Impossible Music

by Sean Williams

  If you think I’m ever going to agree that I’m better off this way—​

  Some do think that. There might be parts of you, better parts, that you would never have discovered otherwise. People, too. And places. The way you experience everything changes. YOU change. It’s inevitable.

  How have I changed?

  I don’t know you well enough to say. Maybe it’s too soon, anyway. The change to your hearing happened literally overnight, but the rest will take longer. That’s how it works, unfortunately. Deafness has come as a terrible shock for you, but maybe the opposite of deafness is staying the same, never changing—​and that, in the long run, would be much worse.

  I thought the opposite of deafness was tinnitus.

  Actually, the opposite of deafness as you mean it is probably Deafhood.

  Deaf what now?

  He finger-spells it and follows up with a one-handed sign I don’t know.

  You’ve never heard that term? Look it up. I think you’ll get a lot out of it. I certainly did.

  Can you give me the one-line summary?

  There isn’t one. That’s the point.

  An activist called Paddy Ladd coined it in the nineties, he tells me. If I’m understanding Dr. Ladd’s argument, Deafhood is a process or journey, a thing you’re being—​unlike deafness, the noun or deaf, the adjective, both of which are defined by the static fact of not hearing. Deafhood aims to capture what it’s like to be deaf beyond simple hearing loss, emphasizing what’s good about it, as KO suggested I could do. It empowers the Deaf, who are often victims of audism (like racism or sexism, but with hearing), to think themselves just as able as anyone else. And it encourages cooperation and communication between the many different Deaf cultures around the world—​because it turns out the Deaf are not just one monolithic organization of identical clones. Of course. Losing your hearing doesn’t erase every other thing that’s unique about you, like being Australian, or a skate derby jammer, or a guitarist. Exactly what I was trying to tell Madeleine Winter.

  I dig a little deeper after my session while I’m waiting for Maeve to pick me up.

  A century or so before Paddy Ladd, George Veditz coined the term “people of the eye” for Deaf culture—​and I have a hot take on how Deafhood could actually be a thing. I mean, come on, People of the Eye! They sound like the best nu-prog band ever.

  But what if you’re not entirely deaf? What use is Deafhood then?

  “Home, James,” I tell Maeve as she comes to an abrupt halt in front of me. Maybe she screeched the tires. I can’t tell.

  G—​where? No—​see?

  Her signing puts us in serious risk of a car accident. She’s only been driving solo for a little while. To avoid a crash, I explain at length that I haven’t heard from her and don’t want to nag. The only way this works is by being patient and letting G set the terms, as her condition allows.

  By giving her all the power, in other words, she dictates at my insistence.

  “It’s not like that.”

  Isn’t it? Don’t get me wrong, I like the girl, but if a guy tried this on me, he’d be setting the terms with his own right hand, you know what I mean?

  “I know I want you to stop talking now.”

  Just be careful, is all I’m saying. Don’t let her take you for granted, or she’ll be the next one kissing footballers while sad sack Simon makes everyone’s home life miserable.

  She’s not just right, she’s also speaking to my own fears on this front, and I feel a twinge of irritation now that she’s given me permission to feel annoyed—​because yes, fuck it, why am I the one waiting around for G all the time? As long as I’ve known her, she’s dangled me at arm’s length until she’s needed me, never the other way around. Is that any way to run a relationship?

  But Maeve is wrong at the same time. She knows nothing about how things are inside G’s head. I’ve only had a glimpse myself, and I’m pretty sure that not pushing too hard is respectful as well as strategic, if I want to be with her—​and I do, very much. I never want that wonderful rush to stop. I have to trust her just like she trusts me and avoid burdening her with my problems. She has more than enough of her own.

  Everything is fluid at my end. Who knows where I’ll be next week, next month, next year? So much could change in an instant, just like it did last September. That’s why all this waiting does my head in. At any moment I expect a hammer to fall.

  “Don’t worry,” I tell both of us. “I’m not going to fuck this one up.”

  Famous last words. Maybe you’ve fucked it up already and that’s why she’s giving you the cold shoulder.

  “Are you trying to make me miserable?”

  That’s my job. Little sister, remember?

  She takes a corner way too fast and cuts across two lanes into heavy traffic. I hang on, imagining every other driver honking at her. Today, my deaf perception tells me nothing about that, which is probably for the best.

  G

  January 15

  When I get home and check my email, there’s a response from Professor Dorn. Finally.

  To: Simon Rain

  From: Grace Dorn

  Date: January 15

  Subject: Impossible Music

  Rain—​

  Thanks for your patience. If you notice anything untoward in this email, it’s because I am dictating. Anything to spare the hands. Software is not as good as a personal scribe, but I’m told I can’t have everything.

  I have been mulling over your Impossible Music proposals. There is promising material here. So promising I ran the concept past the director of the Centre for Creative Practice, using much of your original language (if writing about music is like dancing about architecture, as someone once said, then you’re nimble on your feet). She thinks your technical requirements might rule you out of the undergrad concert in June—​but that’s no reason to despair. Quite the opposite!

  The Centre just had one of their items for the Fringe Festival cancel for reasons too boring to go into here, leaving them desperately short. They know it’s late notice, but they’re wondering if you’d be interested in an entire program devoted to your Impossible Music idea. They have development money available, and there are fast-track disability arts grants they can access. You never know—​your giant screen might be practicable! But let’s dream small for the present.

  There are two conditions:

  (1) You need to be enrolled at the university. Fortunately, as you’ve convinced me that this idea has legs, that won’t be an issue. Your grades are good. Your ideas are good. Consider yourself in my composition program, pending a mountain of paperwork.

  (2) Enrolled or not, you’re far too inexperienced to curate an entire concert, either creatively or administratively. Sorry, but that’s the way it is. How would you feel about opening the concept up to other composers? I myself would be very interested in writing something for the piece you facetiously call “Miniatures/0.00005.”

  Of course, your work will be represented. Do you have any more proposals? I like how you have incorporated graphical representation in #4 and technology in #1, but why no dance? Seems to me that you’ve missed an obvious trick there.

  Talk soon.

  * * *

  I read her email twice. The flood of conflicting emotions is just as intense the second time.

  Go, Impossible Music! I’ve made it into Professor Dorn’s composition course, and the relief is so great at first that I barely grasp what else she’s saying. Music and me have a future after all!

  A concert for the Fringe, though. That’s barely two months away. It’s a crazy thought—​but if most of the music isn’t actually heard, maybe it’s not completely insane. Rehearsal schedules might not be necessary, for starters.

  I look up “Centre for Creative Practice” and realize that she’s talking about the Coetzee Centre, an interdisciplinary body that exists to fund things that would normally slip through the cracks of the university’s creative veranda. Things li
ke music for the deaf, it seems.

  But . . . not all my music?

  Here, my thoughts become momentarily stuck.

  This was never intended to be a collaborative idea. For performance, yes, but not in conception. Impossible Music came out of the agony of my hearing loss and speaks directly to my experience of deafness. It’s more personal than anything else I’ve ever conceived. How can I possibly share it with anyone?

  I start writing a terse reply, telling Professor Dorn to keep her filthy claws off my idea, but in the end I never send it. Her closing sentences sink in at last, leaving me puzzled.

  No dance? It doesn’t seem possible that she can have overlooked the proposal for “Doom Ballet”; it is, after all, the longest of the five. And the best, in my not-so-humble opinion.

  On the third reading I realize that she only mentions pieces one to four. It’s almost as though she didn’t receive “Doom Ballet” at all.

  Could that be possible? I distinctly remember sending it.

  I scroll back through my Sent folder and find it, as expected, on the seventh of January. The words in the body of the email are exactly the way I remember them.

  “Doom Ballet”

  Part of the thrill of loud music is the feeling of losing yourself inside it. Heavy metal is like that for lots of people. You don’t have to understand a riff if it’s played at high enough volume—​and you can say the same about electro or even a Beethoven symphony. It blasts you into a different mental state, one in which thoughts and emotions don’t really matter anymore. It’s just you and whatever the music is doing to you.

  The three members of local band Blackmod walk onto the stage, the first carrying an electric guitar, the second an electric bass, the third drumsticks. They take their positions on the stage. Hands at the ready. Feet too, because what the audience can’t see is that the pedals that normally contribute to the sound of their instruments will actually be the instruments in this piece. Any movements these musicians make higher than their ankles will be silent.

  The guitarist raises his pick. The drummer pretends to click his sticks together. The bass player chops the neck of his instrument down to begin the piece.

  Projectors flare, casting light through every space in the venue—​on the walls, the ceiling, the audience. The light conveys words, piercingly bright, disconnected from any obvious meaning. They come in strings that repeat in time with the pedals being activated by the musicians as they twist in a fierce parody of a normal concert. At the same time, performers move through the audience, aggressively gesturing (not signing) in a dance that encompasses hands, face, and body.

  Words and movement loop around each other in knots and cascade in waves that defy any attempt to decipher them. They have clarity but no pitch or tone. They have rhythm but no timbre. They are music, and they are noise:

  sounds in my head

  loud

  all the fucken time

  screaming

  fragments

  over and over

  earworm from hell

  Look away and see shadows going berserk. There is no escaping this onslaught. It is bright. It is fast. It is unceasing:

  so loud in here

  hard to concentrate

  can’t sleep or even think

  I’m so tired of this

  torture

  There are different kinds of deafness. Some people can hear a little, some nothing at all. Some hear too much and would kill to hear less. Like Beethoven.

  24 hours a day

  squeezing me out of my own head

  squirting me out my ears

  no room for me

  driving me crazy

  Because Beethoven wasn’t actually deaf. He had tinnitus.

  I’m fucking insane

  never going to get better

  shut the hell up

  you have no idea

  This is tinnitus for the eye.

  I reread my proposal, seeing the piece in my mind playing out with incredible impact. The audience blinking and reeling from the strobe-like flashing and the flailing limbs of the dancers. Gasps from the hearing, startled signs from the Deaf. Awareness spreading that the chaotically light-filled hall is a pale echo of what it must be like to have severe tinnitus—​and that there are worse things than losing something.

  This is one of those works that felt like it made itself. Inspired by G, of course. They’re her words, and the movements of the band evoke the cringeworthy moment when I made her cry by miming Blackmod. The “unofficial” sign language is how we first met. I’m just the guy who wrote it all down.

  So why hasn’t Professor Dorn even mentioned it?

  Perhaps it simply never arrived. One of those internet glitches that happens sometimes. I hit Forward and start to type in her name.

  G

  I freeze. A list containing two contacts has appeared on the screen.

  Grace Dorn

  George-who-loves-coffee

  Fuck shit fuck. I think I sent it to the wrong person.

  “Doom Ballet”

  January 16

  What to do? For starters, check that I actually did send it to G.

  Any hope I have of rescue on that front is dispelled the moment I look in my Sent folder again, and there it is, in black and white.

  After that point, I have no ideas.

  I’ve been giving G space—​and all my saintly patience—​on the assumption that her tinnitus has been playing up, but what if that’s completely wrong? What if she read the proposal for “Doom Ballet” and hated it?

  Of course she hated it. I know her well enough to know that. I stole the words right out of her mouth, the words she shared with me in moments of great intimacy. I, who have done nothing but complain about what I’ve lost, and who just moments ago was fuming that Professor Dorn wants to steal Impossible Music from me, have taken from her in turn—​without permission, without credit, and for all she knows, deliberately and without remorse. Maybe she thinks I actually meant to show her “Doom Ballet,” brazenly BCCing her in on the conversation like I’m proud of what I’ve done!

  Even if she’s since guessed it was a private email sent to her by accident, what does that change? She chose her moment to tell me about her experience with utmost care. I’m planning to unveil it to the world.

  It was thoughtless and selfish of me not to consult her first, before sending it to Professor Dorn.

  And then, to make matters worse, I showed the guys in the band! If she finds that out as well . . . Oh, god.

  I text her. I message her. I send her another email.

  I just realized how badly I screwed up. I should never have written “Doom Ballet” without talking to you first. Please, let me make it up to you somehow. At least let me apologize.

  No reply. I consider writing her more, but I know that badgering her will only make things worse. She’s making it very clear she doesn’t want to talk. And if her tinnitus is bad on top of that, then I’ll just be compounding the problem.

  In a fever of anxiety, I contact Aunty Lou.

  Is G okay? I did something stupid, and now she won’t talk to me. It would help if I knew she was all right. Hard not to worry after the last time she went quiet like this.

  Thankfully, that draws an immediate response.

  Is that what’s going on? George isn’t talking to me either. She’s gone out every day, but I don’t know where. I thought she was with you.

  Aunty Lou’s message doesn’t provide the reassurance I crave. G has been going out? That’s better than tunneling into the gloom of her bedroom and avoiding human contact. But where has she been going? Is she alone?

  Could there be someone else?

  I don’t believe that. If there wasn’t room for one boyfriend, there couldn’t be room for another.

  But what if that’s the real reason there was no room for me? Maybe there was someone else all along!

  I catch myself at this point. Senseless to let jealousy get the better of me
. Her silence is a rebuke, and it hurts, but that’s no reason to lash out in return. I hurt her first. Whatever’s going on, it started with me.

  Will you let me know if she says anything to you?

  I can’t promise that. I don’t know what you did.

  I understand. If you get the chance, just tell her I’m sorry.

  I will. Or maybe you’ll tell George yourself. You’re young, both of you. Sometimes these things blow over.

  I want to believe Aunty Lou, and her advice is not so different from Mum’s, whom I confide in on the way to one of my many tests. Be patient, she tells me. Don’t make things worse by trying too hard.

  What’s the difference between trying too hard and not trying hard enough?

  Well, if that isn’t one of the mysteries of the ages . . .

  Dad is even less help, despite having a lot more experience at this than either me or Mum. Perhaps fucking up our relationships is something else we have in common.

  When things break down, it’s not always possible to put them back together. I mean, maybe they can be, but not every time. Don’t bash your head against the wall just because you feel guilty. Walking away can be for the best, too.

  We sit and watch the flashing lights in his cave, two sad dudes contemplating the ways we’ve fucked up.

  I don’t even tell the guys in the band, knowing I’ll get nothing better from them. Plenty more fish, Roo will say. Plenty of hot deaf fish, Alan will add. I only want one fish, I’ll say, and they’ll give me a hard time for turning down Mia, who must surely have told them about that little adventure.