

Losing Music - bdr
http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/losing-music/

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varunsrin
"But what I’ve lost isn’t just a set of structured sounds, but the world those
sounds create, a world you can live inside: Bach on a snowy afternoon, hard
blues on a long night’s drive, the background mood in a restaurant or at a
party (or, increasingly, any public space not yet colonized by ESPN on
flatscreen TVs). Music is color. When you’re young you’re the hero of a movie,
and the Heifetz you play in your car or the Velvet Underground you first try
out sex to isn’t just background, it’s location and weather. You feel it on
your skin."

This was one of the most heart-wrenching things I've read, and makes me really
thankful for what I have, and if I'm honest, fearful for what I will
eventually lose.

Music is woven into the happiest and saddest moments of my life, and my most
important memories have sounds attached to them - from dancing barefoot on a
remote beach in Goa with people I've since come to think of as family,
watching the sun rise to the growls of a Roland TB-303, to coping with the
loss of someone dear by listening to Radiohead's 'Everything in its Right
Place' on repeat for hours on end, curled up on my bedroom floor.

I keep a diary - not of places I've visited or things I've eaten, but of
moments like these where I've had a powerful connection with people and music.
It's an incredibly emotional experience to go back and read through it all -
I'm glad I have it, because otherwise I'd start losing bits and pieces of
these memories, and with it, my past.

I'm incredibly fortunate in that I've been given the opportunity to work on
solving this problem, a problem that I'll undoubtedly face as my tinnitus gets
worse and a problem that my co-founder has faced for almost two decades. The
next time we're having a shitty day at work, we'll only have to read this to
keep on going.

~~~
_mulder_
Music is like your own personal life-diary that you don't even have to write.
Music is such an important trigger for memories (along with smell which is
even more powerful but less controllable) but the majority of people seem to
take it for granted and make no effort to preserve these memories. It's
staggering how hearing a song you haven't heard for 20+ years can immediately
put you right back to being a kid, or some other nostalgic memory, even if
only fleetingly.

Perhaps I'm overly sensitive to having my music memories overwritten; I've
been known to leave clubs or bars or turn off the radio if a particularly
personal song is playing because I don't want my original memory to be
overwritten. My friends don't understand, to them music is just music and
something to dance or shout along to. A handful of songs provoke extremely
potent memories in my mind of when I was a kid. Hearing these songs is the
only channel I have to experiencing that time of my life. The problem, and
half of the beauty of it, is that I don't actually know what the songs are
until I hear them. I keep intending to compile a list of which songs trigger
these memories.

Infact I, along with most people I imagine, have a whole library of songs that
read as mile-posts dotting throughout their life. Perhaps a particular song
triggers a memory of a summer holiday, or high school party, or road-trips as
a kid, or even just what you listened to whilst coding your first successful
project.

The single worst thing that can happen to music is for it to be used for
advertising. What may be a catch song to a marketer could be someone's last
memory of a dead parent or friend. I commend artists, especially Radiohead,
who vehemently forbid their music to be used for anything after it's been
released. Thom Yorke (I think) did a great interview on the subject but I
can't find it, annoyingly.

~~~
Kronopath
_I 've heard that song too many times,_

 _I 'll admit it._

 _It 's not that I'm sick of it,_

 _I just fear for its life._

 _The tunes get a little bit stronger_

 _Every time they are sung,_

 _Or a little more threadbare._

 _Slowly undone._

— The Fugitives, _Slowly Undone_

[https://soundcloud.com/light-organ/the-fugitives-slowly-
undo...](https://soundcloud.com/light-organ/the-fugitives-slowly-undone)

------
grownseed
This is a very touching article and it reminds me all too well that I most
likely don't have that long before I go full-on deaf again.

Now, ironically enough, being deaf played a huge role in my appreciation for
music. My condition led me to being completely deaf by the age of five, and a
few years and a bunch of surgeries later, I had recovered a good part of my
hearing (which I'll always be thankful for).

Coming from a family where music had little to no presence, it really
surprised my parents that I would develop a strong sense for music. I picked
up piano as a kid and numerous other instruments in more recent years.

I couldn't live without music, and I'm not saying this lightly, but being deaf
is not the end of it.

I would dare say that there's a dimension to music, or more generally speaking
sound, that cannot be heard but can very much be felt. I've spent a great deal
of time (and still do) feeling music/sound through my skin and my body, and
maybe because losing a sense sharpens others, or maybe simply thanks to focus,
I discovered and appreciated a completely different quality to sound.

It might be easier to say because I've already gone through it, but I'm not
particularly worried about losing my ears again. Sure it can be limiting at
times, but being deaf comes with an interesting world of its own, one which I
find myself longing for on occasions, as curious as it might sound.

------
yourad_io
Very powerful text. Makes me contemplate everything I have, everything I am
sure to lose :')

~~~
rosser
I came here to say something very much along those lines: treasure the moments
and the things you have while you have them, but don't cling, because you will
lose them. All of them. Everything.

------
wazoox
"We’d be driving along and yukking it up and I’d pop in Congolese rhumba icon
Papa Wembe’s “Awa Y’okeyi” and everyone would be patient for a couple of
beats. Then somebody would break in with “Alright, what the hell is this?” and
derision would ensue. The CD would come out and some indie thing slid into its
place."

Hum, so his friends are extremely limited in their ability to understand
anything not desperately mainstream. That's more or less the definition of
limited cultural openness and poor taste for me.

~~~
jrkatz
In dismissing his friends' taste he is guilty of the same. It's never fun to
be the only person in a group who likes some music, but it happens and it
doesn't make the minority any better or more open than the majority. It's just
different preferences.

~~~
Dylan16807
He doesn't really dismiss their tastes as much as provide an idea of why they
were rejecting the disc he put in.

It's not like he put in something musically strange; it's a piano and a guy
singing. A reaction of "what the hell is this, make it stop" is not very
reasonable.

------
iceron
This is wonderfully written. It reminds me of a condition called visual snow
[1] where sufferers develop continuous TV-static-like tiny flickering dots in
their entire visual field. Makes you appreciate the things you have.

[1]
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/head.12378/full](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/head.12378/full)

------
gtani
This was a touching post. I've thought a lot about this in the context of my
own musical practice and through an acquaintance who's been going through
rounds of neurologists, MRIs and what not to get at those symptoms.

Part of musical practice is playing digital piano with the sound off, or
playing a solidbody guitar unplugged and with earplugs in so i can't hear
anything. The point being you have to extrapolate what sounds would be
produced and later resolve what you expected and what you actually perceive.

Also, this reminds me of musicians like David N. Baker (jazz trombone), Evelyn
Glennie (percussion) and Leon Fleisher (classical piano), who had different
challenges but learned new instruments or kept playing when they were
essentially unable to play their primary instruments. There's others: Django
Reinhardt is famous, of course, but Michel Petrucciani not so much

------
cratermoon
I wonder why his doctors haven't recommended surgery. "surgical procedures are
performed on the endolymphatic sac to decompress it."

[http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/balance/pages/meniere.aspx#5](http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/balance/pages/meniere.aspx#5)

~~~
Elisa
Surgery can be used (as mentioned above) as a last resort to relieve
persistent vertigo and dizziness, but it's very risky in terms of preserving
remaining hearing, can cause total deafness.

~~~
cratermoon
Yes indeed. I happen to only know about the surgery because the first American
to go to space in the Mercury program, Alan Shepard, was diagnosed with
Ménière's in 1964, after his historic first flight, and was grounded. He opted
for what was then _very_ experimental surgery. For him it was successful and
he went on to command Apollo 14, the 3rd moon landing.

------
johnsteve
Music is a very important part of human life. But in recent times, you rarely
get to listen to good music, which is sad!

~~~
robotresearcher
The good music didn't go away. We just keep adding to it.

