Coming to My Senses: One Woman's Cochlear Implant Journey

Music

110 Music Ihad expected to like bird voices and was surprised to discover they could irritate me. Meanwhile, family, friends, and total strangers expected, and still expect, me to be thrilled to hear music and are surprised when I tell them I don’t hear music very well with the cochlear implant. When discussing the implant with the doctor before surgery, I was asked which of two types of implants I wanted to get. He described one as being geared toward clearer reception of music and the other as being better for those who want to hear human speech. I didn’t hesitate to ask for the latter. Hearing people more fully, clearly, and quickly—my family especially—was at the top of the list of what I wanted. That the makers of cochlear implants address the fact that different parts of the brain are attuned to picking up and hearing different sounds, or so-called languages (researchers and medical professionals in the field of otolaryngology speak of the “Language of Music” ) was news to me. Perhaps someday there will be a cochlear implant with an app attuned specifically to Bird Language! This goes to show how very complex the act of hearing is, and what I’m sharing here with you is only a small portion of what waits to be discovered in the realm of hearing. For those who want to know more about the cochlear implant and music, go to Jeanne Coburn’s chapter in the back of this book, as she speaks of this briefly there. I had few expectations about being able to hear music when I got the implant. In addition, it had always irked me, when I Music 111 wore a hearing aid, that hearing people assumed I couldn’t hear music. Before I got The Brick I often, as a child, crawled down under the grand piano in our living room when my mother was playing and put my feet up on the black underbelly of the instrument. I loved listening to it that way, and I would often, when no one else was in the house, sit before the keys, close my eyes, and hope hard that when I opened them I would be able to play like my mother. Though I did learn “Chopsticks,” I couldn’t get beyond that—my hands did not flow up and down the keyboard the way hers did. Then, at age fifty, I decided it was time to try to turn my piano-playing dream into a reality, and I took lessons with a vivacious Russian lady. Elena, and later Eveline, another brilliant teacher, tried, like the speech therapist I’d had as a child, to help me hear piano music by way of my other senses. They spoke of the notes as colors, from primary to secondary, from light to dark, and emphasized how the touch of the fingers could, and should, vary, from assertive and fast, to modest and slow, to merely suggestive, depending on what I was playing. Considering these different pressures helped me to hear each piece in my head as I learned to read music a bit. I knew I had to be able to hear the music in this way—within myself—in the same way that I have to hear written words in books before I can put them together in sentences and understand their meaning. Both piano teachers would make notations on the piece to help me remember the different parts and how they fit together. (“Light to dark—soft to heavy,” and so on.) For a while I dared hope my fingers could learn to know when I hit the wrong keys, since I couldn’t hear those mistakes with my hearing aid, Likewise I dared to hope I could remember not only the music but my teacher’s notations. I was 112 Coming to My Senses inspired too by the example of the Scottish deaf percussionist , Evelyn Glennie. I love the thought of deaf people making music! However, though I may come back to the piano at some point now that I have a cochlear implant, my work with deaf children at that time kept me from regular practice at the piano, and I finally stopped altogether when I realized that pursuing music in this way was more drudgery than pleasure. Coming to this realization helped me begin to make peace with...