The Deaf Way II Anthology: A Literary Collection by Deaf and Hard of Hearing Writers

A Letter to C. F.

Pamela Wright-Meinhardt 139 A Letter to C. F. IF YOU ASK a ballerina, a watercolorist, a violinist, a writer, an actor on the stage, or any other artist where their craft comes from, they will often tell you they are just another medium for Art, on the same level as the paintbrush, pen or bow. Art swells up inside of them, in waves of crescendos and silences until bursting forth on the canvas with which they have been gifted. In short, Art starts in the heart and is meant to touch hearts. It is folly to think, then, that not being able to hear prevents a person from being inspired by sounds. The organ of the ear is a small compartment of a whole, not the whole of a person. Millions of nerves race through a body; what’s to say a few in the ear destroy a person’s ability to understand music? Or poetry? Or simply to have their hearts touched? And if the message is acoustic , is it always missed? Absolutely not. It is also absurd to say that being able to hear is always a blessing, and not being able to hear is not. God’s blessings come in many forms, and it would be sacrilegious to judge the forms in which these blessings come. One who cannot hear could easily be blessed more so than his hearing counterpart. According to Keats: “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; I took a Shakespeare class one semester. On the first day, the professor, a grizzly old man who had been teaching at the university level since he was 23, announced to the class that he pitied deaf people. In his lecture, he explained that deaf people missed so much of the beauty of language, especially the spoken magic of the dramatic voice. I calmly sat through class and then wrote him a letter in response. C. F. and I eventually reached a level of sincere and mutual respect. Gallaudet Book 5/1/02, 9:56 AM 139 140 Pamela Wright-Meinhardt Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:” A person who cannot hear can easily have a lifelong love affair with words. They can sigh to Byron’s languid sensuality or Whitman’s a nerve-jarring barbaric yawps, to Ginsberg’s howling staccato, or the lyrical swinging of Ferlinghetti’s perpetual wait for wonder. They can internalize the passions of the gods and complexities of human nature constrained into a single line of Shakespeare. They can, if they choose, move away from the canon of literature. They can have a hundred million miracles! With a little bit of luck they can have their Jellicle hearts climb every mountain, dance all night at the ballet, in their corner of the sky with Rodgers and Hammerstein, or Lerner and Loewe! Oh, not to forget Andrew Lloyd Webber, or Stephen Schwartz, and many others! S’wonderful, s’marvelous, isn’t it? How do they do it? Fools give you reasons, but wise men never try. But what about music? What about the tinkling of a harp, the whine of a flute, the rolling of a cello, or the three-dimensionality of a symphony? Music, though elusive to those who cannot hear, can be loved. This love can run into anguishing depths, much like Galileo loving his distant and mysterious stars. For one who cannot hear, music becomes a persistent child, inching his way into a life until the soul cannot exist without him. Granted, there are times that not being able to hear is a sadness indeed; and beauty passes by unaware. However, it is sadder that in this life there are many who hear but do not listen, those who look but do not see, and those hearts that contain vast potential for love and brotherhood, but remain closed and brittle with cold or hatred. Is lack of hearing then a handicap if one who cannot hear can listen, feel, understand, and love? Gallaudet Book 5/1/02, 9:56 AM 140 Pamela Wright-Meinhardt 141 Some of us who cannot hear have the gift, or curse, bestowed upon us by God and Fate. . . . This is the ability to understand sounds, music, and poetry without actually hearing them. We embrace this anomaly, this strangeness inside of ourselves. It swells...