Reflecting on Silence

The first post I wrote for this blog when I restarted it was about an extended period of deafness that arose due to a combination of hearing issues in my left ear and the complete blocking of my right ear due to wax build up. During that time I was working online so I was able to teach with the use of headphones, but otherwise I was pretty much trapped in a world of very muffled sound. There was some ability to hear, but it needed to be carefully managed and it was only for conversation. Music was lost to me for six months because I couldn’t pick up a tune.

That time was extremely difficult for me because music had been part of my life for about 50 years by then, and it was the very basis of my online persona at that point. Without it I had less to say and it definitely isolated me from people in both spheres of my life. Looking back, it took almost all of the colour out of my existence and the loss of music was a huge part of that. Even today, I look back and shudder when I think how grey and dispiriting that time was. I genuinely can’t understand people who rarely listen to music because to me it’s as central to my life as breathing. Do they feel grey and dispirited?

What would happen if I became deaf again? Perhaps I could deal with it a bit better but I know it would remove a huge part of my life, a part that is irreplaceable.

If you want to read the original post, which I still think is very interesting, here it is https://davidgpearce205.blog/2021/04/22/the-sound-of-silence/