My brain keeps shouting at me.
It needn’t. I can hear it perfectly well. In fact, I can now hear pretty much EVERYTHING close to perfectly and count myself lucky. All that wonderful, adaptive, refined technology now nestling in and behind my ears is doing its level best to bring me pitch perfect sound with crystal clarity, boosting sound where I need it boosting and working out when I am in a crowded restaurant it needs to turn itself up. I can tell it to ignore background in the car and it listens. I can hold conversations on the move again. I can tell it to hunt for sound close by and in front of me that is in fact the human voice – and it does it! I can hear my washing machine half a building away (ok, not socially useful but I hope you get the point). Phone calls pop up in my ears – a bit disconcerting to anyone who hasn’t worked out I am in fact not talking to myself while holding a phone but so much better than blaring out ‘HELLO – I’M ON THE PHONE’ like a real-life version of the comic who did that (demonstrating with cruel precision that all good comedy is based on real life). Wonderful.
My brain’s having none of it.
‘THERE’S SOMETHING IN YOUR EARS SO WE CAN’T HEAR VERY WELL’ it shouts. Yeah, that would be the hearing aid speakers. The kit that makes it possible for us to join a family meal in a noisy restaurant and not rapidly resemble the barmy recluse ignoring everyone in the corner. Some family members might ruefully suggest the barmy recluse joining IN the conversations now isn’t actually much of an improvement, but I can hear them perfectly well and disagree. Quietly. But no, the idiot in the middle of my head insists my ears are blocked. Even though the world is now not muffled.
‘BUT THE WORLD’S GONE ALL TINNY!’ it bleats. No, it hasn’t. The high frequency sounds you’ve been forgetting these past few years, without a shred of guilt by the way, are now getting through at levels even you should have to acknowledge. So although it may sound like I am suddenly placed in a TV studio with headphones and can hear my eerie, disembodied voice coming out of…somewhere, what I am in fact hearing is how the world used to sound when my ears worked better. And idiot central hadn’t gotten used to the cotton-wool soundscape around it.
‘WHY HAS IT ALL GONE QUIET AGAIN?’ it wails, when I take my hearing aids out. Because under 2 weeks ago that was normal. And you are in fact getting used to hearing the world again.
I am winning. You can hear it. And it sounds great.
Alan Taman
