On my Deafness

On My Deafness

 

Oh! The whole point I had in mind for remarking on my telling brother in law tom about the drama of insisting I am getting the Boy flute lessons is that Tom then insisted I listen to the Rolling Stone's "Ruby Tuesday" immediately. He has this feckless bratty sense of urgency sometimes and I was writing an email to you all yesterday but I wrapped it up and listened to Ruby Tuesday. Tom expressed disappointment that my phone had such poor speakers and lacked a phone jack to plug it into his master stereo speakers, which is quite amazing and gained racoon style from dumpster diving.

I will bring Nathan-gift my portable boom box to listen to this song with Tom when we put in the new alternator today. Tom wanted me to hear the flute part of Ruby Tuesday, and I was shocked because this is a popular well-known song I've heard many times my whole life, but I never really acknowledged the flute.

I have it LOUD and on repeat as I dance my chares, adoring Ama with my songs. I do hear the flute, yes, and I will share it with the Boy later, but I really hear ONLY the cello.

In the Name of Jillian who is God, so if the cello forever blessed in my ears.

And that's fine.

But I remember my grandpa, the one who loved me so closely because we both played guitar, and gave me Angela, my guitar, when he passed, said he went deaf in such a way that he could hear low tones fine but high tones irritated his ears. He was into old-school country music, which he told me was the ONLY real music. Rock and roll with drums and electric guitar was not music. I patiently and meekly listened and never disputed him. I adore my grandpa so much! So he favored Ernest Tub, an old school country singer with a deep booming bass voice.

Lately, I notice my music prefers the same: the bass. I thought it was Jillian who taught me to pick out the bass first. And maybe that is true. But I like music with thick drums and thrumming overwhelming bass. I guess I always did. They might be giants John Linnel has nazel nerd voice. But as for both "In the Meantime" by Spacehog, and "Possum Kingdom" by the Toadies, my highschool staples, these are songs built around and based on an ingenius bass lick. Muse too I think begins with the bass. How a song begins, its inception and conception, determine also its limit and extend.

The Beatles, Paul, said he wrote all songs on acoustic guitar first. Me too. I can't get electric. I LOVE the riffs of electric music. Always did. That killer little riff in Jethro Tull's Aqualung. So SMALL yet inexhaustible. An eternal MOTIV. The same is Beethoven's fifth tattoo, a symphony lending it quite well to heavy metal renditions.

I hear the bass now. I hear the tinkling less. The flutes less.

Now Mom and (biological) Dad are both nearly completely deaf. This is my blessing too. Like Beethoven and Milton and Homer, I get to lose the external form of the sense so as to internalize and intensify beyond all belief. I am very very VERY sensitive to rhythms and repetitions. To the point of EXTREME MIGRAINE if the rhythm is off. This pet peeve and hypersensitivity is also my superpower. What is evil but infant good? And the best editors of all time are the most irritable.

Old age is a GREAT dropping off of the sense to prepare to leave this limited husk. The slow decay of the body is beautiful. Death is beautiful. This is wonderful!