My Story: Hearing Music for the First Time, He’s Blown Away by the Beauty
I’ve never understood it.
My whole life I’ve seen hearing people make fools of themselves singing their favorite songs or gyrating on the dance floor. I’ve also seen hearing people moved to tears by a single song. That was the hardest thing for me to wrap my head around.
I was born profoundly deaf, and all music sounded like trash through my hearing aids.
That is until a couple of days ago, when I put on a new pair of hearing aids for the first time in years.
The first thing I heard was my shoe scraping across the carpet; it startled me. I had never heard that before, and out of ignorance, I assumed it was too quiet for anyone to hear.
I sat in the doctor’s office frozen as a cacophony of sounds attacked me. The whir of the computer, the hum of the AC, the clacking of the keyboard, and when my best friend walked in I couldn’t believe that he had a slight rasp to his voice. He joked that it was time to cut back on the cigarettes.
That night, a group of close friends jump-started my musical education by playing Mozart, The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, Sigur Rós, Radiohead, Elvis, and several other popular legends of music.
Being able to hear the music for the first time ever was unreal.
I realized that my old hearing aids were giving me a distorted version of music. They were not capable of distributing higher frequencies with clarity; instead it was just garbled gibberish.
When Mozart’s “Lacrimosa” came on, I was blow away by the beauty of it. At one point of the song, it sounded like angels singing, and I suddenly realized that this was the first time I was able to appreciate music. Tears rolled down my face and I tried to hide it. But when I looked over, I saw that there wasn’t a dry eye in the car.
I finally understood the power of music.
Obviously, I did the only sensible thing and went on a binge of music.
Below are my top five favorites from my limited exposure to the world of sound:
1. Mozart’s “Lacrimosa”: I know it’s a depressing song, but to me it represents the first time I could appreciate and experience music.
2. The soundtrack to Eleven Eleven: I can see how this comes off as narcissistic, since it’s my own film and all, but it’s such a personal work that when I listened to it for the first time I broke down. I felt like I was truly seeing the film for the first time ever. I’m grateful that Cazz Brindis was able to capture the tone perfectly. We discussed the film and specific scenes with essay-sized reasoning/deliberations on what should be conveyed. The critical response to the film surprised me, and I still didn’t quite get it until seeing the visual images coupled with the soundtrack.
3. Sigur Rós’s “Staralfur”: The first song I had to listen to again, over and over.
4. Luis Bacalov’s score for Il Postino.
5. Minnesota’s “A Bad Place”
Ironically enough, I’m now turning my hearing aids off more often than before because most sounds are even more annoying, and the only time I have it on is when talking to people or listening to music/birds.
Silence is still my favorite sound. When I turn my aids off, my thoughts become more clear, and it’s absolutely peaceful.
I hope that one day hearing people get the opportunity to experience utter silence.
What exactly changed between my old hearing aids and my new ones?
My previous hearing aids were only four years old, but technology has gotten cheaper and better at an exponential rate since then.
Before, I could almost hear the low frequencies at a hearing person’s level, but not as crisp…higher notes, on the other hand, I didn’t hear at all.
I never realized how little of a range my hearing aids picked up compared to hearing people until a telecommunications class in college. We were learning about radio equipment, and the guest professor told us about how high human ears can hear and also compared to various animals.
He turned around and set the dial down to the lower pitches. I could still hear nearly all the low frequencies like the rest of the class. When he turned the dial in the opposite direction, I blanked out at about 40 percent, while the rest of the class stopped between 90 to 100 percent.
It’s an odd feeling, learning something so profound about yourself at 21… But it’s not as odd as the things I can hear now.
It was during “Lacrimosa” that I realized I was truly hearing pitches I’ve never experienced before. It was like seeing a color I’ve never seen before.
I honestly never thought I would really be able to hear my own soundtracks because I have accepted my deafness, I have always been and still am grateful for all I’ve been blessed with, so it was never a big deal to me.
Now…I’m overwhelmed and beyond grateful.
But this is just the beginning. That’s why I’m asking you to give me the names of the songs most beautiful to you.
Please leave your suggestions for Austin in the comments, and be sure to share this story.
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Austin Chapman is a graduate of Pepperdine University and works as a freelance filmmaker. He is currently composing the soundtrack for a new short film.
