Impossible Music
Page 21
The one proposal that didn’t make the program tonight is “Doom Ballet,” but that’s okay because it’s being performed elsewhere. Privately.
One month ago, Prameela had an insight into G’s Neuquil treatment. The implant forces a signal into G’s nerves, a tone that is supposed to cancel out her tinnitus. But her tinnitus is not just a simple tone. They’re the earworms from hell. Something a lot more powerful, therefore, is needed to cancel them out.
That’s where G had the idea of reading the original text of “Doom Ballet” into a voice recorder and pumping that into her vagus nerve. Clarity but no pitch or tone, as my original notes said. Rhythm but no timbre.
Good music transforms. It’s too early to tell if her tinnitus is improving or not, but she seems easier within herself now. She is here tonight, which makes me happier than I can say.
In return, I go with her to roller derby training and wait with all the other girlfriends and boyfriends. We’ve taught them signs to make at the other teams when ours isn’t doing so well, making us a kind of hyperaggressive Auslan cheer squad. Someone recorded us once, and we went briefly viral before the video was pulled for being obscene.
The other community I’ve consciously nurtured, with the help of GlanMaster, TTC, and others, is Deafman, which has become a bit of a meeting place online for musicians in my situation. There aren’t many of us, but we have lots to talk about. Some are here tonight; one has come all the way from Sydney. We’ll go out for a drink afterwards, the first time we’ll talk face-to-face. My shyness makes mingling with strangers hard, and maybe I am too much like Dad in that regard, but through Deafman, at least, I’ve established things in common (beyond the simple fact of deafness) before making the difficult leap to conversation.
GlanMaster calls Deafman a dating site for sexually repressed deaf nerds. He’s not so far from the truth. As another online friend says, referencing Star Trek: “Assimilation isn’t just for the Borg.”
What seems impossible alone is often, together, merely improbable.
* * *
I can’t hear the applause, but that’s okay. I can feel it. The program unfolds piece by piece, and soon enough it’s time for another one I wrote. Now called “B♭ (rose/steel),” I’ll always think of it by my original title, “A Little Light Opera.”
Color organs meet modern haptic technology in the most expensive concert Adelaide has ever seen.
Just kidding!
Instead of outfitting everyone in the audience with actuator vests, gloves, VR helmets, etc., this piece relies on the people experiencing it to provide a significant part of the performance.
The concept is simple. Projected onto the screen will be a “light opera” written for a color organ operated onstage. This is the “instrumental” component of the work.
The “vocal” component is provided by performers scattered throughout the hall. Each performer responds to a particular color on the screen, initiating touch or movement that audience members will be encouraged to pass along. These messages will sweep through the hall, reinforcing and interfering with each other in unpredictable ways.
This performance is designed to unite people in a work that counteracts the isolation and loneliness frequently suffered by those cut off from “ordinary” society by deafness or other factors beyond their control.
This is an opera for everyone.
G passes a sign (“family”) to me and I pass it on, with a grin. It worked! Sign language only feels like a straitjacket if you fight it.
The following piece is a kinetic sculpture that captures reflections off rippling water as music is fed into it from below. The light, glittering across the ceiling and walls, is magical and strange, like someone has thrown talcum powder across a room to reveal the outline of a ghost. Music transforms, yes, but tonight music—the very idea of music—is itself transformed, as it has been transformed for me.
If there’s no such thing as unmusical sound (as I wrote in the program guide), and if there’s such a thing as musical un-sound, then everything is music.
“In the dark,” as John Cage himself once quoted, “all cats are black.”
Then it’s time for me to join the rest of Blackmod backstage. Roo signs hopefully, Beer? But he knows the deal. He gets paid after the gig, not before. We grin and butt chests. Just like old times, one last time.
Onstage, in the heat of the spotlights, I raise my pick and await Alan’s signal to begin a composition called “G.”
Her face is the only one I can make out from the entire crowd.
Small word, big question.
This is how.
Author’s Note
To sign “thanks” in Auslan, touch the tip of your fingers to your chin, then swing your open hand forward from the elbow. For emphasis use two hands. For even more emphasis, repeat.
Imagine me making this sign most emphatically throughout what follows.
I am neither deaf nor Deaf, so how did I come to write a book about a teenage rock god who can’t hear?
There are two answers to this question.
The first is that I started writing music at the age of fifteen and have dabbled on and off ever since, in the cracks between novels and short stories. Simon’s belief in the musicality of all sound is mine, and his corresponding love of music is one that I feel keenly. In my early twenties, I had to choose between potential vocations—composition and creative writing—and although I have never once regretted the choice I made, I can’t help but wonder where I ended up down that other trouser leg of time.
The second answer to the question of “why?” reflects my experiences with anxiety and depression arising from chronic pain in my arms and neck. Writing was the cause of that pain, to the point where giving up my career seemed the only available option. Like Simon, I endured feelings of intense powerlessness and isolation that took long periods of soul-searching to overcome. The benefits I received from reaching out for advice and support cannot be overstated.
All of this, and more, combines to make Impossible Music the most autobiographical novel I have written to date.
Simon is not me, however, and making him him took a great deal of work. This book owes a debt of thanks to everyone who helped ease his story into being.
I’ll start with the members of the South Australian Deaf community that I met online and in person while working on the book. These include Debbie Kennewell, Katrina Lancaster-Maggs, and Anita Morgan of Deaf Can Do; Donovan Cresdee and Barry Priori of Sign Language Australia; Paul Bartlett; and the late Barbara Elsdon of the Royal South Australian Deaf Society. Any mistakes or misrepresentations of Deaf culture are entirely mine.
I spent several years learning Auslan, an experience that was full of challenges, surprises, and entirely new concepts. I have tried to capture the richness of sign language in these pages, but there’s no substitute for getting out there and learning it for yourself. Thanks to all the teachers, interpreters, and volunteers at Auslan immersion camp—and to my classmates, especially fellow scribbler and source of constant inspiration Donna Tucker Nading, who has traveled alongside me through so much of this journey.
No mention of learning Auslan would be complete without a nod to Sarah Ann Gagliardi’s glorious cakes, which sustained us through many difficult lessons.
As the book took shape, a number of insightful and obliging friends in the Deaf and hearing communities stepped up to read various drafts, including Simon Brown, Pamela Freeman, Caroline Grose, Robin Haines, Robert Hoge, Sandi Hoopman, Xander Monteath (the original “groaning ghost”), George Watt, and everyone at Jill Grinberg Literary Management. Matthew Lamb and Phil Crowley published an early version of part one in Review of Australian Fiction, which was valuable incentive at a critical time.
The finished novel contains contributions from family and friends, possibly without their knowledge, among them Roger Bannister, Stuart Barr, Rob Bleckly, James Bradley, Charles N. Brown (who gave me the best advice I ever ignored), Ginjer B
uchanan, Chilla Bulbeck, David Cake, Zac and Naomi Coligan, Bill Congreve, Richard Curtis, Peter Dinan of Freedom Fitness, John Douglas, John Drake, Ken Evans (the world’s foremost forensic synthologist), Anastasia Farley, Robin Haines, Bill and Laura Harrison of SATE Recordings, Jan Harrow, John Harwood, Justine Larbalestier, Philip Leedham, Nicholas Linke, the real and very patient Ian Mackereth (for supporting the Writers on Rafts fundraiser for victims of the 2011 Queensland floods), Chris Masters, Karen McKenna, Jo McNamara, Finn Monteath (my in-house metal detector), the late great Geoffrey Moon (who faced the difficult choice between music and painting, and chose music, much to the good fortune of his students), James Mullighan, Garth Nix, John Polglaise, Tim Powers (“Why really?”), Jennifer Rutherford (director of the actual John M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice), Anna Smaill, Gabriella Smart, Sputnik, Jonathan Strahan, Scott Westerfeld, Kathryn White, Christyna Williams, Mizzie Williams of Fisher Jefferies Barristers and Solicitors, Rachel and Sebastian Yeaman, everyone at Physio Pilates Proactive, and the members of the SF Novelist group.
Huge thanks to all of these people, and to numerous, inestimable, unbeatably gorgeous friends and family, particularly my wife, Amanda, for support through difficult times and for putting up with me talking about this book across many years (to pick just two items from a very long list).
Extra-special thanks to Anne Hoppe at Clarion Books and Jill Grinberg, the best editor/agent combo anyone could hope for, to Eva Mills and Sophie Splaff of Allen and Unwin for getting so wholeheartedly behind Simon’s story, and to the incomparable Lisa Vega for her thoughtful design work.
Music and musicians play an enormous role in Impossible Music. Many of the imaginary examples were inspired by real people: kudos to Jason Fischer (Sproutrider), Russell Kirkpatrick (long-suffering bandmate in 3D Owl), Nicholas Linke (Punkin), Amy T. Matthews (Glam Gong), Paul Sloan (Anal Twin, Ratsinger, übertor, The Ubiquitous Pig), and Tiffany Trent (Electric Sky Prawn’s number one fan). Several enigmatic shop signs from Myanmar also proved inspirational, among them Crystal Tomato, Glan Master, Shark Venus, Transparent Art Gallery, and Triple Nine Great Integrity. One band name (Thanks Throat Cancer) came from a dream. One song title (“Peyote Squeal”) came from Scrabble.
Neither the album Depth Perception nor guitarist Sean Williams has any connection with this novel: just one of life’s excellent coincidences that he released Depth Perception the day I finished editing the manuscript.
Thanks to the very real Steven Wilson for his blistering track “Deafman” (via side project, the Incredible Expanding Mindfuck), for many hours of sublime music, and for speaking frankly at a Q&A in Auckland, New Zealand, about being inspired as much by books and movies as by the music of his peers. To flip the situation, I find constant inspiration in the work of musicians, so here’s a big shout-out to those mentioned or alluded to in the book: Rick Astley, Avenged Sevenfold, Johann Sebastian Bach, the Beach Boys, Ludwig van Beethoven, Black Sabbath, Bring Me the Horizon, John Cage (the greatest musical genius of the twentieth century), Def Leppard, Depeche Mode, Devo, Dio, DragonForce, Bob Dylan, Evelyn Glennie, Hawkwind, “Blind Lemon” Jefferson, Jethro Tull, Jimi Hendrix, Judas Priest, Kiss, Led Zeppelin, Los Del Río, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Gustav Mahler, MC Hammer, The Meatfückers, Metallica, Wayne Newton, Gary Numan, Opeth, Orianthi, Porcupine Tree, Rage Against the Machine, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Steve Roach, Erik Satie, Joe Satriani, Alexander Scriabin, Ed Sheeran, Slipknot, the Smiths, David Sylvian, System of a Down, TesseracT, and Frank Zappa (whose “Watermelon in Easter Hay” was a particular touchstone for many points in Simon’s story).
More specifically, in the course of writing the final novel, the following albums provided inspiring accompaniment:
1i3835tra3um3, by AtomTM
Hearth, by Martin Goodwin
MantraSequent, by Jeffrey Koepper
Arcadian Rhythms, by Brendon Moeller
Skeleton Keys, by Steve Roach
Earth Luminous, by Erik Wøllo and Byron Metcalfe
Thanks to each of these artists for keeping me in the groove.
A key thread in this novel is the challenge of relearning intimacy once the power of speech is gone. Among the many books written about the experience of being, becoming, or engaging with the Deaf, five provided key insights:
Islay: A Novel, by Douglas Bullard
Rebuilt: My Journey Back to the Hearing World, by Michael Chorost
Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World, by Leah Hager Cohen
The Quality of Silence, by Rosamund Lupton
A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family, by Lou Ann Walker
I encourage everyone to learn more about Deaf culture, not just by tracking down these books, but by reaching out to their local Deaf communities for opportunities to engage directly. Although my hearing has held up pretty well for someone who’s listened to so much loud music, I now know that I could lead just as rich a life in utter silence as I have in the world of noise and distraction.
Researching Impossible Music delivered me to some other unexpected destinations. Grace Dorn’s work “The Grand Kenotaphion” is based on a composition of my own that was inspired by Jonty Semper’s 2CD set Kenotaphion, compiling a century’s worth of archival recordings from Whitehall, London, on Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday. (Other touchstone CDs include Sounds Like Silence, from Inke Arns and Dieter Daniels; and From the Depth of Silence: Orchestral Music of Somei Satoh, performed by the Janácek Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Petr Kotik.)
The 4'33" app for iPhone (available from the John Cage Trust and C. F. Peters) is a glorious exultation of Cage’s most famous work, one that will give you a chance to add your own performance to the repertoire, alongside mine.
Bengt Bengtsson’s experiment, wearing layered headphones in order to better appreciate loud music from a Deaf perspective, is one I experienced at the Unsound Adelaide Festival, brainchild of David Sefton, to whom eternal thanks for putting Adelaide on the international experimental music map.
I am inexpressibly grateful to the two funding bodies that assisted me at critical times during the creation of Impossible Music: the Australia Council for the Arts and Arts SA. This book would not have been possible without either of them.
A significant part of the first draft was written in Canberra, where I was the 2016 ACT Writer-in-Residence, an initiative of the ACT Writers Centre in collaboration with the Gorman House Arts Centre and the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House. The manuscript was finished in Adelaide, Australia, and edited in Dublin, Ireland.
Finally, there’s an international sign for Deaf pride that also doubles as “solidarity,” “friendship,” or even “I love you.” It looks like the heavy metal devil’s horns gesture, but with the thumb extended.
I am making that sign to you now.
www.hmhteen.com
About the Author
SEAN WILLIAMS is the award-winning, #1 New York Times best-selling author of novels, short stories, poetry, and a science-fiction musical. He has also played in a band and, as a teenager, won a Young Composers Award. Sean lives in Adelaide, Australia.
Visit him online—and hear some of his music—at impossiblemusic.info.
Connect with HMH on Social Media
Follow us for book news, reviews, author updates, exclusive content, giveaways, and more.