Undeaf

Hēran Soun
Sep 3, 2018 · 2 min read

Noise-cancelling headphones are terrifying. The lady-computer, whose tone is set to attempting friendly, said she was “connected”, and that her noise cancelling was set to “high” and instantly the background world noise disappeared, and I panic.

I was born with 15% hearing in one ear and 10% in the other. That dipped to zero within my childhood but after three operations, I now hear. The Oxford accented speech-therapist sharpened my slurred words but I choose to follow noise. The instruments to create noise were everywhere… instruments for music came later.

People arrived with their old instruments. A cracked double-bass (that accidentally had a lost biscuit inside), a 1960’s Japanese classical guitar, a cello, an alto saxophone — which later I was recommended to rotate the mouthpiece 180° to have the reed at the bottom, which improved things no end. I put these instruments between myself and noise. I was alone with them, no one to to learn the labels and rules from. The guitar pegs were twisted till it sounded complete and I left.

If only foley can be a radio play (see Andrew Sachs-The Revenge), then what are the limitations with what music can be? And can my personal amazement with all sound be translated into something pleasing to someone else?

I started to explore and experiment in studios. Hidden winters in woods next to Berlin with Junos and drums, a full-time relationship with a piano in Paris, until meeting the people at Dave Litchenstein’s (son of pop-artist Roy Litchenstein) studio in Oakland CA. I bought a 1984 RV, parked it in their parking lot and started sleeping through the days and recording through the night. I‘ve spent 2 years being nocturnal. I once fell asleep recording vocals in the sound isolation booth. I woke in a pure panic, frantically clicking my fingers next to each ear to check again, just as the first nurse did with a rattle all those years ago.

I put on those headphones still, there’s comfort and dread in them. I wasn’t ‘fixed’ for being deaf, I still think I would have been me and still trying to make noise. I just wanted my first instrument to be me.

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