Disappointed, but Perhaps Expectations Were High

man that is quite the story..  I could do without a lot.. but going deaf... I'd likely eat a bullet. Between music and Raff's voice.. along with other sounds .. like the wind through the trees.. the sound of wind chimes.  I'd find it hard to enjoy life without hearing..

Here is an unusual tale even by PA standards. Kinda how I got into prog as well. On the night of the Mayan prophecy when the world was to end, I woke up the next morning deaf. Yes, deaf. Deaf as a bloody door nail. No rhyme or reason was ever found. After a half year of being deaf and going all over world to find a cure (unsuccessfully), I relented to get a cochlear implant. I was unaware that an implant itself is only half the battle. One must train their brain to learn how to interpret the impulses into the cochlear since they don’t follow the normal auditory pathway. That is a momentous process. Most people with implants don’t listen to music. I however had my ex-girl friend and great overall friend. She is a classically trained singer with an advanced knowledge of musical theory. She scripted a program that used stages and concepts of musical theory to accelerate the development of neuro programming which by proxy would allow for my brain to better understand normal sounds voices speech etc. it was brilliant

I started out the first month with basic music AC/DC. To learn and identify the instruments then the beat, the melody, the tones, the ranges etc. 5+ hours a day. Exhausting. Then to Phish using same concepts. Then to Pink Floyd where it all came together. That’s when I discovered Airbag and my brain and adaption turbo charged. My audiological scores were phenomenal and way ahead of most Cochlear patients. 3 months of Airbag and Bjorn Riis and I was close to normal (full hearing) for speech recognition and sound association. My hearing for music is precisely where it was prior to being deaf and that’s unheard of.

So I wrote an email to Airbag and to Bjørn telling them the story. It’s unique, cool, and presumably interesting. The response? None. Zero. I’m disappointed a bit. Shrug. Life goes on. Anyways being deaf lead me to PA too, so it ain’t all bad.