Impossible Music

by Sean Williams

  I’m sorry I haven’t told you any of these is never in the UK and he is someone is evident to me and I’m glad you’re here and graduates a patient god knows what you’re getting out of this just don’t ever forget my coffee in all your data and

  Watching the words trickle and stutter across the screen, most of them transcribed inaccurately but with occasional, powerful flashes of meaning, it really strikes me how frustrating, perhaps even pointless, this whole voice-recognition exercise can be. It’s like that Google Translate game where you turn a sentence from English to Russian to Chinese to Spanish and then back to English, because the nonsense it produces is hilarious. Only this isn’t making me laugh, and it isn’t a game. It couldn’t be more serious.

  This is how we communicate, secondhand through apps. No wonder I’ve missed the full impact of what G’s been going through.

  She speaks for a long time, crying at one point. I lie down next to her on the hospital bed and watch as she edits the gibberish on the screen into sense.

  I’ve told you some of it. Tiny fragments of sounds—​songs, speech, background noises—​get stuck in loops, over and over. They don’t mean anything. I’ve tried listening hard to see if there’s a message in there, but it’s just . . . nothing. And loud, most of the time. Sometimes I can’t sleep, or even think. When it fades out for a bit, I tell myself it’s going, finally, but then it comes back again. Always. Louder than ever. You have no idea.

  I have some idea. She’s been sharing hints of this ever since we started hanging out. Which is not to say that she’s wrong for telling me again. I guess it hasn’t penetrated my silent world, the truth of her private cacophony.

  I think of the day at uni when I mimed the sound of Blackmod and feel faintly ill. I was making imaginary noise to fill my emptiness while she was trying to erase imaginary noises that she had too many of.

  You know they torture enemy soldiers with noise, don’t you? That heavy metal shit you like, 24 hours a day. It drives people crazy. Literally. Like this is driving me crazy. Like it’s squeezing me out of my own head, squirting me out my ears.

  And then Prameela . . . Ah, fuck, sorry. She said it was a long shot, and the treatment isn’t over yet, but nothing’s getting better. It’s never going to get better. And sign language feels like giving up. When Aunty Lou is mad at me, she says I’m as stubborn and stupid as my mum ever was, but I don’t know if she’s just trying to shame me into being good. Do your parents do that?

  Briefly interrupting her editing, I confirm that this indeed is the case. They learn the technique in parent school.

  I’m sorry I haven’t told you any of this. There’s no room for you in here, Simon. There’s no room for me. But I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re so patient. God knows what you’re getting out of this. Just don’t ever forget my coffee again, or you’re a dead man.

  I laugh, and she kisses me, taking me by surprise with the force of it, the need. Naturally, I respond. This is what I want. She fills me when she’s with me. When there’s space for me, when the noise allows me in.

  The bed shakes under us. We break apart and look up. A smiling nurse has banged the end of the frame. This is how you attract the attention of someone who can’t hear. This is how you ruin a teenager’s day.

  The nurse has an iPad, which she uses like a whiteboard. She writes, Time to check out?

  G gives her two giant thumbs-up, and I, blushing furiously, get off the bed and out of the way.

  * * *

  As I wait in the hallway for G to dress and pack, I think more about G’s world. Hers is full where mine is empty. If only I could take on some of her burden. That might make life easier for both of us. I would have some sound, and she would have less.

  For the time being, I am able to put aside the possibility that my brain is learning to hear again. Later, I will email Selwyn Floyd. I won’t tell G. I feel like I am holding a candle between my cupped hands. Speak too freely, and it might just blow out.

  G appears with a backpack slung over her shoulder, wearing strikingly conventional sneakers, tights, and hoodie. No black. The trim is actually pink.

  Catching my eye, she shrugs. Aunty Lou, she mouths. When I mime taking a photo, she puts on a not if you want to live face.

  Sometimes Auslan is simplest, and I know she knows the sign for Where to?

  She gives me directions, starting with walking down the hallway.

  * * *

  Her house is near the beach. I can smell the salt and dead fish. Seagulls wheel across the western sky. The threat of rain has kept beachgoers at home, so I have no problem finding a parking spot. The electric gate across G’s driveway is shut.

  She inclines her head. Coming in?

  I mirror the gesture and with added eyebrows. Sure?

  She nods, puts one arm through the strap of her backpack, and opens the door of the car. I follow her, but not too closely, as she reaches over the fence, pushes a button, and the gate slides soundlessly open.

  A dog bounds through the gap and throws itself at G and me in turn. It’s one of those little yappy dogs I loved to hate, back in my hearing days. I assume it’s been barking at us from the other side of the gate the whole time we were standing there.

  G ignores the dog, apart from holding its collar while she closes the gate. Aunty Lou’s pet, then. Not something I’m obliged to make friends with.

  She waves Come on and leads me up the path to a deep veranda. The home is an old austerity place built for soldiers after the Second World War, the kind Mum’s always wanted to buy, but it’s been touched up at least twice since, with mixed results. The original sandstone has been regrouted, and there’s evidence of a second floor extruding through a red-tiled roof. The door is modern, and so is the security system. G keys in a number to spare the neighbors. A siren wouldn’t remotely bother us, until the SWAT team arrives.

  The dog stays outside. Inside is dark and warm. The air smells faintly of lemon, of her. Something reminds me of home, but it’s not the furniture, which looks like it hasn’t been updated for twenty years, or the books, which are everywhere. Aunty Lou loves a good romance novel, it seems. And why not? At least she reads. The last time Mum picked up anything romantic was when she was dating Dad—​“And look how that turned out,” she loves to say.

  As I follow G past a kitchen bar with cane stools, thinking, So this is where she eats, it hits me: there are no plants, vases, statues, or the like to block the view of anyone who lives here. That’s why this place reminds me of home. Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to preserve a direct line of sight for those who can’t hear.

  Again, Aunty Lou’s work. Mum did the same. I wonder if they were given identical pamphlets by their GPs: Surviving Your Child’s Sudden Deafness . . .

  My gaze swings around to G. She’s studying me studying her house, and I wonder if she’s imagined me being here as often as I have. I feel suddenly self-conscious, and my heart does that little flutter again.

  Dropping her bag on one of the stools, she mimes, Drink?

  I shake my head.

  Then she’s kissing me again, and I stop thinking in words.

  Deafman

  December 1

  Mixing and mastering the Deafman cassette made me happier than I had been since the stroke. My only other project was “get used to being deaf,” and it would be fair to say I had zero investment in that. I hadn’t realized how bored and frustrated I had become. Deafman gave me a reason to get out of bed.

  I stopped going to deaf classes completely. It wasn’t as though I was being graded or anything; I just didn’t bother turning up. I also stopped seeing my counselor. KO emailed Mum a couple of times, but she put him off, guessing that I was going through something that might lead me to a happier place.

  The reporter and I had arranged to talk in two weeks. That was my deadline. I figured if I didn’t have something concrete for her by then, I probably never would.

  Dad helped implement this plan, but he l
et me make all the creative decisions. The cover had to be cheap, so I used a free photo of Blind Lemon Jefferson, touched up with eighties fluorescent highlights. On the flipside, by hand, I wrote the titles:

  DEAFMAN

  Side One:

  “Triple Nine Great Integrity”

  “Glam Gong”

  “Blood Meal, Mouth Feel”

  “Shark Venus”

  “Peyote Squeal”

  Side Two:

  “Pain Grade”

  “Transparent Art Gallery”

  “Crystal Tomato”

  “Sister of a Clown”

  I played the master over and over against my stomach, against my thighs, even against my skull. I sat in Subaqueous Studios and watched the levels rise and fall so long they still danced when my eyes closed. I dreamed the album in all its colors and vibrations, the spooling tape, Blind Lemon’s heavy-lidded sockets.

  But I never heard it, not in my dreams or in real life. I never hear my dreams at all anymore, which I’m informed by the internet is weird. The part of my brain that died took that ability too.

  When I could justify delaying no longer, I started duplicating. Roo and Sad Alan cut and folded the covers. Dad prepared labels to go on the cassettes. The four of us stuck them on over pizza, me watching their lips and my app as they talked about musicians Dad had played with through the years.

  All this effort condensed down to just two boxes of finished product, plus an upload to the usual music streaming services. I put a copy in an express envelope to send to the reporter the next morning. We packed up our rubbish. My friends went home, and Dad went to bed.

  I stayed in the cave all night long, staring at the steadily glowing lights and feeling like I’d forgotten something important.

  * * *

  The reporter, Madeleine Winter, who sounded like someone from Game of Thrones, messaged me a week later, which was perfect timing. The open box in my bedroom had emptied by about a third, with sales limited almost entirely to friends, subscribers, and family. Now that that audience was exhausted, I was thinking of doing something on social media to give it more of a nudge. Releasing bonus tracks for particularly generous supporters, say, or taking something very much like requests, although I had no intention of playing “Danke Schoen” or (worse) “Damage, Inc.” so GlanMaster could have a giggle.

  With Madeleine Winter in the loop, maybe the news­paper could do that for me. If I got really lucky, maybe I’d make enough to think about doing this for a living, and uni would be irrelevant.

  We arranged a time to meet in a café the next day, one day short of my three-month anniversary. She asked, Will we need an interpreter?

  We’ll be fine, I messaged back.

  Great. I have pink glasses, and I’ll sit facing the door so you’ll see me.

  And if I get there first, I’m the one who looks like a heavy metal guitarist.

  Of course! Haha.

  Madeleine arrived ten minutes late, just as I downed the coffee I had negotiated with my waiter by writing on a napkin. She spotted me immediately—​I was wearing a Dio T-shirt and kept my hair down so there could be no uncertainty as to my identity. She breezed over and settled opposite me with an apologetic expression.

  “No worries, hi, nice to meet you,” I said, causing her to practically jump back out of her seat.

  OMG, she messaged me while I trained an app to recognize her voice. You can talk!

  “Sure,” I said. “I only lost my hearing recently.”

  I’m so sorry, my phone spelt out.

  “What for? It’s not your fault.”

  I mean . . . It’s amazing. You don’t look deaf at all.

  I opened my mouth to ask her how I was supposed to look but thought better of it.

  “This is working now,” I said, putting the phone between us. She did the same with hers, to record the conversation.

  That’s pretty cool, she said about my app. Wouldn’t it be easier to just read my lips, though?

  “I can’t do that, and anyway, it’s not reliable.”

  What a shame. It’d be so great at parties. I’ve always wanted to learn sign language so I could talk to my friends without anyone else knowing what I was saying. I bet you do that all the time.

  “Not really.”

  No, I guess it wouldn’t work when everyone’s deaf. Of course!

  Madeleine laughed, and I noticed people glancing at her. She was talking too loudly.

  “My friends aren’t deaf,” I started to explain, but again stopped myself. That wasn’t what I was there to talk about. “So, the cassette . . . ?”

  Oh yes, I listened to your album. It’s intense. And no wonder. I love music. I’d kill myself if I couldn’t—​sorry, but you know what I mean? It’d be like breaking up with someone or losing a pet. It must rip your heart right out through your chest. Is that what you’re trying to capture in these recordings?

  “I was just trying to play guitar.”

  I know, right? And you play it so well! Are you sure you can’t hear? At all? You haven’t got one of those implant things you’re not telling me about?

  She laughed again, and I hope I didn’t look as irritated as I was beginning to feel.

  This was everything Sandra Mack had warned me about in our very first session. People won’t understand, she had told me. Most have never met someone from the Deaf community, but that won’t stop them having preconceived ideas, and it certainly doesn’t stop them saying the same things everyone says. “Sign language looks so beautiful. Can you show me how to swear?” Maybe you’ve said things like this yourself—​it’s okay, no one’s to blame. But now you’ll be on the other side of the conversation, and there will be days it’ll drive you mad.

  I get that already because of my hair and my tatts, I had typed back with a shrug.

  Sandra had said, You can cut your hair and have your tatts removed. This, I’m afraid, you’ll have forever.

  Then, as during this interview, my face had felt as if it was made of wood.

  “Can’t hear a thing,” I told Madeleine Winter, “and never will. Because I had a stroke, three months ago, getting a cochlear implant isn’t an option. The part of me that hears sound is gone for good.”

  So you have brain damage as well? My god, this story just keeps getting—​I mean . . . Simon, you’ve overcome so much to make this album, this cassette. It really is incredible. And you did it all on your own?

  “My father helped, and my friends.”

  They’re so good to you. They must be very proud. How does that make you feel?

  “Feel?” Like shit, I wanted to say. And right now, like I’m being patronized and belittled. I told myself to think of the sales. If the article went viral, it would totally be worth it.

  “I feel like nothing’s preventing me from being the artist I always wanted to be,” I told her. “Not hearing doesn’t stop me loving music, or experiencing music, or thinking about music. Music is all around us. It’s in everything we do. Life is music, so until I’m dead, I’ll keep making it.”

  Fine words, plus something of a challenge to both myself and the universe. She nodded enthusiastically, and I wondered if anything I was saying was getting through the way I meant it to.

  Eventually her nodding slowed, and she told me she had enough for a story. A photographer would text later that day. Was there anywhere I could think of for a suitable shot?

  I suggested Dad’s studio, and she cheerfully agreed. Bring a guitar, she said. That T-shirt will be perfect. And make sure you buy the Saturday paper.

  We stood and shook hands. She hurried off, late for her next meeting and leaving me feeling as though she’d taken all the breathable air with her.

  Maybe the cassette would sell. But what else would change?

  A coffee appeared in front of me. On the house, said the note on the napkin, accompanied by a surprisingly accurate caricature of Madeleine with drag queen makeup and horns. The waiter gave me a sympathetic smile and went ba
ck to the counter.

  Add the D

  December 31

  I try not to resent Selwyn Floyd for being on holiday between Christmas and New Year, right when I need to see him. Luckily, Prameela Verma manages to fit me in. I sit nervously in her waiting room, considering my fingernails and reminding myself that I’m not making anything up.

  It happened. I heard something.

  Didn’t I?

  Any other day, my entire being would be focused on G and what occurred between us in the last twenty-four hours, from me taking her home to now. That definitely happened. When I breathe in, I smell her, even though I haven’t seen her since this morning. I can feel her, taste her, too. Part of me is still in her room, in our soundless bubble where everything is right, even as the rest of me is freaking out.

  It’s dark in her room, just like I imagined it. No neater than mine, but cluttered in different ways. Clothes convene in her corners like I collect cables. Her books are ordered vertically as well as horizontally, like my CDs. Her posters are of dark fantasy series, where mine are of metal bands—​and funnily enough, the makeup, scowls, and fonts aren’t dissimilar. Her bed isn’t made, but her sheets are clean, the antithesis of my bed. My feet dangled over the end. Mum rigged a new switch outside my door so she can flash the lights when she wants to come in; Aunty Lou installed a bolt on the inside.

  I saw naked-wood scars on the door frame where the lock used to be.

  There was no other evidence of what happened when G tried to kill herself, and I didn’t ask about it. Maybe me coming over was a means of avoiding that subject, but it wasn’t as though we didn’t talk at all. We stayed up late typing into our phones so Aunty Lou wouldn’t be disturbed by our too-loud voices. She knew I was there, just as Mum knew I wasn’t coming home. We were considerate, discreet, and careful.