I recently came across an essay that I wrote a while ago. It was for a required freshman English composition class. I forget what the prompt was, but I thought it was interesting.
I’d like to note that I found this essay with the disclaimer, “I wrote this while watching Pieces of April,” so the prose isn’t super awesome.
Nov. 28th, 2006
I am deaf and I know American Sign Language, but I was mainstreamed and can interact freely within the hearing or deaf world. Nonetheless, my fundamental difference from hearing people allows me to observe their culture. Therefore, I have been acting as an anthropologist of the hearing culture almost from birth. In this paper, my central observation revolves around music.
When a hearing person asks me about my deafness, he or she invariably asks me, “Do you enjoy music at all?” I call this The Big Question. If I answered it truthfully, I would tell the hearing person that I do not listen to music because I never learned how to listen to music. An astute hearing friend of mine once compared music to a second language that hearing people learn automatically at an early age. It must be true because I am not “fluent” in the language of music. I like to watch music videos and listen to the music that they play in church, but I simply do not care about music in general because it does not make any sense to me. As an illustration of how foreign music is to me, my friend once played Madonna, then death metal – and I could not distinguish between the two.
Faced with The Big Question, however, I do not say any of this. I usually lie and simply say, “I can enjoy music sometimes.” When I was younger, I told the truth and said, “No, I don’t listen to music very much.” When I told the truth, hearing people became shocked. “Well, what do you do instead of listen to music?” Most hearing folks cannot imagine somebody exists out there who does not listen music. I have learned that music is akin to religion or politics in many respects. I have learned not to say that I do not like music because, when I say this to a hearing person, he usually reacts viciously, as if I were insulting his very existence. I honestly do not understand this explosion because music is just a bunch of sounds to me. However, if I say, “Music is just a bunch of sounds to me,” the hearing person becomes even angrier.
Another aspect of the hearing fixation on music is the fact that they think that I am somehow deprived since I cannot listen to music. Now, I can understand why Beethoven’s story is sad – he devoted his life to composing music, but he went deaf. I will never understand why music occupies such a central position in hearing people’s lives, but I can respect the importance that hearing people attach to music. Still, the fact remains: my life is not any less complete because I do not listen to music. To expect me to enjoy music is like expecting somebody who cannot see any colors at all to enjoy a Rothko painting. I often cannot distinguish the singing from the instrument, I did not know that music has “color” until eleventh grade, and it was only last week that I learned that many hearing people associate certain songs with specific events.
Honestly, there is so much more to life than music. Movies, people, books, paintings, writing, making books, falling in love, and so on and so on. Why does music occupy such a central position in hearing people’s lives? As far as I am concerned, hearing people’s attitudes towards music are as fascinating to me as the African Bushmen’s attitudes towards Hamlet are to American anthropologists. Despite my best efforts, I worry that I will never get a straight answer about music because hearing people seem to operate on a central assumption: everybody listens to music, and those who do not listen to music are either crazy or hopelessly deprived. I hope I can open a dialogue despite my unorthodox views on the one religion that all hearing people seem to believe in.
Reading this four years later, it’s interesting to see where I am now compared with where I was then. I’ll focus here on my changed attitudes towards music.
I forget who the “astute hearing friend” was, but I would have to agree that music is almost like a different language. Growing up, I didn’t learn it, but I’d say that I understand it a lot better now than I did in the past.
I’d like to pause here and point out that people did try to teach the “language” of music to me while I was growing up. I took lessons for a few different instruments and studied music theory/history. It simply never stuck. In college, others gently tried to nudge me into the world of music. I’d hear stuff that I liked sometimes, but it wasn’t really on top of my list of things to do: there were so many other things I could be doing instead of listening to music!
One major reason that I didn’t actively listen to music to was that I unconsciously did not trust my own taste in music. Somewhere along the way, I got this idea in my head that deaf people couldn’t be decent music critics. This meant that, when I was 12, it was totally logical that boy bands were the best thing ever to happen to music because all of my hearing friends liked them. Therefore, because I didn’t like *NSYNC or Backstreet Boys, that meant that I was missing something profound in the songs. Later on, when I went to college, I still believed this deep down inside. So I was wary of exploring music myself because… what if a hearing person somewhere informed me that I was listening to music that I’d thought was good but was actually totally shitty??? Totally irrational thinking, but it persisted despite the fact that people constantly assured me that everybody has a different taste in music.
Then I went through a phase: I didn’t wear my cochlear implant at all for an entire year. I didn’t wear it to work, I didn’t wear it to school, I didn’t wear it at home, I didn’t wear it to hang out with my friends. I even managed to avoid wearing it around my family. But you know what? As strange as it may seem, I actually gained a newfound appreciation for music during that time.
Part of the reason is because I began going to a local nightclub where the DJ played awesome thuddy industrial music. Since I dance poorly and I was under 21 at the time, I usually ended up sitting in the corner next to the speakers and ‘listening’ to the music by leaning against the wall. Since the wall was made of conductive material, I could feel the vibrations. Eventually, I realized that I also enjoyed ‘listening’ to music at home in the same manner by placing my hands on my laptop speakers while blasting music at full volume. (Looking back at my play history, it appears that I mostly listened to Lady Gaga, Less than Jake, and MGMT – in that order. Oh god, my neighbors must have really hated me. In my defense, I refrained from playing music past 7pm or before noon.)
At some point, I said to myself, “I think I’ll wear my cochlear implant again.” So I took it out of the shoebox in my closet and put it on. After I listened to music with my cochlear implant in, I realized that I like listening to music with my cochlear implant. I subsequently got “headphones” for my cochlear implant and now I listen to 99% of music that way, although I still do enjoy taking off my cochlear implant and ‘listening’ to thuddy music via the vibrations.
-~-~-~
Remember my first post about music? I said, “I think I will try to listen to EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD.” It’s led to interesting results: the more music I listen to, the more accepting I am of themes that I previously didn’t like. An example would be high-pitched sounds: I can enjoy chiptunes and harsh guitar riffs now. In fact, one of my new favorite genres is Scandinavian metal, especially the band Týr. Also, my constant quest for new material has helped to stem a problem that I’ve had in the past: sometimes songs or bands get stale after listening to them over and over again. If I have a million different types of music to listen to, this doesn’t happen as easily.
To sum up where I am now compared to where I was in 2006: I’ve finally taken it to heart that everybody has a different taste in music. My taste is no more or less valid than anybody else’s! Now I open up iTunes with the attitude that it’s okay if I like this song. Since I can now trust my own judgment in music, I’ve found that listening to music is actually not a bad way to spend my free time.
One Comment
you’re learning to speak music now? :)
in the way of full disclosure, i’m hearing, and i grew up, as you describe, knowing about music and so knowing it as my second language, and so i don’t share your experience.
that said, i relate to an aspect or two of it. it’s tough to describe or explain the social isolation with which i came to know music. i grew up in a very rural and very ISOLATED place where nobody ever performed music, where nobody i know ever played an instrument (and it was exceedingly rare for this to take place, from what i can tell), and where there was a very limited selection of music available by radio.
so the only music i knew from a very young age was country. by the early 90s, a kind of pop country was starting to take over, and so even the older virtuoso performances, storytelling, and other characteristics that form the appeal of country music for some were lost on me, as a little kid listening to music that was termed country only by a quirk of a kind of genre-legacy stamped on it as an influence. it was country, but it was late-pop Dolly Parton and Billy Ray Cyrus and Alan Jackson.
i was thoroughly uninterested.
but it was the only thing my mom, grandma, brother, sisters, cousins, or any public place ever played, to my knowledge, so i assumed i just didn’t care much. i really loved movie soundtracks, but i didn’t have exposure to these beyond movies themselves.
by late middle school, i came to know that pop music existed and listened to it, but it was a narrow range of whatever got radio play in the late 90s.
finally by high school, i was coming to be aware there were other kinds of music, and things i did like, but gosh, i found out late, and i’m still struggling to catch up. my musical vocabulary feels a little stunted even today, and i don’t really get or understand music as other people enjoy it, and i’m routinely completely unaware of entire genres, albums, bands, etc that people find essential.
maybe part of that is being unadventurous and hypersensitive to the emotional impact of music. idk.
but the point is, i wasn’t completely uninterested in music, as it turns out, but hadn’t found anything i liked for a REALLY long time, and there are tons of things to me that still seem novel and without context. but i guess i’m like that about a lot of things.
so, back to talking about you. your earlier text is interesting because i definitely detect a bit of anger about the whole situation. at least i don’t think i’m imagining it. maybe you were defensive or reacting to some particular recent situations going on. it’s awesome to see the difference a few years have made. i guess i don’t have a horse in this race (it doesn’t personally affect me whether you like music or not), but i’m happy that you enjoy it this much now. it’s like an adventure!