Disappointed, but Perhaps Expectations Were High

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.

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..

Man, I can’t understand how a band wouldn’t reply to a story like that. You sure it went through the right channels? Might have gotten lost in the cracks. Maybe try again, I’m sure they’d be really interested in your story. I mean, unless they’re dicks, but I have no reason to suppose that.

Lewian wrote: micky wrote: 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.. Yeah... I fall in love with a woman's voice first, not with her look or even... "inner values"...

yeah..  take our responses in context.. as I'm sure you do. Perhaps it got lost in the mail otherwise ...f**k that band..  you have a helluva to be thankful for and really is quite the story. With a happy ending which doesn't happen more often than it does unfortunately  I'd lose a limb.. several.. hell up to 4 (as long as kept the 5th) before I'd live (happily at least) without losing one's hearing.

Edited by micky - November 28 2019 at 19:09

Great story!

Would give the advice to take in consideration that some emails get filtered and end up in the spam folder. Perhaps some of the medical terms used in your story are on the 'filter' list.

I neglected to mention that active touring artists are quite busy and may not have the time to respond, at least not right at that moment.

Edited by SteveG - November 30 2019 at 07:03

Nice story. Would have been nicer with a response.