I was twenty-six years old when music died. It had been on life-support for a few years, slowly fading yet stubbornly hanging on like some brittle yellow leaf which refuses to let go of the twig and clings hopelessly as autumn turns to winter. When if finally succumbed, it was like losing a close friend. Indeed, it felt like losing my only friend.
When I was eleven, my sixth-grade music teacher, Mrs. Bailey, took it upon herself to teach our class to play the ukulele. Perhaps she was a glutton for punishment, a closet-masochist who secretly delighted in the thought of a discordant, atonal symphony of inattentive brats banging senselessly on cheap instruments. Perhaps she had noble intentions of inspiring greatness in us, nurturing a possible prodigy or two and instilling a life-long love of music in us, the unwashed masses. Or perhaps she was bored. Who knows? And what did it matter? A few weeks of playing “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” and “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and we’d be done with it and we’d move on to greater, less embarrassing things in life.
But a funny thing happened. I fell in love. I’d never really paid much attention to music up to that point in my life. I was too busy being a baseball fanatic or riding my bike or playing with my G.I. Joe or little green army men to pay much heed to the finer things in life. But there was something about this strange little instrument that spoke to me. And I listened.
My parents took me to the nearest music store, fifty-five miles from the family farm, and bought a $12 ukulele for me. Twelve bucks is a lot of simoleons when you’re eleven years old, and I felt as though I were being entrusted with a Stradivarius or a Stratocaster. It had that funky Hawaiian sound that reminded me of Don Ho and Tiny Tim, and those four black nylon strings seemed to hold some kind of power, some hidden knowledge that beckoned me.
Mrs. Bailey taught us a few rudimentary chords (and by “a few” I mean three or four), which was about all our little sixth-grade pea-brains could handle. We learned a couple of old standards and goofed around and honestly, I think Mrs. Bailey was either deaf or had cotton in her ears because no normal human could remain as cheerful and encouraging around a gaggle of sixth-graders armed with lethal ukuleles as she could.
I had a Mel Bay ukulele instruction book at home and I taught myself a few more chords and immediately set about writing my first song, an epic masterpiece titled “Pickles and Cheese.” Three chords can certainly go to a musician’s head—after all, many classic rock songs contain only three chords—and I was sure I had achieved my masterwork. My mistake was playing it for my mom one day. (Dear Reader, I beseech you, if you ever write a song for the ukulele, DO NOT PLAY IT FOR YOUR MOTHER OR YOU’LL LIVE TO REGRET IT.) For years afterward, every time we’d have visitors at the farm, my mom would excitedly proclaim, “Mike wrote a song on the ukulele called ‘Pickles and Cheese!’ Go get your ukulele and play it for EVERYONE!” And I’d shrink to about half-size and shake my head vigorously and slink off to hide somewhere. It never failed. My magnum opus had become an albatross around my neck and would surely spell my doom lest my mom eventually forget.
About this time I began taking a real interest in guitars. I wanted one desperately, but a guitar was much more expensive than a ukulele. My dad—always prone to making promises he would delightedly and gleefully break—told me he’d buy a guitar for me if I learned to play the ukulele. I’d already learned more than anyone else in my music class and I was eager to learn more because man, I really wanted a guitar. But there was no pleasing my dad, a guy whose soul held no light or warmth or mirth or hope or any sense of keeping his word. As the months rolled by, I continued to teach myself more on the ukulele and my dad refused to hold up his end of the bargain (a recurrent theme throughout my life). I was upset, frustrated that he seemed to take a sick sort of joy in breaking promises, and I eventually reached the point of giving up hope. Then Christmas arrived, and with it an amazing surprise from my mom.
She’d spent $100 of her own money on a used Kay hummingbird acoustic guitar. It wasn’t fancy and the action was too high but it was beautiful, cherry sunburst, and along with a case and a small bag of picks and an instruction book, it contained unlimited hope and potential. I really didn’t know what to think, I was so shocked. My dad was furious, of course, and yelled at my mom for doing something as outrageous as supporting her child’s dreams, and he made it clear to me many times that he’d break the guitar if I played too loudly. Yeah, he really knew how to ruin everything, and his threats and the way he treated my mom for doing something kind for me led to a sense of doom and guilt and embarrassment that would soon manifest itself in an unexpected way.
I played around with the guitar for a few days, then abruptly put it away. Looking at it made me feel worthless, undeserving, and my dad’s threats had destroyed any joy I’d felt when my mom had given it to me. I simply couldn’t bear to play it. So I put it away. For five years. And tried not to think about it, or music, anymore. My mom never said anything about this but I know it hurt her, and I don’t know if she ever understood why I gave up on it. I was too young to accurately articulate what was going on in my head. Fortunately, this hiatus would end just as abruptly as it had begun.
I was sixteen when I suddenly developed the urge to dig my guitar out of the closet. I’d become heavily interested in music by this time and I suppose this was a natural progression. I grabbed the song book that had come with the guitar and sat down in my bedroom and began teaching myself to play. It was as though a switch had been flipped, as if I had only been waiting for the right time to arrive, and that time had finally come. After two straight weeks of teaching myself chords, I began picking up songs off the radio and playing them. My hearing was normal back then and I had a good ear and could play songs after only a listen or two. I gravitated toward guitar-oriented music, of course, and for me this meant bands like Boston, Journey, Kansas, Styx, Rush, Eagles, Badfinger, Jefferson Starship, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin and other rock bands whose songs were carried by the few radio stations I could pick up at the farm. I’d lie in bed at night with my little transistor radio under my pillow and listen to KOMA out of Norman, Oklahoma or X-Rock 80 out of Juarez, Mexico (both Top 40 AM stations) and dream of hearing my own songs play on those stations one day.
The summer of my seventeenth year, I had a job pumping gas at a Texaco station in town. Once again, my dad had made one of his sketchy promises: he would pay for an electric guitar if I’d pay for the amplifier. I’d already picked out the guitar I wanted and set about working to earn the money for the amp. Of course, my dad backed out again and I had to pay for both the amp and most of the guitar. He was angry because I was happy and had kept my end of the deal. When we went to the music store to pick up the guitar and amp, he said, “If you play that thing too loud, I’ll break it!” I mean, this guy had a natural talent for being an asshole. So, with Mr. Guilt Trip having said his piece, I set about exploring the world of the electric guitar.
I was writing music and lyrics by this point, and to say music—and guitar—had become an obsession for me would be quite an understatement. I was living and breathing music. When I wasn’t listening to music, I was playing my guitars. My mom told me many times that she’d lie awake in bed at night, waiting for me to return home from my job at the gas station, because she knew I’d play my guitar for awhile before I went to bed. I had no idea she had been doing this. It was incredibly touching, and I felt as though maybe there was someone who supported me after all.
Music was also my therapy. I grew up in a severely dysfunctional home where there was domestic violence. My dad was a monster who had no qualms about knocking his wife around now and then or making his kids hate themselves. I was my mom’s self-appointed protector. It was my job to make sure my dad couldn’t harm her, and it was an exhausting and never-ending job. And I mean that. Even today, at age fifty-seven, with both my parents gone, I’m still dealing with major depression and PTSD from my childhood and several events that took place involving my dad using physical violence against my mom. I had no close friends so I had no one to talk to about any of this. I was painfully shy and extremely introverted and suffering from more than my share of self-hatred. All I had were my guitars. I would pick them up and disappear into some alternate reality where things were peaceful and there was beauty and kindness and no violent, abusive fathers and no need for young boys to be hyper-vigilant to the point of developing major depression and PTSD. Music was my balm, my elixir, my panacea. I would oftentimes fall asleep with my guitar in my hands, having drifted off to the soothing tranquility of those six magical strings. Music was everything to me. It was life, it was hope, it was healing, it was safety. And it was all too fleeting.
By this point, my mind was made up. I was going to be a musician. I was going to start a band, write original songs, record albums and tour. It was going to be my songs I’d be hearing on KOMA and X-Rock 80, my albums I’d see in music stores, my band’s name on the marquees of venues across the land. Everything was set. All I had to do was continue playing, keep improving and never give up. Nothing could stop me.
Well, they don’t call me Captain Irony for nothing. In late winter of my senior year of high school, I developed meningitis during a basketball tournament at my school. It was my last hurrah as a high school athlete (one who had been relegated to the bench for the most part in football and basketball due to religious discrimination), and I ended up missing the state tournament. I was seriously ill, with a high fever that lasted for about a week. I’d never been that sick prior to that, and haven’t since. I missed two weeks of school. And thus began my journey into deafness.
It started slowly, with my family noticing I was saying, “Huh?” quite often. I began missing words on spelling tests at school—something that never happened before—due to not understanding what word the teacher was saying. As time went by, I began struggling to understand speech and ended up with my first pair of hearing aids (which didn’t help at all) at age twenty-one in 1985. I could still understand music for the most part, although I was beginning to have trouble with it, too. It took me longer to figure out songs, and there were many instances where I couldn’t decipher chord patterns or solos at all. But I kept playing because playing guitar was all I knew at that point. It was everything. The more I improved as a guitarist, the worse my hearing became. I continued writing music and absorbing whatever guitar-related literature I could get my hands on, but in the back of my mind I could feel things slipping away, and it frightened me.
Music died for me in 1990. I was twenty-six. I developed a serious bout of strep throat which infected my ears, and lost a huge chunk of my hearing. I was immediately tone-deaf. I recall trying to play my guitars after that and not being able to differentiate between notes and chords. Everything sounded the same. It felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. Just like that, my dream of being a musician was over.
I felt lost without my guitars. I’d always carried a guitar pick in my pocket everywhere I went. It was my lucky talisman. I reckon its luck had finally run dry. I could no longer improvise. I still knew how to play, but I wasn’t able to understand what I played anymore. I felt like that little sixth-grader noisily strumming the strings of that ukulele so many years ago before I had any idea what I was doing. All I had now were memories of music, memories of playing guitar.
What’s more, I had lost my therapist. I could no longer use my guitars to calm myself and keep myself sane in a crazy world. When I’d try playing, it just made things worse. The sense of loss was palpable and felt so unfair. I wanted to blame someone, something, for this mess, but there was no one to blame. I was sick as a teenager. I fell ill with meningitis during a basketball tournament. Years later, I came down with strep throat. That was it. I was angry at God for a long time (and I still have questions about it, let me tell you). Humans have a need to assign blame when things go wrong in order to maintain the facade of an orderly universe. When bad things occur, if we can pin the blame on someone or something, we set the world to order again and can go about our ways being angry at the person or thing that caused our pain as we grieve. But what to do when no one is at fault? There’s no closure. There are only questions that remain unanswered and which leave us with a sense of a universe that is totally random and merciless.
I have memories. Playing a classical piece in an ensemble at the regional music competition my junior year of high school. Late-night jamming with my drummer buddy Jeff at the school’s music room during freshman year of college. Recording myself jamming and being humbled and shocked and delighted at the reactions of people who listened to those jam tapes. And I still have my guitars, all three of them, in my closet as I type this. They will be with me always, even though I haven’t played them for years. I will remember falling asleep with my guitars in my hands, my arm-hairs vibrating to loud power chords, jamming alone with my eyes closed and my mind far, far away from all the pain and frustration of the real world.
I still have music, of sorts. My mind constantly has some background song or other playing at all times, something that’s been with me for decades—different songs for different occasions. During times of extreme stress, such as my mom’s death, my dad’s physically assaulting me and threatening to kill me, the ending of relationships, music was there in my head, working its soothing magic and holding me together. I can’t play my guitars anymore, nor can I understand any music that’s come out since 1990, but I have all those songs from my past that have never abandoned me. So, in a weird way, music is still the constant in my life, the linchpin, the cornerstone of everything I am. Put simply, despite being deaf, I can’t live without it. Yes, Captain Irony again.
Silent Pariah 
You’ve been through so much, and I kept thinking while reading this, that I wanted to hear even more about your life. Have you ever thought about writing a complete autobiography?
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It’s strange, but I’ve had some other people tell me I should write a book about my experiences. I actually had sort of a fictional autobiography in mind a few years ago but never got anything written down. I suppose I see my own life as the apotheosis of banality (hmm…sounds like a good title for my life story!). I have a handful of other essays here that are sort of like “chapters” in my life, and while they’re focused on my deafness, they also explore other areas. I’m honestly humbled that anyone would want to learn more about my life. Your kind words are greatly appreciated. 🙂
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Oh you should then! And that’s a great title. Lol… Why not put all those chapters together. You’d have a book in no time! You know… November is National Novel Writing Month. Better known as NaNoWriMo. I participated once and wrote an entire book during that month. They generally recommend 50,000 – 60,000 words per novel. Perhaps you could write your autobiography? You’ve still got a few days to consider it at least for this year. I’m not participating this year. I think once was enough for me. But it was a fun challenge and I amazed myself that I could even do it. 😃
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I’ll bet that was an intense project! I’ll fiddle around and see if I can find more info on this. I wasn’t aware of it. I’m not sure if I could sustain a project that big over such a small window of time. It’s certainly intriguing, though. Thanks for this info, Michelle. 🙂
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Here’s the link if you’re interested. 😉
https://nanowrimo.org/
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Thanks for the link! 🙂
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You’re welcome ☺️
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I learned a new word! Apotheosis
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Apotheosis just has a really cool ring to it, doesn’t it? 🙂
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Hello Mike Y, I would like your permission to publish your essays on Gobblers every Tuesday yes, and Tuesday no. I await your response either here or at fleminglabwork@gmail.com. A cordial greeting juan re crivello
Founder and editor of Masticadores.com
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Hello, Mr. Crivello. I’ve sent an email to you regarding the essays. It’s an honor and I’m grateful for your interest in my writing. 🙂
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Hello there, my friend.
I must admit. This is an old piece and we’ve shared some comments and insights with each other today. It’s nearly 2am in my timezone and I decided I wanted to continue exploring your work. I’m reading through your essays oldest to newest and it feels so kismet. I mentioned in a comment mostly talking about writing but that I was working on other projects, making music and quasi-graphic design.
It feels so kismet to read your story. I had a similar upbringing per say. Strict generational Marine family and my dad found my Mother halfway across the world and brought her home. Creativity was not encouraged but rather structure, discipline, and organization.
As a kid I was obsessed with music. After many struggles and getting diagnosed with PTSD at 19, I’ve been unraveling my twisted christmas light balls with busted bulbs of trauma and childhood memories. One notably full of birth defects. Vision obviously, as I’ve been wearing glasses since the age of 2. Only recently have I been sharing with my family some of my earliest memories, even the moment I realized I had memory and could archive and retrieve my days. I only shared with my Dad about a week ago remembering when they slipped those baby glasses on with the wrap-around straps and tiny buckle that never wanted to clasp comfortably. They were pink and I hated pink, but the world was so bright and glimmering for the first time. I still remember seeing my mom and dad’s faces clearly for the first time. The clouds were never smudges in the sky, they were detailed, exuberant, and unique. I even could take sneak peeks in the mirror and didn’t see a distorted amalgamation reflecting back, not looking back because I had never seen the detail in my own eyes before. I always thought they were shit brown, but really more hazel with gold flecks and a small green stripe under one eye. I don’t even remember which eye it is as I’m using my eyes to type, but it was thought provoking when I learned that for the first time many years later.
As time passed, trauma got in the way. Shadowy hidden Domestic Violence common within the military community (unfortunately). It was only fitting that I later worked as a Domestic Violence Advocate at a shelter, as a sentiment towards healing for my family and especially for myself. As brief as it was, I realized advocating for others allowed me to advocate for myself. As a kid I had eidetic memory, and relayed to many a doctor and interviewers of washed down “im so smart” clubs how I would recall each day like a page on a book. Each month a chapter, until I was growing older and chapters were years not months. Trauma drives a real shit bin at the memory, and a neurological disability that went untreated 15 years too late definitely didn’t help.
It wasn’t until another kismet experience years ago where I relayed a distant memory of tuning forks and frequencies realizing I was seeing a childhood audiologist for some time. My parents have never been keen on talking about the hard stuff, their sick and intimidatingly precocious kid, or most definitely – the past and my childhood, or lack thereof. Frequent moving between states, and they really just didn’t want to continue the appointments or transportation or find a way to make it feasible.
I always knew my hearing was bad. I always said huh. I always asked people to repeat themselves, only to see red faces. Mostly my Mother and my aunties. I had a lisp, speech impediment, and a thick tonal accent (even though I was only fluent in English). I was placed in the ESL class on my third day of kindergarten and then notably taken out when they got an advanced essay published by yours truly and even wrote one each, first with my right hand, then the second with my left to further nourish the point “I understand you, you don’t understand me. Why can’t you meet me halfway?”
Apparently I had a problem communicating, and choosing to treat the entire world with the silent treatment was also considered a communication problem.
They were mostly just impressed I knew how to hold a pencil and was ambidextrous besides the teaching myself how to read and write because I was jealous of the kids who got to go to preschool and was stealing my older brothers books and homework because I didn’t want to be behind when I got to kindergarten.
Eventually in the 1st grade after I was deemed applicable for accessibility accommodations, I was placed in a Speech Therapy class. Which I gotta say, was the time of my damn life as far as education went. I recommend it for everyone, not just young children.
Some of us were there for speech, some for hearing, some for ESL advancement, or generally improving communication reaching (mostly for those on the spectrum and nuerodivergent). We even learned to read braille as well as practice ASL.
Speech Therapy covered a lot about communication, especially body language, eye contact, and gesticulations. My nuerodivergency felt adequately inhibited in understanding body language and even trying to make eye contact, let alone maintain it in a conversation. (Asians culture doesn’t really care about that anyways, though my Italian side’s ancestors said I must point; and I did and I continue to use my yummy yummy yummy gesticulations constantly in conversation to this day.)
Only to find myself baffled in my 20s speaking to a coworker that was taking an ASL class at the local community college and discovering that my childhood audiologist published his thesis on our practices with those tuning forks and a wide range of instruments just to figure out what I could hear and can’t hear and find innovative ways to how I could hear. They pointed out that I signed all the time when I spoke and asked if I knew, and I didn’t. I really didn’t know I did, I thought I just gesticulated a lot and the Italian side of me wanted to talk with their hands. This coworker was full-blooded Italian and dispelled to me that this was not the case and that children with born to early-onset hearing loss that learn ASL before reaching elementary school regularly incorporate and use it without noticing since it was introduced early. I told her I knew I had hearing problems but it was the faint memories of tuning forks and seeing so many instruments for the first time in person that dispelled – I was that kid in the study. Same age, same year, same timeline, same hospital. I never even attended any college campus besides educational route encouragement tours upon privately reserved invitations and they’re airing out my business in my own town on the other side of the country where my appointments took place for a community college credit.
My memory was clouded by so many years of other struggles, my hearing was not the priority and I just thought I wrecked it with screaming, screeching metalcore with my earbuds in everyday riding the bus to school. Turns out I was already a case study. Makes sense.
I even got a hand-me-down full range casio keyboard out of that experience so I could study at home. I never realized my parents bought it for me until now, looking back. It wasn’t for my siblings. I’m grateful for that realization. I was the only one that knew how to use it anyways.
Even in the middle ground of my life thus far, I remember in the 6th grade doing a science experiment based on sound, frequency, echo, and reverb using tuning forks. I couldn’t hear all of them and my project partners were kinda concerned and my teacher was distressed over it and I just blurt out “I can hear A, B, C, and D; but I struggle with E, F, and G. I can only hear the lowest three octaves. stabley” while unsure 11 year old memory blocking traumatized me freaks out asking in my mind how do I know that only to go on and over-explain myself and think I won’t look weird if I have a justifiable reason goes “they bounce off the walls easier that’s why I cup my hand when I talk because I can’t hear the echo but I can hear the reverb. If you stand by the wall I can hear you better. I don’t want you speaking directly into my ear because some words and high-pitched voices make my eardrums hurt and palpate.”
That 11 year old girl had no idea where it came from, it was just accepted fact. I learned this before 5 years old, so why would I learn to question it now?
That same year, I joined orchestra. I rejoice in the power of some universal force as I had to choose two instruments upon recruitment. My dad and cousin played trumpet, so I put that down as one choice. What else to do in a legacy military family, than follow the course. Then I put cello because I wanted to be the next Yo-Yo Ma and thought if I learned classical strings maybe one day I’ll learn guitar too and get to branch out.
I ended up playing viola because no one else wanted to, let alone knew what it was. My mom still thinks I played violin to this day.
Looking back I’m thankful because I probably would have actually and really blown my eardrums out playing a brass instrument.
I loved it though. I damn killed it at the game too. Playing Grade 6 professional music after a year and change and sporting my bets into county and state competitions (even if I killed it, my performance anxiety cooked me). Nonetheless, public school didn’t work out and I retreated.
It made me think of my first flippy jvc headphones and staying up all night with some radio and cassettes I’d collect from working the stalls at the flea market. (You knew the chicharronnes had to be delectable if the 5 year old racially ambiguous mixed-heritage asian girl is counting your cash at a princess play register running sales and your boss brings multiplication flash cards for you to study when you’re bored in the middle of 120 degree desert heat working under sheet metal and wooden stilts hoping the fan doesn’t short out today and someone brought water not juice.)
I had quite the collection. I was most proud of my Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin, the Modern Lovers, Blondie, Karen Dalton, Hank Williams, A Tribe Called Quest, and Wu-Tang tapes. I wish I still had them today.
I’d listen to static on the concrete stairs upon what seemed a mile of a mountain of my apartment block, chipping away dirty birdy blue paint chips on the railing. I never got to step foot on the Laguna Mountains, but damn did it feel like it five stories off the ground on a steep hill of daisies and dandelions. And I’d sit there, and think only my little radio knew what I was hearing in my head. I didn’t know what tinnitus was. I didn’t understand I had birth defects after test after test after let alone the brain scans.
I only remember being fearful when I was yelled at for “huh” because my mom had a freak accident and had to get an emergency eardrum surgery, as it had ruptured.
Imagine the berating words between a Filipino Mother and her eldest daughter, both hard of hearing yelling at each other bc they couldn’t hear each other. We functioned at different ends of the spectrum of volume, and she preferred loud.
So I lived a quiet life. As quiet as I could make it be.
Until I had to disrupt it. Hours playing viola everyday. Hours spent torrenting music until I started respecting piracy acts. I could shit out the storage on an mp3 or ipod in weeks compiling. I wish I still had those too. I even hit 10,000 liked songs on the music streaming app I use, for the words of Hello Darlin’ by Mr. Conway Twitty himself to ease me out of my ego, only a few days ago. Two other accounts abandoned as I abandoned Top 40 altogether.
I’ve been coming to terms with being disabled with a late diagnosis. I’ve been coming to terms with realizing I was born disabled. Feeling like a familial liability just to ask “Did that really happen? What were all those doctors for?” Even now as I’m approaching my mid 20s I realize my eyesight and hearing have been deteriorating steadfast along with the rest of my health, especially my brain.
I made myself proud though, today of all days after many sweet smiles and gazing between our writing. I finally produced a song. Not just a beat, a song. Lo-fi production was my sneaky whims of fun when I got my first laptop in middle school. I never realized it was good. I shared it once and humbly abandoned what I love, as I notably know myself to do out of embarrassment for being passionate. Violists who want to play at Carnegie Hall don’t do production or drum kits. Even the metal head punk hippie I was at the time, felt I had to clean the act up if I wanted to pursue a career as a classical stringed musician.
I dropped playing viola around highschool as well as my entire education and took care of business at home. I would break it out annually, if that. My beautiful beautiful $2.7k viola, bow, case, accessories, and even an extra set of strings with a tubular carrying case for gut lines my dad bought for me after we paid off the rental through the school program and I had been accepted into a state competition. I fudged it up but middle pack of Top 50 in the lowest grade for admittance wasn’t too bad looking back even if it was the end of the world at the time for preteen me in a world where perfectionism was the expectation but there is no possibility, let alone room to reach. Being a marine brat instilled that early, orchestra was all my own and I treated it such as the same.
So I idealized Beethoven’s 9th and Clockwork Orange-d myself as I knew my degenerative hearing loss and afflicting myself by blasting my eardrums with earbuds carrying sonic waves of symphonies ultimately led to my unique playing style of tuning slightly flat and absolute adoration for B flat on the G String of Viola in A Minor. I thought it was my secret, though in retrospect I think that’s why my first orchestra teacher spent so much time nourishing my potential and eventually talent. She knew. At least I followed my gut, and didn’t choose violin. I would’ve annoyed the hell out of myself with that screechy high E string. I wouldn’t even have been capable of tuning it properly.
Later, my dad bought a guitar for me at 18. I got promoted as manager at my first tax-paying job after less than half a year and I theorize my dad was trying to relive my childhood. I played it maybe enough times to count on one hand since. So my beautiful viola with a bow that long ago lost its hair and yamaha guitar sit under my bed cascading theoretical compositions into my dreams. I got them out of the garage and then out of my closet in the years since, so I’m getting closer to actually playing them one day.
Though I will always be proud of translating Bach’s Prelude to Suite No. 3 in Alto Clef for Viola to guitar tabs, because I didn’t know how to read guitar tabs so I had to put it in scales and octaves and just found the note on the strings. I learned those through studying on the casio in the early days and I’ve never played a damn real song on piano ever, it just gave me structure to translate to what I can understand and experience within my own capability of hearing.
To get to the point, the hearing I have managed to scrape together since birth – I’m losing. My bose speaker never seems loud enough these days and I don’t like the feel of earbuds unless it’s in mono otherwise the tinnitus just gets my anxiety going.
I did it though. I made a whole 4 minute and 28 second long song in two hours. It needs to be polished. It was just a program with drum kits, my lovely lovely 808s at the hand of a click and drag. I hit it at E minor, in a low octave, at 44 bpm and I just really love it. It’s been 10 years since I last tried and I adored it.
I didn’t realize until after the fact reading through your essays on deafness and hearing loss that I made that song to be comfortable for me. Sludgey, grindy, heavy, deep bass, hypnotic industrial sounds.
I didn’t use a damn lick of treble, because I can’t hear it.
I decided to show it to two friends for notes. Whatever the hell came out of my laptop was not what I heard on my speaker or my phone. The location of where the sound came from, changed. That’s why I couldn’t hear it. I didn’t hear the same because I can’t hear it the same.
I’m epileptic and I hide. I have too many eye problems but the glasses and specific shades for specific lighting, weather, screentime, or page reading; I can’t hide. Yet, I still after all these years have chosen not to dispel my hearing loss and intricacies of how I hear or why everything I hear is coming from the opposite direction depending on the note, key, and frequency if it’ll even reach me. I always look in the wrong direction when someone calls my name, which says a lot for Miss Conception.
I know it’s a lot. I made a comment, my own personal essay to you on an old post. I’ve never gotten to share this much in detail, my struggle with even understanding there’s a problem besides my devices showing I’m at a bright red risky volume.
Even the Coda is my favorite insignori of all music emblems and symbols there is. My favorite way to master a composition.
I’m glad I came across you.
I spent three hours trying to disparage my reality in a blog comment, because I knew you’d understand.
I’m very happy I get to call you My Friend, Mike.
I hope this counts as a little [lengthy] adventure as well 😉
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Oh, this is an adventure, most certainly! 😊 I’m going to get a better reply written very, very soon but wanted to let you know I read every word and I’m so grateful to you for sharing yourself in such an honest way. Thank you, Sam. More to come later. 😊
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I’ll be waiting for it☺
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Hey, Sam. I just read though your comment again and can’t help but to see some common themes: deafness, PTSD, childhood domestic violence, music, writing (of course) and even working in a desert flea market (seriously!). I’m continually mind-blown by your writing style, your articulation, your obvious joy for words, your intelligence, your honesty, and your willingness to expose your vulnerabilities. You’ve broadened my vocabulary and sent me searching to discover more about some of the issues you’ve experienced. You’ve taken me on your own personal journey and shown me things I’ve never seen or heard. Thanks for this, my friend. This is, indeed, an adventure. 😀
It’s so kind of you to read through my writings. I began this blog as a means to connect with other deaf people, hence the essays. After a couple of months with little to no views, I debated giving up, but decided since I’d already paid for a year’s subscription to WP, I might as well publish my old poetry that had been languishing in a folder on my hard drive, unseen and unread by anyone but me. So, yeah, poetry was an afterthought even with my blog. I never dreamed anyone would bother reading it, so it’s been a big surprise. While I didn’t achieve my original goal of connecting with lots of fellow deaf and hard-of-hearing people, I’ve come across some amazing writers from all over the world, and that’s made this whole blogging venture worth it.
Learning about your struggles with hearing and vision—especially as a little kid—was painful for me. My deaf journey began at age eighteen; I have no idea what it must be like to experience hearing loss at a much younger age. It’s fascinating how you coped with it—and your vision problems—and I can picture you signing instinctively as you spoke, unaware you were doing so until it was pointed out to you later. I understand about that constant static hiss, too. It’s always there for me, and much louder when I’m tired. I also have weird head noise frequently—not really sounds, just damaged nerves firing off, mimicking sounds. I’ll cover my ears with my hands to check if those sounds are environmental or in my head, and yep, covering my ears doesn’t help. I began losing my ability to distinguish directional sounds many years ago before I stopped hearing most sounds, so if I heard something, I’d be glancing this way and that to try to figure out what it was and where it came from. Now, I suppose I’m just blissfully deaf to the point where I don’t hear much at all save for the constant static drone.
Your precociousness resonates, too. I was reading and writing before kindergarten, thanks to my older sister “playing school” with me (against my will, much of the time) and my grandma on my mom’s side showing me how to write in cursive at four years of age. I’d bring my plastic dinosaurs to kindergarten and read their names printed on their bellies to my classmates, describing them in all the detail a little five-year-old mind could muster, and my teacher eventually got hold of the high school guidance counselor to test my IQ. I scored 132 and there was talk of moving me up to third grade, but the principal—the corpulent and invidious Mr. Booth—shot that down and forced me to remain with my own age group. Thus ensued twelve years of abject boredom as I drifted through school, never really challenged and actively villainized by the kids in my own class for being “the brain.” I grew to detest school and dreaded it (for more reasons than academic marginalization—plenty of religious prejudice reduced me to a pariah, too). Flash forward to the present and I’m a college-drop-out and a tech school drop-out. No degrees. Undiagnosed childhood depression caused so many problems, and it got to the point where I simply couldn’t function. I couldn’t control my depression and insomnia, couldn’t handle school, and basically couldn’t handle life. A proper diagnoses of depression and PTSD came at age 29, but the damage was already done, and now, with 13+ years of therapy under my belt and counting, I’m still struggling, but at least I have an outlet in writing.
Your musical journey is so intriguing. Part of my musical aspirations included becoming fluent in classical guitar (in addition to my rock ‘n’ roll dreams). I wasn’t able to make any headway in that regard other than teaching myself a handful of classical pieces by bands like Rush and Triumph (which weren’t really true classical pieces from a purist’s standpoint, I suppose). But that was as far as my classical guitarist dreams went: “Broon’s Bane” by Rush, “Petite Etude” by Rik Emmett of Triumph, “Eugene’s Trick Bag” (the classical section of the guitar duel between Ralph Macchio and Steve Vai in the 1986 film Crossroads) and a couple more I learned in high school (and performed in a group ensemble in a regional competition). I was losing my hearing as I was teaching myself to play guitar, and reached the tipping point of tone-deafness at age 26 and that was it. Too many lost opportunities to contemplate, so I try not to think too much about it. I would absolutely give anything to be able to listen to the song you’ve created. I do still dream of recording albums and touring, being on that stage. I still have my three guitars as mentioned in my essay, and they’ll always be with me. Even now, I’ll watch classical guitar videos on YT with the sound off just so I can visualize what’s happening, studying various techniques. Music—even though I can’t even hear it anymore—is just too vital to my soul to quit, and it looks like it has profound meaning for you, too. And that makes me happy in a misty-eyed, wistful kind of way.
My own desert flea market adventure consisted of being a grounds-keeper one summer at a big flea market in Farmington, New Mexico, laying down the chalk lines to designate the spaces, clearing trash (yay..) and helping out in any way during the busy weekends. One food van—run by an elderly Latino couple—sold the most decadent and greasy cheeseburgers on the planet, and my mouth still waters thinking about them!
Thanks so much for sharing these parts of your life, Sam. I have a lot of admiration for not only your writing chops, but also for how you’ve persevered through circumstances that would crush other people. Mad respect to you, my friend. You’re always welcome here, and I’m glad you stumbled across my blog when you did. A new friend made, and new adventures await… 😊
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I think through many of our similarities, disabilities, trauma, as well as how life goes on following a traumatic experience… I’ve found this odd and unexpected bond with you. I came across you on the reader app, really just looking for the same sentiment I was seeking from my writing. Finding something valuable in the word jumbles. See if anything managed to resonate or offer some sort of relation, even empathy would make me happy and soothed. I think the distinction of living a lonely, relatively life has this stark perspective. So much longing, waxing and waning within my own character that I found myself relating less and less to myself as I was digging my own hole to the rock bottom of rock bottom yet again as if this was Dante’s Descent. Distancing myself from the people I love and care for, myself. It was insecurity, but that happens when you’re a lonesome soul and you’re alone and you’re lonely on top of that. Even for my exponential introversion, I relish in ambiverted moments and long, winding, deep conversation.
Before I took up the website, my employment stability as far as being able to maintain my health to show up, really took a hit. Before that I was working 3 jobs, averaging 80 hours a week or more, never would I drop below 67 hours because that was what I wanted to maintain so I did it. My preoccupation with my finances, especially living a life where you can’t legally obtain a driver’s license due to the severity of my disability in my state and being dependant on ride-share services – was absolutely crippling to my profit margins. They were not only weak, they were slim and damp too.
Heartbreaking for an ancestral line of Italian bankers, accountants, and CPA’s (another thing I also thought about working on if I went back to school until I shared this sentiment with my Mom and she said my Ita-Lolo (Italian [filipino term for..} Grandfather) (he made that term up to suit our specific cultural needs) was a CPA and carried many different careers under his belt, but being a CPA made “his soul die” and he jumped creek and transitioned to a way he could use his knack for numbers that made him happy and he could maintain his -happy-go-lucky and snarky, interrogative, sarcastic personality. His genes were very strong so to say, as they reached me in his absolute crowded hoard of grandchildren scattered all over the world, traveling as his generation did. Home for a legacy of people who loved numbers, was just wherever the money went (we’re old world Italian, money don’t stay in the same place, you gotta chase it, chase a bag always, bring the family with you, even if you gotta set up shop alone for a little bit. regroup and repair all your hurt egos cynicized by distance later. the lowcountry-swamp-marsh-southern side agreed with this as well.)
So I was bedridden and Todd’s Paralysis turned to… paralyzed below the waist for the better half of a year and a half. Leaning on walls and learning my mobility over and over and over again. This probably happens about every 3-5 years and I gotta get back on the bench and earn my way back to plate.
As a kid, it’s easy to get past that and I don’t have to go to school (yay) and shit out a 100 on a packet every two weeks and get my bonus questions to secure a nearly perfect weighted gpa. When you’re working though as an adult, even a young adult. I can look back at my measly 5 years of tax paying jobs, even my private tutoring “business” I started when I was 9, and know I accomplished a lot. There was such a demarcation within my generation and people in my age range because I chose to hustle and they chose to party and bullshit. I got that out way too early that I was done with that life by 16 and a little renaissance for nasty 19 since the money was good for me and I could blow it, with a base, safety net, and alternatives.
Circumstance and health blowing that shit over instead like a dying crop, really f*cked with me. I’ve been trying to get over my corrosive shame of being a highschool dropout when I got letters from every state college, out-of-state randos, liberal arts colleges, art and graphic design research centers, and ivy league schools by 6th grade, even West Point officers knocking on my damn doors and even in public places like supermarkets. Finding myself with just so much mail and I didn’t give them any attention because I didn’t want my a** kissed, I wanted to earn it. I don’t have relationships with anyone I knew before 18 anymore, but it was heartbreaking to see when all my old classmates were graduating in their damned robes and kicked heel poses on ig and fb. Good for them. It took a long time to realize coming from a background of adversity, different socioeconomic status, and performance where finances weren’t to be flown but managed – it was just never gonna happen unless I again s*hit out essay after essay explaining why I’m marginalized amongst a majority of society yet so smart and have overcame so much pls pick me pwetty pweewtty plllsss (the cynic comes out, but let’s be real, come on, this is a pay-to-play society and education only speaks in those terms unless you give good face to the camera -_-)
So with all my guilt and shame, an unpredictable and rocky neurological disability where not only my mobility was decayed, but my communication and cognitive skills were 0 to none after so so so so much work and immersion therapy after I diagnosed with Social Phobia at 13 – I felt like dog shit, my life was dog shit, and my finances, even my credit score turned to dog shit. I had no other reasonability but to choose life for the sake of myself, and celebrate with what I enjoy the most. All the things young fetus and inner-child Sam were still craving. Which included stability with money, but authenticity earning it.
So I set up the website. Stopped hoarding all my journals of baked poems that had turned stale. Sometimes I think about looking back at them and seeing if they’re any good. I’ve realized after going through all that and cleaning up so many times in so little of years, I had to work for a change and I had to be honest with myself and takes sneaky peaks in the mirror. Now I can look, even gaze. It feels almost like getting sober all over again, coming back to the fruition of realizing I had to divert my attention to the sects that required it, not needed nor wanted.
If I feel so alone in this world, the best thing I can do is set up a business doing what I love and chasing those dreams by the curtails.
Reading your work and talking with you (even through just comments) has offered this vitality to my life really. I first came across some of your haikus I believe, some essays, a lot of your published work. I believe it was “My Jade Reprise” [forgive me if I got the title wrong, I’m not sure rn typing this all out] that really hit me as I have an anxious habit of twisting my jade ring around my left thumb when I try to focus and switch it to my right ring finger when my pins and needles start afflicting them more regularly. Just so I got something to hold onto, something to do with my hands, something tangible to feel that I can breathe and spread my attention and try to force my focus out of its hermit hole. Really just to know, I’m still all there. A lot of the past 5-6 years, the sensory to even feel and my mobility tarnished – I went back to empty baseless ways and nihilism.
That day, I was twisting that jade ring at the speed of a centrifuge when I clicked on the link to read the whole passage.
As I read your haikus, a story about your dog, and your journey through accepting deafness. The same way I mentioned “rabbit-holing” in a different comment, it offered a thumbtack to place on the board. Another embarrassment, explaining that my hearing doesn’t just suck… there’s a little more to it and it’s affecting the brain to overarching game of life.
I saw your depression, trauma, longing, wistful glances into open space, and your crave for tangibility just as I was looking away from all that. Call it denial but the grieving process really does come in stages, a process that takes time. I am deceptively successful at hiding all that afflicts me, and even in my writing I was hiding in prose as I offered this inkblot like cover and false image, I really just won’t bring it up so how would you know? Even I can admit my emotional distance acts more like dissonance and I sent that message into the atmosphere a long time ago, pinged it, let it bounce, and the message was received already too late by the ones I wanted to hear it on time.
Though I can admit I am prime in accountability, and suppose my writing is how I have and continue to earn it in depth and nuance to every. single. aspect. of my life. I’m becoming more honest in my writing. My honesty and vulnerability is no longer only kempt in secluded beautiful journals and scribbled with an array of my favorite pens and shades of those favorite pen models. I can be honest and vulnerable on keys too, save the draft, and upload the copy. You’ve helped me to realize that, Mike.
So for all my bullshit and insightful ramblings I leave you with my 100 days Chinese Blessing Proverb (I got ancestry on every livable content, I really try to vitalize all of them for my flighty perspective and arduous perception).
“When you gaze upon your own shadow; you are illuminated.”
It’s funny for all my vision problems and problem with problems of my problems and everyone’s and every other thing’s problems I try to take care of, solve, and nourish – I think the ancestors were spot on with that one.
You shine very bright, Mike.
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Just finished off my left over half of a doublestack greasy burger with lots of bacon and hot peppers (green and red, success!!) and reminded me I forgot to talk about the flea market experience. I worked in one in San Diego County where I’m from and also near the border in Arizona. Somehow both the pinwheel chicharrones stand. I started out serving plates, then once I got comfortable with returning change (thank the international calculator stand for that) I was at the register, until I started learning how to fry them and could be trusted with the stand myself. Not too shabby for a 1st grader. I always got a shift plate full and towering, even if I could eat a whole 5 gallon bag at the time, I realized it was much better I didn’t in that soul wrenching dry, desert heat.
I loved going out to the “roach coaches” and different stalls or people cooking in the parking lot on whatever.. My most favorite though was the Torta stand where they would bless me with Barbacoa AND Lengua, so I never had to make the choice. It became very popular so when they were running out and the market was about to close and I needed dinner, they’d re-cook off carnitas in the al plastor juice and dunk my Torta because I like my sandwiches dipped and extra juicy with jus on the side too. A sweet memory.
They had a lot of variety other that too. Squid/broccoli/pumpkin tempura, shrimp green chili fluatas, the dankest loco moco, dominican pasteles, wagyu and octopus yakisoba (creative, right? for a flea market at that), my wonderful sweet cheese empanadas and they’d give me the back of the house orange marmalade ones, many sneaked deep fried snickers and dark chocolate twix, granita and spumoni stand with handmade cones to order, stroopwaffles and black licorice next door, latkes/knish/pea flour cakes stand hidden behind that, arepas, caldo de res, ceviche and leche de tigre I treated like shots of red bull (I didn’t know the other connotations, whateva, give me the juice).
There was even one guy who’d go out to some secret spring he found. He wouldn’t reveal the location and he’d filter it himself with this technique. He was a chemist that was bored with the field and focused on the water. It was sweet, so fresh and so clean clean; I’ve never had any other water like that. Not even voss of fiji could compete. Just what I needed when we the heat index was crashing into the 120’s. I felt so healthy after a small paper cone cup. I think he was a warlock, looking back.
My taste buds are invigorated thinking about the cornucopia of just how much there was to choose wandering the makeshift halls covered in tarps and ice-water soaked sheets radiating cool mists into the air and hum of many many many fans on. A mere sample of all I discovered in my serene chaos working at the markets while my mom sold her makeup. (much better than the door-to-door days in our little cracked concrete jungle at home.)
Thought I’d share 🥰
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Wow, Mike what a comprehensive story about your path to deafness. I can’t imagine. I guess that is one of the things that happens when you live in a dysfunctional family. Lack of healthcare for younguns and teenagers. My parents only took me to the hospital when they couldn’t stop the bleeding themselves.
I love the photograph you shared. You two were rocking and looked very cool. I am sure that you sounded good as well. I am so sorry that you lost such a precious love and ability to use that gift as well.
I can not imagine what it would be like to lose any sense but what a life changing experience. At least with the meningitis you were able to correct some of the loss with hearing aids but once you lay in bed with a high fever for seven days with a strep infection that attacked your ears (and I am guessing that they did nothing to help you) that finished the hearing that remained.
You have so many reasons to be angry and I know what that feels like, Mike. I am so grateful that you shared this post with me because I had never read it. Now I know all about your travels down the road to deafness. Such a sad story and a loss, I can not even begin to imagine.
Thank you for sharing about your story in such detail. I knew you liked music and enjoyed it before you became completely deaf but I did not know that you were such a gifted musician. It almost sounds like you played via a gift of being able to hear a song a couple of times on the radio and then play it. I knew a couple of gifted musicians when I was a teenager and they played by ear. One could play any instrument including the flute which I love.
I am grateful that you have some good memories of your teenage years, Mike. I have known you for a while now and I know sometimes good memories make us sad because it makes us think of what we could have had. When you get my age you forget those things and focus on what you can do today. Today, I am grateful every day I feel good physically. I suppose I get comfort from my faith because I don’t understand why my parents could not have done better.
Keep using your gift of poetry and storytelling to treat the world to your work my friend. Sending love, hugs and blessings always your way.
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Thanks, Joni. Yes, it’s been an adventure, for sure. I should point out the hearing aids never helped at all. My hearing loss is an auditory processing problem, so amplification didn’t improve my ability to hear. The aids were just wildly expensive knick-knacks, sadly. Implant surgery won’t help, either. I was thoroughly tested at Denver Ear Associates in 2016 and was told they couldn’t say if an implant would improve my situation due to the fact I’d been deaf for more than 30 years at that time; it was a $25,000 risk I wasn’t willing to take when they said, “What do you have to lose?” So, amplification never helped, surgery is a no-go, and my deafness–while not complete (I can still hear some sounds, but speech is now impossible to understand)–continues to worsen. I’ll be totally deaf at some point in the near future.
Sometimes I feel like deafness is the least of my problems. I live alone and spend all my time alone, so it rarely comes into play other than when I think about music (wanting to listen/play). Being totally reclusive has its benefits as I don’t interact with people face-to-face unless I absolutely must. Still, I miss basic things normal folks take for granted: bird song, crickets, breezes in the elm leaves, etc. And, of course, playing my guitars.
Thanks for reading, my friend. Your kindness and compassion are invaluable to me. 😊
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Mike, I never knew that even implant surgery would not work but I did think it probably wouldn’t. Sounds like it was the first illness that completely took your hearing. Scott and I were reading your work together and he said it is one thing to experience sound and then to lose it and I agree with that I can’t even imagine.
I wanted you to know, however, that there is one person at least that doesn’t take the sound of the birds or the wind blowing in the trees or even watching and listening to the leaves, falling off of the trees for granted. When I was a younger girl, I used to pray every day and thank God individually for each of my senses as even then I realized what a gift it was, especially to be able to see here and touch those you love. Perhaps it was being a nurse, and watching people lose those abilities some suddenly, like a man who came in to the ER who had been behind a cement truck and the structure that comes out that the cement comes down, swung open when he was behind it and blew that wet cement into his eyes. He was a young man with three children and a wife and his eyes were completely scarred over and solid white. By the time they got all the impacted concrete out of his eyes. But even before, then, I prayed and thanked God for my senses.
I don’t go out a lot anymore either and I don’t mind being around the nature and it brings me great joy but I have someone to share that with. I would have a very hard time being by myself all the time I like to laugh and one of the biggest reasons why I enjoy being at home is because I am around nature and I do hear sounds, and the wrestling of the leaves are one of those sounds that I love. I can’t imagine what it has been like for you Mike and I’m sorry for everyone who suffers from a loss of any of their senses. I can’t imagine the courage it takes to go anywhere or do anything when you can’t hear or see. I also always think of the soldiers that have lost limbs, I have been to events to celebrate soldiers who have lost as many as three of their limbs young man in their early 20s. I try to imagine what other people go through when I know people, and even if I don’t know them, and it has made me extremely sensitive. I think many people don’t think about what doesn’t affect them directly, but I am never going to be one of those people. I am grateful for your gift and I enjoy reading your work immensely and have such respect for your honesty and I say that as another person who knows it makes you vulnerable to others.
I send you our love, prayers, and appreciation for your friendship. ❤️🤗❤️
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Joni, I absolutely cherish the kindness, empathy and compassion you and Scott so freely express. I’m fortunate to call the two of you my friends. You folks are the best. Sincere thanks, as always. 😊
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