A New Start To Things

The last few weeks have marked a fresh start for my life. I recently got my drivers license, I've started paying more attention in school, and I even started this blog. Oh yeah, and I suddenly lost the ability to hear. Gone.

I have had problems hearing out of my left ear for months now, but the right ear finally decided it was time to give out on me the night of Thanksgiving.

I woke up the next morning, and it was the quietest day of my life.

I still have the ability to tell when sounds are present; I feel vibrations, and with the help of the lower powered hearing aid that was already being used in my left ear, I can distinguish conversation with the help of my attempts at lipreading. [Although I do often happen to misread. There is no awkwardness like thinking someone is telling you something they're not] But music seems to be just, missing.

Playing music was always my escape. There used to be nothing I would rather do than sit alone in a quiet room and strum a few chords on my guitar, and maybe sing a few lyrics. Some Bob Dylan, perhaps?

But all of that has changed now. When I play a chord, the melodies that used to bely the simple notes, the gentle cacophony of a slightly detuned string, the sound of fingers sliding across the wooden frets, all seem to have faded. There is sound in the notes, but there is little harmony left to me.

This is not to say, however, that this will stop me.

Music is as it always was, and I know that when I play a chord, those notes still exist. From the clean overtones of a solid note to the gentle reverberations and rattling of the loose peg in the tuning keys, the sound is all still there. I just have to look harder, and pay a little more attention.

Hopefully I won't lose any potential readers this blog may ever have by doing this, but I am going to cite one of the most annoying and over-repeated phrases in television history, as it summarizes my thoughts quite perfectly.

Maybe that guy from "Lost" was on to something when he said, "Dont tell me what I can't do".

I will still lead a musical life.

I will still sing, perform, laugh, and dance to songs, even when I can't quite hear them.

I will still live the life I had always planned to.

 And nothing will stand in my way.

(SIDE NOTE)

I realized after I wrote this that it sounded way too inspirational and dramatic for my taste. I hate the whole overdramatized thing. So I promise in the future my posts will be a little less preachy and a little more upbeat. If you wanted to listen to a teenage boy whine, you could just watch "Dawson's Creek".

So here's my honest word. We'll have some more fun. And I'll make more jokes.