sound is musical, then every word has meaning, even if it’s not the one intended.

  . . . suicide.

  The very thought of what G has done scares me shitless.

  Perhaps it’s this that gives me a flash of inspiration.

  According to the notes G handed me, she has a chip in her head now. That’s the reason for the new scar on her neck that I noticed at uni. It isn’t a cochlear implant, though. A cochlear implant processes sound and feeds it directly into the nervous system of your inner ear. Not just the sound of the world around you: you can connect your phone to your implant and hear things that were never real. No one else can hear these sounds but you.

  That’s the germ of my new thought, and the hospital room grays out around me as I pursue it, imagining a performance piece that never even once exists as sound. It would start as information in a computer, say, then that information would be fed wirelessly into a hall full of people with cochlear implants, so they would all hear music appearing out of apparent silence. Ghost tunes over Wi-Fi. Even better than a silent disco.

  Problems are immediately apparent, some of them solvable. People who don’t have implants can wear earbuds, which wouldn’t sound exactly the same, but some variability has to be permissible. No musical experience is identical to any other, even if you’re listening to the same song on repeat. Like that river we can never cross twice.

  Still, expensive, and it relies on hearing something in the brain. This is a stunt that wouldn’t work on someone like me, missing the crucial part that hears.

  But the possibility has my mind turning over idea after idea, sensing that I’m getting closer to something even better. Being selfish again, hiding from the problem at hand. Later, I will be guilt stricken. For now, though, in the hospital, the chain of thought pulls me irresistibly onwards.

  Computers are boring to watch. Why not a band playing electronic instruments? That wouldn’t work so well with Blackmod, unless we took up keytars and electric drums, which I know Roo or Sad Alan wouldn’t do. Still, let’s imagine.

  If the synths aren’t plugged in, no one’s missing out on anything.

  Or what if they are plugged in, but the faders on the mixing desk are down and the amps aren’t turned up?

  Or everything’s working as normal, but the audience is wearing noise-reducing headphones?

  No, too expensive, again—​and all it takes is for someone to remove the headphones to ruin the effect.

  I’ve hit this roadblock before. The difficulty of creating aud-ible music that isn’t audible to anyone is very apparent to me.

  Only . . . my brain is really beginning to fizz now . . . the music doesn’t have to be inaudible to anyone.

  It just has to be inaudible to the audience.

  In that moment, the first work of impossible music is born.

  Its existence is a comfort in a world that until now has offered no comfort at all.

  Deaf and Dumb

  October 7

  When I first met KO, my new counselor, he wanted to know why I’d walked out on his predecessor. He had Sandra Mack’s side of the story, of course, and he wanted to hear mine. That was going to require me to fess up about my darker emotions and feeling patronized and being an arse to Mum afterwards, and I told him that would take too long to type out.

  I’m in no hurry, he said. Better that than keeping it bottled up inside you.

  So I tried. I described how I’d felt sitting in the car after my prolonged spit about all the music I’d never hear again. I knew I had to apologize to Mum but didn’t know how. Signing it wouldn’t feel real—​so little felt real anymore, except for the intensity of my anger and frustration—​but saying “sorry” aloud would risk things flaring up again. Texting wasn’t an option . . . was it? I decided it wasn’t. But how were we going to move forward if I couldn’t heal that breach? I couldn’t live in the car . . . though part of me was attracted to that idea. It was safe in there. The seats were comfortable. I was alone.

  When I closed my eyes and settled back, my pulse slowed, my muscles slackened—​

  Thump thump thump—​

  I felt rather than heard a fist pounding on t
he roof of the car. My eyes snapped open, then slammed shut as the overhead light blasted on. Someone was getting in behind the wheel. Rough hands pushed a hard-edged oblong into my stomach. I had to look, even though my eyes were still adjusting.

  It was Maeve and her trusty whiteboard. She’d written three words in red and underlined them four times in black.

  Deaf and dumb.

  I scowled at the message. “I can talk just fine,” I told her, but I knew what she was really saying. “And I’m not stupid.”

  Her nonverbal language was almost as easy to read as the words on her whiteboard.

  You’re sure acting stupid. Like running to Dad’s was ever going to help. If anything, it makes it worse. Mum is inside listening to that boring music of hers, you know. She’s on her second repeat.

  “I’ll come in when I’m ready.”

  Two hands palm up in the air. A gesture, not a sign: When will that be?

  “What do you care?”

  On the whiteboard, she wrote, You’re my brother, you asshole. Come inside.

  “I’m surprised you haven’t already moved into my room.”

  A single raised eyebrow, a tilt of the head. Oh, believe me, I’m tempted.

  I sighed, wishing I could ask her what I should do about Mum. But we didn’t have that kind of relationship. She thought I was a loser, and I thought she was annoying. For all that we were less than a year apart and our paths often intersected, the orbits we followed were way out of alignment. Chalk and cheese, math and music—​we had nothing in common except the house we lived in.

  She performed some substantial editing on the board.

  brother + stroke = pain in the ass

  Well, we agreed on that. I hated having brain damage, and she hated me having brain damage. All this drama made life difficult for her too, although it was hard to remember that, sometimes.

  “Look at the upside,” I said, and she tilted her head the other way, WTF?

  “You can play that K-pop shit all you want now, and I don’t have to listen to it.”

  Her eyebrows came up. Yeah, see? She erased the board with one sweep of her sleeve and tugged at my arm. Coming?

  “I will if you tell Mum I’m sorry first.”

  She looked at me through lowered brows and meaningfully shook her head. That’s on you, sonny.

  Then she was moving, and, almost as though I had no volition, so was I. Out of the car, across the yard, through the back door, into the kitchen. Mum was there, nursing a mug of cocoa and a wary look. I signed Sorry twice, the word feeling awkward in my hand but sincerely meant, and she nodded, not without sympathy. Nothing was resolved, but we had moved on. That was enough.

  I went to my room and erased the iTunes folder on my laptop. Dumb to keep it, and I felt an act of contrition was required. Upside, I told myself: more room for porn.

  * * *

  Finding an upside to losing music has been hard for me. Here’s another one: no more worries about earbuds breaking or getting lost.

  Mostly it was shit, though, not being able to hear, and for so many reasons I could have listed them all day. Maeve is always telling me when my shoes are squeaking or I’m making other noises I’m not aware of. The “groaning ghost,” she calls me sometimes, when I’m humming along to head music without realizing. The habit is ingrained.

  And speaking of porn, masturbating is so nerve-racking I’d almost rather not try. Is there someone outside my room? Will they walk in and catch me at it? Having a younger sister in the house automatically makes locks fifty percent less reliable.

  * * *

  Sudden deafness takes something already fraught with potential disaster and makes it seem utterly impossible. Being in general, I mean, not just wanking.

  In the silence of my world, it’s all too easy to fixate on my issues and forget about everyone else’s. Hence, I am less likely to die by my own hand than by crossing the road and not hearing the car speeding around a corner.

  Was G fixating too, in the noise of her world? Or did she already feel drowned out? Erased?

  She tried to kill herself. She failed. Then she called me. And now I tell myself to think about the future. There has to be one, or why would I be here?

  * * *

  KO asked whether my breakup with Shari and the argument with Mum changed the way I felt about myself or my situation. He obviously wanted me to say yes, and that is indeed what I told him—​because it was true, and because I had learned to choose my battles. The situation I was in impacted on those around me. My parents and sibling had a deaf member of the family now, which in some ways seemed as confronting as if I’d become a paraplegic. Only, instead of ramps, we had to build bridges—​bridges spanning the gulf of misunderstanding that lay between us.

  Finding a way to do that was the hard thing. Silence meant as much as the spoken word to me, as far as my brain was concerned. Close my mouth, open it . . . withdraw, unburden . . . I might as well have flapped my jaw up and down like a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  Time, KO tapped into our shared file in the cloud.

  That’s the cure for what ails you. I’m not talking about deafness, although it’s good you can use that word now. (Maybe one day you’ll even spell it with a capital D.) I mean your sense of being alone and forgotten by a world that’s moved on without you. Forget the songs you’ll never hear again—​what about the new music you’ll never hear AT ALL? What about the new ringtones on the next iPhone? What about—​

  Yeah, I get it.

  I think you’re starting to. You imagine yourself staring into a world empty of sound, and you see only blankness. It takes time to see that it’s just as full as it ever was. Breakups make you feel the same way, which is why I think these two crises have come together. I promise you’ll find someone else, and I also promise you’ll find a way to be Deaf, too. Your own way.

  How? What does that even mean?

  Perhaps it would help to ask what it was about music that you liked. If it’s rhythm and structure, maybe dance could be a substitute. There are Deaf dancers. If it’s the social aspect, the drinking—​drugs, even—​

  I’m not interested in substitutes. Music is my drug. Every bit of it.

  Well, we’ll just have to find you another drug. (DON’T tell anyone I said that.) Does it help to know that there are other people out there looking too?

  I wondered then how many people he saw every day. Single figures? Double? But he wouldn’t tell me.

  No one follows the same path, Simon. Lots of people are lost. You’re not alone.

  Great, I wanted to say, and I bet Gustav Mahler had company too.

  Something Quiet

  December 29

  In the hospital, I come back to that wordless shrug—​“How?”—​and a message from G that had been waiting for me on Christmas morning, a grim response to my description of the stroke, or so I guessed at the time.

  Remember that accident I told you about? The roller derby? My wrists? I have a vivid memory of hitting the ground and the whistle the ref blew, but it’s a blur after that, apart from the pain. There was swearing. Quite a lot of swearing, I suspect. When the ambulance arrived, they loaded me up with seriously awesome painkillers. The next thing I know, I’m lying in hospital with my hands in plaster and there’s Aunty Lou by the bed and a doctor talking to me, but somehow I can still hear the ref’s whistle that sounded as I went down. Peep-peep. Peep-peeeep. Peep-fucking-peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

  At first I think I’m imagining it. I mean, it’s not there all the time. Mostly when people are talking. I can still understand what they’re saying, but it’s harder to make out the words. Sometimes the whistle surprises me out of nowhere and makes me jump. I feel like an idiot, but an idiot is better than crazy, which I feel like I might be sometimes, too.

  Eventually Aunty Lou notices the jumping and insomnia and she makes me go see the doctor. I tell them about the whistle, and they tell me it’s all in my head—​which I suppose, technically, that’s wh
at tinnitus IS, one way or another. Either the nerves are overactive or the brain is, take your pick. They say there’s no physical cause they can detect and that stress could be making it worse, because I missed a bunch of school and my midyear exams didn’t go as well as I hoped—​so they put me on antidepressants, but that only makes the noise louder. I don’t tell anyone because by then my hands are pretty much better and I’m ready to skate again, and nothing’s going to stop the Diva Hammer from going back, dammit.

  That’s when things really went to shit.

  Yeah. So. There was a second accident. That’s the real reason why I don’t skate anymore. I was so used to ignoring the whistle in my head that I didn’t pay attention to the one I was supposed to hear in the real world.

  Five minutes into my first bout back, the other team’s jammer stops right in front of me, and I don’t notice in time. I trip over her legs and crash into the barrier so hard I knock myself clean out. Because I’m protecting my hands. I’m lucky I don’t break my neck instead. I’m lucky I wake up at all.

  That’s what they write down for me when they realize I can’t make out anything over the racket in my head that’s now one hundred times more terrible than before. Random sounds on a loop, over and over, with no break, ever. Voices, snatches of music, ringtones, dogs barking. Nothing they can do about it but wait to see if it goes away—​which it isn’t doing. In fact, it’s getting worse.

  But hey, look on the bright side! At least the fucking whistle is gone.

  Four days after reading that email, I look at her in the hospital bed, with her arms lying limply by her sides, and notice that her eyes are open. She is staring at me. I feel a jolt, like someone flicked a switch inside me, and I wonder if she ever properly explained the way she felt to anyone else. She must have a Sandra Mack or KO to sound off at, however uselessly. Does she hide it from them because there’s no solution? Because she doesn’t want Aunty Lou to worry?