A deaf man hears music – and can’t stop listening
August 26, 2012
Austin Chapman figured his short films must be pretty good because
they’ve been sweeping major awards on the independent film festival
circuit the past couple of years.
He was never quite sure about the soundtracks, however, because
Chapman, who is deaf, could never really hear them.
Or any other music.
Then, a month ago he popped a brand new pair of bright orange,
state-of-the art hearing aids into his ears and his world was changed
forever. He cranked up Mozart’s “Lacrimosa” and suddenly tears of joy
streamed spontaneously down his face. He turned on Radiohead and Devo
and an epiphany occurred.
After years of scratching his head as friends around him snapped their
fingers to the beat of Rolling Stones songs or got up and moved to the
wave of electronic dance music created by DJ Moonboots, Chapman
suddenly understood what this human fascination with sound was all
about.
The 23-year-old filmmaker, whose life has largely been visual until
now, still struggles to adequately explain the rush of new sounds
echoing through his head. He compares them at one point to seeing a
high-resolution photograph for the first time. Later, he describes the
sensation as being exposed to a color you’ve never seen before.
Finally, with a broad smile on his face he offers this analogy: “It’s
like the first time you kiss a girl. It’s like that.”
The experience came as he cruised around his Orange County, Calif.,
neighborhood with friends soon after getting the new hearing aids. He
had always wanted to really hear Mozart, so his friends put on
“Lacrimosa,” the brooding work the composer completed on his death bed
in 1791.
“I was in the car and it was quite an experience,” recalls Kyle
Sinnott, Chapman’s best friend since high school. “He was nodding his
head and moving his fingers. He cried at one point, and the same goes
for everybody in the car. Everybody let out a tear.”
Soon Chapman was playing “Brain Damage” from Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of
the Moon,” and humming along to the ethereal “wooh oooh” guitar part
that surfaces eerily throughout the song.
Music was in his brain and he couldn’t get it out.
Not that he’s embraced every new sound he’s been hearing since getting
his new, improved Phonak hearing aids.
To his dismay, he can suddenly make out the sounds of other people’s
conversations that he’d never heard before. Rather than enjoy his new
eavesdropping skills, he finds them annoying.
“When I hear the talking, I want to say, ‘QUIET! SILENCE!’ he says with
a laugh as he sits in a downtown deli on a recent afternoon, trying to
ignore the conversation at a nearby table.
The sound of a baby cooing does please him.
“I’ve never heard a baby talk before,” he says, smiling in wonder.
“Their voices are too high.”
Born profoundly deaf, Chapman’s condition was diagnosed when he was
about a year old when his mother noticed he didn’t flinch when a door
was slammed behind him. Neither his parents nor his sister have a
hearing impairment, and he says doctors don’t really know why he was
afflicted.
Although he had worn his old hearing aids for only four years, they had
already become outmoded. All he could make out with them were low
sounds like those made by a bass guitar. Sometimes a mid-range tone
would break through, but high tones didn’t exist in Chapman’s world.
It was the same when it came to listening to a conversation. He could
hear someone speaking directly to him in a clear voice, especially if
it was someone with a deep voice and someone he knew and the sound of
whose voice he had come to recognize. But he struggled to hear people
talking in higher tones, something he said led him to avoid striking up
conversations with strangers. He’s less reluctant to do so now.
He and others have been the beneficiaries of a remarkable breakthrough
in digital technology in recent years that has made small hearing aids
far more powerful, particularly in picking up higher pitched sounds,
says Gisele Ragusa, a University of Southern California professor and
expert in deaf education.
She’s watched as children were suddenly able to hear music for the
first time and noticed they were often frightened until they got used
to the new sounds. She’s not entirely surprised that an adult would
react differently, particularly after years of seeing friends enjoy
something he could only hear fragments of, which she notes must have
been annoying.
“He would probably feel elated and excited, and also have some sense of
confusion at first, until he got used to recognizing what he was
hearing,” she said.
Chapman quickly posted word of his audio breakthrough on the social
network reddit.com, asking others what he should listen to next. To his
amazement, within days he had more than 14,000 suggestions, everything
from Beethoven to the Beatles.
He’s holding out on that latter suggestion, at least for now, although
he says he will eventually obtain every album the Beatles ever recorded
and sit down and listen to them all.
“I’m waiting until I have a really good sound system,” he says with a
chuckle. “I want to sit down, and when I hear the Beatles for the first
time, I want to really hear the Beatles.”
In the meantime, he’s rewatching his short films, listening to the
soundtracks others created and looking forward to someday doing his
own.
His first work, “At the Altar,” was made when he was a student at
Pepperdine University and won the award for best cinematography at the
Reelstories Film Festival in 2010.
“Eleven Eleven,” a hauntingly beautiful film about a young deaf man who
finds his soul mate, only to lose her to death after one day, was
honored with the festival’s grand prize and audience choice awards last
year. Also that year, his documentary “City of Widows” was honored for
its story about the fate of young women in India who are banished to a
life of poverty after their husbands’ deaths.
Since graduating last year, Chapman has worked as a freelance
filmmaker. He also runs the website artofthestory.com. His ambition is
to eventually make a feature film.
Before music entered his life Chapman says he never gave much thought
to what his lack of hearing might be causing him to miss. After all, he
can read lips, communicate in American sign language and he speaks
fluently, though with the pronounced accent of someone who is
profoundly deaf and who for most of his life could never clearly hear
himself speak.
“I was a really happy person,” he says. “I was really happy all the
time.”
Then, after a moment’s thought, he adds with a smile, “Now I’m even
happier.”
Source:
http://www.kvia.com/news/A-deaf-man-heears-music-and-can-t-stop-list
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