Impossible Music

by Sean Williams

  That, however, was obviously not an option for me.

  On learning that I had to come up with something more substantial than guitar solos, my first thought was to give up in frustration. How could my Deafman solos not count? It wasn’t like I played notes at random—​although by Professor Dorn’s musical standards, maybe that would have worked in my favor. It was absurd and totally unfair!

  Then I talked about it with Mr. Mackereth, who suggested that what she probably meant was that Deafman was too closely tied to my practical skills, which belonged to the era in which I could hear.

  She would need something new that didn’t involve the guitar, and I would have to deliver.

  My second idea was to score and record music on my laptop. That would surely count. So I downloaded some software and dusted off the theory I’d studied, resurrected and polished some pieces I’d submitted to Mr. Mackereth at school, and wrote something completely new to see if I still had the chops. It looked fine on the screen.

  To make sure my efforts weren’t completely terrible, I circulated audio files to anyone willing to listen and provide feedback.

  The results were mixed.

  I don’t really understand anything that doesn’t have a middle eight, sorry, but it sounds okay to me. Reminds me of Bach mixed with David Sylvian. (Dad)

  Needs more distortion. (Sad Alan)

  I like it. What’s it supposed to be? (Mum)

  Nice use of the Mixolydian. (Mr. Mackereth)

  With a little more work, I reckon you could put EVERYONE who listens to it to sleep. (Roo)

  Why are you asking me? Is this a trick question? (Maeve)

  Yay you! (Sandra Mack—​just kidding, no way did I give it to her)

  I’ll admit I sent in my pieces to Professor Dorn with no small feeling of trepidation. But what else could I do? Not sending them would be giving up, and I couldn’t do that. Even though Mum and I had an agreement now, I could sense her circling, bearing a lifetime of Excel spreadsheets and soul death in her eager hands.

  Would Professor D hate them and crush my dreams, or love them and save me from a life in I.T.?

  Not what I expected, was her reply, the next day.

  Technically good enough, but so safe. Boring, even. Who wants to be boring? I can tell your heart’s not in it. Try again. Give me a reason to say yes instead of groan no. Got it?

  I felt crushed. Another false victory, if you can count “technically good enough” as a victory at all. I had followed the rules and written something that wasn’t wrong and wasn’t awful . . . and wasn’t enough. Because she was right: I had pursued a path I assumed would lead in the right direction, not one I yearned to follow.

  Back to square one: feeling lost in the woulds. What I would do . . . if she would only . . .

  G and I had talked a lot about our hopes and fears for university, but this I couldn’t share with her. She had just bailed on the Judd Nelson Overdrive concert, and I wasn’t entirely sure where we stood with each other. There was promise, but there was danger, too. Already, I knew she was different from the other girls I’d wanted to date. The safe ones.

  The best music, like the best relationships, breaks the rules, but there are no rules on how best to do that.

  * * *

  I had had plenty of spare time to agonize about what it would mean if I failed Professor Dorn, since I had stopped going to deaf class entirely. Why did I need to talk to people like me when I could talk to hearing people just fine? To if not with, anyway.

  The Deafman channel had become less of a time sink too. I still recorded the solos I played, but most of them I deleted now, consigning all but the ones I felt did something new to the bin—​where they belonged, now that I knew they weren’t going to count toward my portfolio. The remainder I posted, more or less indifferently, and my listener base suffered as a result. The one new subscriber I gained at the time was a user calling himself ThanksThroatCancer.

  The name rang a bell. It belonged to a thrash band from Brisbane that had broken up years ago. I had never listened to their stuff and now never would.

  Great minds wank alike, was the first message he posted. He signed it TTC.

  Willing to be distracted from my predicament, I crossed to his account and saw that he also had a channel, ScreaMoMore. It consisted solely of screaming.

  TTC was deaf too.

  Well, nearly, he explained to me when I asked him about it. Down 90dB left and 85dB right, which officially counts as “profound” hearing loss. Nothing profound about it, though. Hearing aids don’t do shit. Everyone wants me to get an implant. Nobody asks me what I want.

  What do you want?

  Well, I don’t want to have my head hacked open, that’s for sure. Cochlear implants sound kinda crappy, apparently. Good for speech, not much else. Why settle for second best? Go all the way or go home. That was the motto of the band, and it’s my motto now.

  You were the vocalist?

  Yeah. Never actually had cancer, just thought the name sounded cool. Almost changed it to Thanks Chickenpox but that doesn’t have the same ring. And I quit the band anyway. Too hard when I can’t really hear what’s going on. Still feels great to have a good yell, though. Great therapy.

  Hence the channel?

  Look at you—​fucking “hence.” Yeah, hence the channel. Gotta get it out there, the rage, the fury, the frustration. Also, my girlfriend thinks it’s hot. She’s Deaf too, born that way. Her implant overloads every time I crank it up. Crappy thing.

  How did you learn about Deafman?

  Through the mighty GlanMaster. He’s into this shit. Don’t know why. Have you met him?

  No.

  I have. Big guy from Melbourne. Got a hard-on for people who don’t know when to quit. Makes him feel better about himself or something, I dunno. Hey, we should form a band! You, me, there are plenty of Deaf drummers . . . Just joshing. We’d sound fucking terrible. But WE wouldn’t know, right?

  I turned him down. A deaf band would definitely get publicity, but I feared it would be all in the vein of Madeleine Winter’s cloying condescension. TTC wasn’t offended. He had lots of other schemes.

  I’m signing for a band called Manbark, for one.

  Singing, really?

  Not singing. SIGNing. They’re real heavy, fast as shit, very political. Got a message, like a heavier version of Rage Against the Machine. I started seeing them when my hearing went—​they were the best I could feel, yeah? Got to know the guys in the band. When I started sneaking in some of the younger kids from the Deaf community, the vocalist brought me aboard to get the message across properly. It’s been great—​and hard as hell. Like a full-on workout! If you’re ever up this way, check us out.

  I didn’t know how to respond to that. TTC was just like me, except that he was proficient at Auslan, had a Deaf girlfriend and ties to the community . . . I didn’t have a single Deaf friend; KO didn’t count because it was his job to talk to me. There were barely a handful of people in the nonhearing world I knew by name, and then only from deaf class, like Hannah, our Auslan teacher, and she didn’t count either. As Dad said, I wasn’t a joiner.

  Yeah, sure, I told TTC, knowing I almost certainly never would. He lived in a different world, one I was only visiting long enough to work out how to escape.

  Blindsight

  January 6

  Prameela sees me waiting with G and smiles like she has no idea how badly I want my results. We both stand, and she asks us in sign how we’re doing. Thumbs-up all round. Another gesture that is also a sign of the same meaning. There are surprisingly few of those. What else could we say?

  G goes into the office, then emerges a moment later with a brochure, which she gives to me. I sit back down and begin to read it as she disappears again.

  Neuquil Tinnitus Therapy

  A grinning blond woman wears headphones that match the ones lying on the floor next to G’s bed: over-ear devices like a white Bose rip-off with a long, coiled cable. Various lines squi
ggle around her head, representing sound or electrical waves, or both, I imagine. Subheadings reveal that I’m reading a more polished presentation of the notes Aunty Lou gave me in hospital.

  This is the treatment G has been receiving. The one that hasn’t worked. The one she’s still continuing, if that’s what she means by giving me the brochure.

  I read more closely than I did the first time, willingly distracted from my own issues. G’s ears are fine; her hyperactive neurons are the problem. They’re like little kids, in that when they’re ignored, they’ll start responding to anything that even vaguely looks like it has something to do with them (Maeve had this bad when she was five). That’s what causes the phantom sounds tormenting G. Those ignored neurons causing a fuss and overwhelming the working neurons that are trying to do their job.

  The trick isn’t to shut down the bad neurons directly, but (as with Maeve) to stop stimulating them. Ignoring them, basically, while at the same time keeping the other neurons going. By sending signals via her implant into the vagus nerve in her neck, paired with specific tones over the headphones, the auditory cortex can chill out those hyper neurons, and the tinnitus will go away.

  That’s what Neuquil promises. So far, though, not so good for G. But at least her neurons are still alive. All they need is the right signals to start behaving. Maybe Prameela is inputting those signals right now.

  I hope so. Last night, while we lay in bed together, I traced the thin line of her newest scar, feeling for the implant in her neck but finding nothing except her pulse, a direct line to her heart.

  Today, I go online to learn more. Neuquil’s website is data-heavy. There are PDFs beginning with individual case studies of those who’ve benefited from the treatment that then go on to give details of the trials themselves. Later, I’ll get Mum to look at them with me. She’ll be able to interpret the stats stuffed into the fine print to see if it actually works.

  Before long, I’ve moved on to making notes on my phone—​an impossible music idea is nagging at me, and by the time G and Prameela emerge, I have a rough sketch of it down. They’ve been in there for ages. G looks tired (partly my fault) and emotional (understandable). Prameela walks us to the counter and, on the way, slips a note into my hand. While G sorts out the bill, I take a quick look.

  Your results are in. They’re ambiguous. I’ve made an appointment with you and your mother tomorrow. In the meantime, look up “blindsight.” You might find it helpful.

  I start feeling tired and emotional myself. What does she mean by “ambiguous”?

  G turns to me, and I put the note into the back pocket of my jeans. Prameela has gone into her office with her next patient. We are alone.

  My—​home—​you—​want—​go—​now?

  I feel like a toddler trying to talk when I sign, particularly when I can’t trust my face to say what I want it to say. I’m not even sure why I’m signing rather than using my phone. Something to do with being here, with her, under these circumstances.

  Is she my deaf girlfriend?

  Am I assimilating?

  How long until I’m enrolled in I.T. and my life is effectively over?

  G drives that question out of my head by nodding yes, and I am swamped by the greater concern for the state of my room.

  * * *

  I don’t remember the note until after G has gone, picked up by Aunty Lou on her way home from work. G needs her headphones to continue her therapy. I can tell her tinnitus is flaring up by the way she nods along to nothing in little loops when she forgets herself. Her whole body is caught up in this condition, I am beginning to realize. Her whole world.

  The first person she meets at home is Maeve, who is as smitten as I am. (At last, she texts later, a REAL girl.) The feeling is mutual. Turns out the tatty T-shirt Maeve has been wearing for weeks is merch from a roller derby team in Melbourne. They bond instantly, which gives me time to make my room presentable.

  G is in the bathroom when I come back down. I quickly explain to Maeve, telling her not to be offended if G blanks out at any point.

  Old news, Maeve writes on the board. She told me while you were off hiding your porn.

  Just like that? I am faintly miffed. It took me weeks to find out, and if G had gotten her dose of the green dream right, I might never have known.

  Because it mattered how I told you, she explains later, after I’ve introduced her to my guitars, my scary wardrobe, and some of the safer features of the room. At first it didn’t matter, and then it did and I couldn’t decide how, and then the easiest way was to show you rather than tell you.

  Is that why you invited me to the hospital that night?

  Partly. I also wanted to see you.

  Why?

  Because I figured you’d eventually learn to shut the hell up.

  In reply, I give her a copy of my cassette, and she laughs until she pees.

  * * *

  Later, the lights flash and Mum comes in. I can tell she’s spoken to Maeve and is thinking what I was thinking earlier—​deaf girlfriend? assimilating?—​and is slightly thwarted when I pointedly pull out my phone to talk to G and she responds in kind. Still, Mum is cool, like she’s always been with the girls I’ve had over, and welcoming to the point where she invites G for dinner that night. But the arrangement with Aunty Lou is already made, so they raincheck for some time in the future.

  The sudden permanency of this relationship is as thrilling as it is surprising, for both of us, I think. The accelerando of mutual feelings gives me as much of a rush as any music I’ve ever heard in my life. It seems senseless to stop and interrogate the feelings, define them, even name them—​and maybe kill them in the process.

  Unfortunately, time is swept up in the rush too, and I just know it’s going to slam to a halt when Aunty Lou comes to collect her.

  It was good to see where you create your masterpieces, Herr Sadwig, she tells me as we wait at the end of the driveway for her lift to arrive, kicking our heels on the low slate fence.

  That’s right, where the magic happens. Quite a privilege.

  Oh, I know. Not every groupie gets to stick their nose in your bag of smelly sticks.

  I told her the story about KO’s deafness ritual, knowing it would get a laugh. The sachet has ended up on my bedside table by chance rather than design, and sometimes when I can’t sleep, I’ll pick it up, shake its contents, and see if the smell is still there. G sniffed the bag and sneezed three times in quick succession.

  Less groupie, more—​

  Don’t say “muse.” That’s so nineteenth century.

  You mean I don’t get to die of syphilis in a bordello in Rome? Things never go my way.

  I lift my head and see Aunty Lou’s car coming toward us. G and I stand, kiss, and part somewhat awkwardly: this we haven’t yet learned to negotiate, lacking incentive. It is a minor jarring note in conclusion of an otherwise excellent twenty-four hours.

  Thanks for coming with me to my appointment, she texts before I can reach the front door.

  The pleasure was all mine.

  That’s when I remember the note from Prameela in my jeans pocket and the task she gave me: there’s a word I need to look up before my appointment tomorrow. But I also have those notes on a fifth piece for Professor Dorn to get down while the details are cooperating. The more I send her, the easier it’ll be for her to find three that work, right? It seems sensible to me. I hope I don’t seem too desperate, even though I am.

  The thought of scaring Professor Dorn away is too hot and sharp to contemplate for more than an instant, like tapping the outside of a boiling kettle.

  My thoughts quickly settle on the requirements of this new work as I pass Mum and Maeve, carefully avoiding their gazes. I don’t want to know what they’re thinking. If I see that they’re happy, I’ll feel as though they’re stealing what G has kindled in me, for me alone. And if they’re not happy, well, screw them. I’m not ready to have this fragile bubble of positivity popped, thanks very much.<
br />
  * * *

  I work until midnight and even then only reluctantly send the draft description of Impossible Music #5 to Professor Dorn. This one means the most to me, assembled as it is from pieces directly plucked from my recent life. The working title is “Doom Ballet,” but I fully expect that to change. Some poor student will one day write a thesis on how the great Simon Rain’s creativity was stifled by his cruel professor in the earliest days of his career.

  Yawning, I can’t be arsed cleaning my teeth and I tug off my jeans in preparation to getting into a suddenly empty-seeming bed.

  Something crackles in my pocket. Prameela’s note—​I forgot it again! Maybe, just maybe, I have been avoiding it.

  Your results are in. They’re ambiguous.

  I flatten the crumpled bit of paper in one hand and Google the word she suggested I look up. The first link is to Wikipedia:

  “Blindsight” is the ability of people who are cortically blind, due to lesions in their striate cortex, to respond to visual stimuli that they do not consciously see.

  Why would Prameela send me to an article on blindness, not deafness? I assume I’ve got the wrong page, but the others turn out to be about the same thing. Some blind people act as though they can see, avoiding and locating objects with uncanny accuracy, even though the parts of their brain that do the actual seeing are gone for good and . . .

  . . . Oh.

  Pop.

  Part Six

  Deaf Perception

  January 7

  The mutability of the mind is both a blessing and a curse. When Selwyn Floyd raised the faint possibility that the healthy remainder of my brain might take up the burden of the part that drowned in the stroke, the idea seemed plausible—​like one section of the internet accepting the traffic that a damaged section could not—​and we were none of us fools for entertaining hope.