Fiction / D.A. Hosek

 

:: The Boy Who Loved Music ::

       There once was a boy who loved music. When he was four, his grand­fa­ther bought a piano for his fam­i­ly so the boy’s old­er broth­er, the grandfather’s favorite grand­child, could take lessons. The boy watched as the piano was unloaded and set up in the liv­ing room. One of the deliv­ery­men tapped a sim­ple melody out on the tre­ble keys of the piano and gave the boy’s moth­er a form to sign for the deliv­ery of the piano. The boy was in love.

       The boy’s old­er broth­er was enrolled in piano lessons. The boy was not. This was no deter­rent for a boy in love. He was a pre­co­cious child. He had taught him­self to read from Sesame Street and Dr Seuss. He could teach him­self to mas­ter this strange new device. His brother’s piano book had pic­tures show­ing how he should posi­tion his fin­gers over the keys and which keys cor­re­spond­ed to which dots on the staff. The first song in the book was enti­tled “Swing­ing” and was a sim­ple sequence of notes: C‑D-E-F-G-F-E-D‑C, repeat­ed end­less­ly. The boy played this song over and over until his parents—either out of respect for his ded­i­ca­tion to his muse or out of a desire to pro­tect their sanity—enrolled the boy in piano lessons along­side his old­er brother.

***

       My grand­moth­er wore hear­ing aids. I had always assumed she did this because of the ordi­nary decay of hear­ing in old age, but her hear­ing loss was the result of a con­di­tion called oto­scle­ro­sis. The bones of the mid­dle ear nor­mal­ly vibrate against each oth­er to trans­mit sound between the tym­pa­num and cochlea, but in a per­son with oto­scle­ro­sis, these bones become cal­ci­fied and trans­mit lit­tle or no sound as they become fused.

       Oto­scle­ro­sis is a hered­i­tary dis­ease. My uncle and one of his sons inher­it­ed it. My moth­er did not. The dis­ease, appar­ent­ly, can skip a gen­er­a­tion. I also have otosclerosis.

***

       The boy’s skill as a pianist grew quick­ly. When the kinder­garten teacher dis­cov­ered the boy could sight-read the songs she sang with her stu­dents, she proud­ly ced­ed the piano bench to him dur­ing music time.

       Music was a kalei­do­scop­ic expe­ri­ence for the boy. He expe­ri­enced notes as col­ors, tim­bres as shapes. Har­monies tick­led dif­fer­ent parts of the inside of his nose. He learned the con­nec­tions between the col­ors he heard and the keys on the piano and was able to hear some­thing once and play it per­fect­ly on the piano.

       He trans­formed this abil­i­ty into pop­u­lar­i­ty by play­ing the pop­u­lar songs of the late 70s for his class­mates’ enter­tain­ment, although he gen­er­al­ly viewed the music of the time with dis­dain. And some of their requests, like KISS or Don­na Sum­mers didn’t trans­late well to the piano. The boy’s broth­er, mean­while, lost inter­est in the piano and turned his atten­tion to base­ball. The grand­fa­ther paid for coach­ing until the broth­er lost inter­est in that as well.

       The boy want­ed des­per­ate­ly to write music, sit­ting at the piano try­ing to cre­ate his own com­po­si­tions. His junior high music teacher told him of a com­po­si­tion con­test and he spent weeks work­ing on his piece, going through a full pad of man­u­script paper before he final­ly had some­thing ready to per­form for his teacher and classmates.

       He sat at the piano and began play­ing his piece. His class­mates snick­ered. He glanced at his teacher and saw her frown­ing, but not because of his class­mates’ behav­ior. Her reac­tion was direct­ed at him. She told him to stop before he reached the end of the sec­ond 12 bars.

       “Is this a joke?” she asked.

       “What?”

       “Your song. It’s—”

       “It’s that song from the Arthur movie,” one of the boys in the class said.

       A girl in the class sang the open­ing line, “Once in your life you find her…” and the class burst out in open laugh­ter. The boy snatched his man­u­script pages from the paper, crum­pled them and threw them in the garbage, flee­ing into the hall­way. He locked him­self in a stall of the boys’ bath­room where he remained until half an hour after the school day ended.

       His broth­er learned of the boy’s humil­i­a­tion and mocked him for months afterwards.

***

       There was nev­er real­ly any indi­ca­tion when I was young of the time bomb in my ears wait­ing to erode my hear­ing. I could hear every­thing just fine. Bet­ter than fine, even. Cal­ci­um deposits were already form­ing on the sur­faces of the malleus incus and stapes, but they did not impact the func­tion­al­i­ty of the bones of the mid­dle ear.

***

       The boy went to col­lege, but to the sur­prise of his teach­ers, he chose to study elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois rather than music. The head of the music depart­ment at his high school told him he should apply for music pro­grams at Jul­liard or NYU or, at least, Northwestern.

       But the boy was real­is­tic about the prospects of a career in music. He had man­aged to get a gig play­ing piano with a Latin band that played out four times a week. They snuck him through the back doors of bars in Mex­i­can and Puer­to Rican neigh­bor­hoods with a claim that the boy was twen­ty-one and a promise that he wouldn’t drink any­thing stronger than Coke any­way. The trum­pet play­er occa­sion­al­ly slipped a lit­tle rum into the boy’s soda when no one was look­ing despite that promise. He could do the math and real­ized that even if he gigged every night and made triple what he did with the Latin band, he would still be liv­ing on a pover­ty income.

       But he was a boy who loved music, so in col­lege he joined a bar band start­ed by anoth­er stu­dent who heard him play­ing the piano in a col­lege prac­tice room. The boy scraped togeth­er a few hun­dred dol­lars to buy a used Roland Juno-106, ampli­fi­er and key­board stand. He liked that he could mod­i­fy the shapes of the notes from the key­board by adjust­ing the set­tings of the key­board, but if they played some­where that hap­pened to have a real piano, he always chose to play that in place of the Roland.

       He helped the band learn songs, writ­ing down chords and basslines for songs as quick­ly as he could lis­ten to them. One day, the gui­tar play­er showed up at rehearsal with a song he had writ­ten. He played the song accom­pa­nied only with his acoustic gui­tar and the boy could see all the holes in the song where the oth­er instru­ments would fit. He start­ed play­ing the miss­ing key­board parts on the sec­ond verse and direct­ed the bass play­er on what to add to the bot­tom end. The drum­mer joined in. On the sec­ond run-through, the gui­tar play­er switched to his tele­cast­er and the song trans­formed from idea to art. They all agreed that they would slip it in with their reper­toire of cov­ers at their next gig.

       After the show, sev­er­al peo­ple asked about the new song, want­i­ng to know who orig­i­nal­ly per­formed it. When they learned it was an orig­i­nal, they all said the band should record it, promis­ing to buy copies when they had them available.

       This was enough for the band mem­bers to decide to write more songs and record a four-song EP. The uni­ver­si­ty had a record­ing stu­dio but it was only avail­able to music majors. The drum­mer filed the paper­work with the reg­is­trar to change his major so they could book stu­dio time. The boy played his parts on the studio’s Stein­way grand piano, lux­u­ri­at­ing in how each chord felt in his body.

       They pooled their funds to have a com­pa­ny in St Louis man­u­fac­ture 500 CDs.

       “I hope this isn’t a big mis­take,” the boy said.

       “Hey, all we need to do is sell 60 CDs at shows to break even,” the gui­tar play­er answered.

       The first gig after the box with their new CDs arrived, it looked like the boy’s con­cerns were jus­ti­fied. They sold three CDs.

       The gui­tar play­er had a friend who DJed on WPGU and the friend added a cou­ple of the bands’ songs into his playlists. Their next gig, the bar was packed and they sold over a hun­dred CDs. The whole run of CDs was gone in a month.

       “We should make a whole album,” the drum­mer said at their next rehearsal. “You got any more songs?”

       “I’ve got a cou­ple half-fin­ished ideas,” the gui­tar play­er said. “We could work on those.”

       “I’ve got a few things we can try to build into songs,” the bass play­er says. He turns to the boy. “You got anything?”

       “Sor­ry, nope.”

       The boy was lying. He had writ­ten sev­er­al songs, but he was wary of shar­ing them with the oth­ers in the band out of fear that he had once again “writ­ten” some­one else’s song. His attempts at song­writ­ing were kept secret from everyone.

***

       My hear­ing loss in col­lege was some­thing that only became obvi­ous in ret­ro­spect. I always assumed that I had trou­ble hear­ing on the phone in my right ear because I had long hair that blocked the phone and the drum­mer was always to my right when I played gigs. I didn’t know that the cal­ci­fi­ca­tion was begin­ning to cause the bones to vibrate less, block the sound instead of trans­mit­ting it.

***

       The band record­ed their first full-length album at the begin­ning of the next semes­ter. They decid­ed to have a cou­ple thou­sand CDs man­u­fac­tured, a poten­tial­ly out­ra­geous risk. Again, they pooled their mon­ey, sup­ple­ment­ing the prof­its from the sale of their EP with funds embez­zled from the mon­ey their par­ents had des­ig­nat­ed for books (why buy text­books when they could be checked out from the library?). They ner­vous­ly await­ed the arrival of the box­es of CDs from the fac­to­ry and hand-deliv­ered a disc to the gui­tar player’s friend at WGPU as soon as they opened the first box.

       The lead track from the CD was on the radio when they drove back from the sta­tion. They sold a hun­dred copies at their next gig—every sin­gle one they had brought to the bar to sell between sets.

       “Maybe we should go on the road,” the gui­tar play­er said. “I’m sure we can expand beyond Cham­paign-Urbana, no problem.”

       The boy was reluc­tant to tour. He wor­ried he’d miss too much class. He wor­ried that the expens­es of trav­el­ing would over­whelm the income from sell­ing CDs and col­lect­ing the two-dol­lar cov­er charge in cities and towns where they were unknown. He wor­ried they’d end up fail­ing as both a band and as col­lege stu­dents. Yes, the gui­tar player’s friend had got­ten copies of their CDs out to oth­er col­lege sta­tions where it had been well-received, but just because they were get­ting air­play on oth­er col­lege sta­tions didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean peo­ple would come out to see them or buy their CD.

       The band mem­bers met with­out the boy. It was obvi­ous to them that the next step for the band was to do a tour across Illi­nois, Indi­ana and Mis­souri, maybe even Wis­con­sin and Michi­gan. If they boy wasn’t up for it, they could get some­one else to play key­boards. They all agreed that the boy was the best key­boardist around, but maybe they didn’t need the best key­board play­er, just some­one good enough. Maybe a new key­board play­er would con­tribute songs of his own. They qui­et­ly approached a friend of the drum­mer and audi­tioned him one Wednes­day morn­ing while the boy was in class. The boy learned about the tour and his replace­ment on the same day.

       The boy, ashamed at being dis­missed from the band, dropped out of per­form­ing music for years. The band went on to mod­est suc­cess, sign­ing a deal with A&M Records. A few of their songs chart­ed, their biggest hit reach­ing as high as #41 before fad­ing into obscu­ri­ty. Every time one of their songs came on the radio, the boy could hear the places where the music was lack­ing, things he would have sug­gest­ed that would have filled those gaps and make the songs bet­ter, but he kept his silence. He was the band’s Pete Best, the mem­ber who didn’t make the cut and any­thing he might say about them could only appear as bit­ter­ness and jealousy.

***

       I didn’t real­ize how much hear­ing I had lost until I casu­al­ly men­tioned to a girl­friend that I heard my pulse in my ear, some­thing I assumed every­one did. I was wrong. Starved of sen­so­ry input, the brain takes what it can get and ampli­fies that. In my case, since sounds weren’t con­duct­ed to the inner ear, my brain inten­si­fied the sig­nal from the blood flow in my head that didn’t need to be trans­mit­ted through the malleus, incus and stapes.

       Lat­er that year, talk­ing with my cousin, it became appar­ent what was going on, He had the same symp­toms before his ear surgery. His father, who nev­er had the surgery, still hears his pulse if he isn’t wear­ing his hear­ing aids.

       For years after col­lege, if I had health insur­ance, it was the kind with a deductible high enough to dis­cour­age actu­al­ly seek­ing any sort of treat­ment. Only in my ear­ly thir­ties did I final­ly get insur­ance that made hav­ing my oto­scle­ro­sis treat­ed prac­ti­cal. I had a stapedec­to­my, first in my right ear and then in my left and my hear­ing was restored to nor­mal. Sud­den­ly I could hear nois­es I had for­got­ten existed.

***

       The boy’s exile from music end­ed in his ear­ly thir­ties. When he was at Mass, the usu­al piano play­er was absent and a woman was strug­gling to lead the con­gre­ga­tion a cap­pel­la. She grate­ful­ly accept­ed his offer to accom­pa­ny and the his fin­gers demon­strat­ed the dex­ter­i­ty they always had as he impro­vised an accom­pa­ni­ment from the song­book con­tain­ing only the melody line.

       This one-time instance turned into a side job replac­ing the parish’s music direc­tor who had fall­en ill and was unable to con­tin­ue in the role. It didn’t ful­ly scratch his itch, but it helped. He made friends with a few like-mind­ed musi­cians and even formed a bar band to play cov­er songs on week­ends. He wrote a few songs, but nev­er shared them.

***

       My hear­ing fad­ed after the surgery. Slow­ly enough that it wasn’t imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous. I could still hear the notes of music, but under­stand­ing speech was a chal­lenge. I occa­sion­al­ly found myself agree­ing to do things I didn’t real­ize thanks to pre­tend­ing to be able to hear. My oto­laryn­gol­o­gist gave me the bad news. The cal­ci­fi­ca­tion that had ren­dered my mid­dle ear inef­fec­tive had migrat­ed to my cochlea. There would still be years of hear­ing and with any luck the tech­nol­o­gy would improve by the time I would need cochlear implants, but in the inter­im, I would need hear­ing aids.

       Hear­ing aids don’t work like glass­es. They don’t trans­form poor hear­ing into nor­mal hear­ing; they trans­form poor hear­ing into less poor hear­ing. What gets ampli­fied isn’t always what I want. In a restau­rant, I might hear some­one one table over bet­ter than the per­son in front of me.

       Most peo­ple lack empa­thy for the hear­ing impaired. It’s aggra­vat­ing to be asked to repeat your­self over and over. Almost as aggra­vat­ing as ask­ing some­one to repeat them­self. It’s easy to imag­ine being blind. You just close your eyes. But it’s dif­fi­cult to emu­late deaf­ness. Elim­i­nat­ing sound from your life, even tem­porar­i­ly, is not a sim­ple matter.

       And cochlear implants are not a mir­a­cle cure. The abil­i­ty to hear sub­tle vari­a­tions in sound that the thou­sands of hair cells in the cochlea pro­vide is still well beyond the abil­i­ty of mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy to pro­vide. The brain needs to re-learn how to hear post cochlear implant and being able to decode speech is enough of a chal­lenge with­out adding in being able to hear the tones and col­ors of music. Search­ing cochlear implants and music on the inter­net revealed that many musi­cians lost their abil­i­ty to enjoy music the same way after get­ting the implants that they could before.

***

       The boy’s hear­ing has an expi­ra­tion date. There will come a time in his life when there will be no more sound, no more col­ors and shapes, no more intense feel­ings from a dimin­ished chord, only silence.

       He’s aware of Beethoven’s famous deaf­ness, but he’s not Beethoven. He might have had the poten­tial to become Beethoven, but if he did, it’s too late.

From the writer

 

:: Account ::

This piece began life as a work of CNF, but I found my own life to be too dull to sus­tain nar­ra­tive inter­est. For­tu­nate­ly, I’m a writer of fic­tion and not non-fic­tion so giv­en the free­dom to make things up, I was able to bor­row aspects of the lives of oth­er peo­ple I’ve known as well as things that nev­er hap­pened to any­body as far as I know to come up with the sto­ry at hand. I do like steal­ing the braid­ed nar­ra­tive form that the CNF peo­ple have claimed for their own. Why should they get a great nar­ra­tive forms like braid­ed nar­ra­tives all to them­selves? While my own hear­ing has decayed some­what over the last decade, since I orig­i­nal­ly wrote this piece, the hear­ing loss has slowed to an imper­cep­ti­ble pace. I can only hope that when the time comes to give up my cochleae for a dig­i­tal proth­e­sis, the tech­nol­o­gy will be much better.

D. A. Hosek’s fic­tion has appeared in The San­ta Mon­i­ca Review, Exter­mi­nat­ing Angel, Nebo, Menis­cus, South­west Review and else­where. He earned an MFA in fic­tion from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tam­pa. He lives and writes in Oak Park, IL and spends his days as an insignif­i­cant cog in the machin­ery of cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca. https://dahosek.com @dahosek.bsky.social