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"The Sound of Metal and the Failure of a Narrative Wrapped in a Failure of Sound" is live at The Big Smoke.

· The Big Smoke,Failure,Sound of Metal,Hearing Loss,Riz Ahmed
broken image

Can one have a physical presence in the universe and have it not fail you? It feels unlikely, Still, does that mean I shouldn't ruminate on said failures or continue my examination of my ongoing failures? I think not. So, please do enjoy "The Sound of Metal and the Failure of a Narrative Wrapped in a Failure of Sound" at The Big Smoke here and if you want to imbibe on some excerpt you can do so below.

You may also want to read my last piece at The Big Smoke, "What’s Your Why? Or a Failure to Make Work, Work", here, the one before that, "The Pygmalion Effect: Or, A Failure to Parent," here, or before that, "Without Ritual (and the Failure to Seek Out the Sacred)," here, or even the one before that, "The Thing About I May Destroy You, Trauma, and Failure," here. And yes, I'm really into ruminating on failure these days.

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"This could have been going on for a while,” the doctor says a couple of weeks after running some more tests and excluding issues related to bone density or ear infections, “and it could have just snuck up on you. What this means is that if you’ve been talking to someone, and you didn’t hear something they said, and then they moved on to other topics, you would have fallen behind as you tried to figure what you missed. And while you might have tried to catch up with the person speaking, you wouldn’t have been able to. You would have missed the entire conversation.”

"Huh.

“Can you operate,” Debbie and I both say, “can this be fixed?

“No,” the doctor says, “but you can start wearing hearing aids and they will train your brain to adapt to the hearing loss and create new pathways.

"The doctor then places a pair of hearing aids in my ears.

"Everything is surprisingly crisp and vibrant, every sound and movement, both inside and outside of her office—people talking in the hall, cars honking, sirens, footsteps, the heating ducts overhead—popping and pinging around my head.

"There’s a buzz in the air.

"A hum.

"It feels like energy.

"Life.

"As I sit back, I realize that I can’t remember the last time the world sounded so alive and present. It’s the most clarity I’ve experienced in some time. It means that I may not actually be going crazy. It also means that I am no longer exactly the person that I thought I was and that I have to revisit the narrative I’ve constructed for myself."