DISCLAIMER:
Most importantly, let me assure you the reader now that my hearing is not currently compromised in any way.
For professional reasons, I'm not going to post any chapters in this series at the same time I'm writing them, and some portions are written long after the fact. Another thing, I am not experiencing permanent hearing loss. Yet. But I am getting to an age and in the business I'm in, every time my ears get plugged with wax I start thinking "is this it?" The whole idea in writing it is to document my experiences of my hearing as I go through those "is this it?" moments, as I have recently. Being a professional sound guy, I'm concerned about damaging my career by even talking about it, which is why I don't publish as I write, have written and will continue to write some of these ponderings with paper and pen to transcribe later.
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ponderings on hearing loss from a professional sound guy
chapter 1: ancient history
I've had a long relationship with my ears. When I was young, I was young (ob) and did foolish things young people do. For one thing, I didn't know I was going into a career using my ears. For another, I was young and stupid and bulletproof. Or so I thought. There were rock concerts, of course. There were clubs. A little bit later there was mixing live rock and roll without any regard for my ears. There were messages such as this one: Delicate Butterfly of a Man Wears Earplugs at Hardcore Show. I was a punk. And unlike my punk sensibilities of today, I was a conforming punk. I was not going to be the only "delicate butterfly of a man" wearing earplugs. Or standing farther away from the speakers than my friends. That was not happening. Kids, don't listen to shit like this. It's bullshit to imply that taking care of your hearing is somehow not punk or not manly or not cool. Being able to hear well for as long as possible is punk and manly and cool. Ear plugs are a drag, no doubt. I still don't like to wear them. There are some that are better than others, both in comfort and in the quality of the listening experience through them. I don't have any endorsement here, but if you don't like one, try another one. Protect your hearing, though. That feeling the morning after a concert when the world sounds flat is not normal and it's not healthy.
There were other stupid things I did. The one which occasionally comes back to haunt me is a particularly misguided skin-diving incident. I was in high school. My family was on vacation in the British Virgin Islands on a sailboat. (Yeah, I know, poor me, right?) I noticed a wreck in about 100' of water on the charts and read about it in the guide book, and I wanted to see it. We were anchored a few hundred yards away, so I snorkeled out to the spot, as best I could, and looked. No way I could see through 100' of water--at least not on that day, not in that bay. So I dove down a bit, and still couldn't see anything. So I took a huge breath and dove down as far as I could go. I still hadn't seen anything (maybe I was in the wrong spot?) when my left ear screamed at me in pain. No one had ever taught me, and I'd never bothered to learn, that I needed to equalize the pressure in my ears when diving deeper than a swimming pool. Oh, that hurt. It hurt a lot. I immediately turned back to the surface and forgot completely about the wreck, snorkeled back to the boat and tried to ignore the pain, hoping it would feel better soon. It didn't. The next morning I had a whopper of an ear infection, the most painful one I ever remember (although I did have one more on my honeymoon that came close; more on that later, I'm sure), and we were getting on an airplane that day, or maybe the day after. Needless to say, it was a pretty painful flight, and I went on antibiotics as soon as possible, which cleared up that pain and emboldened me to think I hadn't done any permanent damage.
Still to this day, I have no evidence of permanent damage, I've had plenty of experiences to indicate there was more to that injury than one infection. The first time I remember feeling that one come back to haunt me was shortly after moving onto a houseboat. I was 28 years old, living in Portland, OR, working as a sound guy. (Minor digression here: living on a houseboat is awesome. I highly recommend it for everyone at least once in their lives, especially when you're young, single and/or childless. If you have this opportunity and all of those conditions apply to you, take the opportunity and thank me later. If you're not single nor childless, the calculation might be a little more complicated than that, but give it some serious thought.) I'd been living on the houseboat for a few weeks and had water skied at least a dozen times in the Wilamette river when my balance started to feel funky. I didn't think much of it because I was living on a houseboat and thought it was simply a case of "sea legs." When I went (temporarily) deaf in my left ear, though, I went to see my doctor. He diagnosed me as having a viral infection in my inner ear which would clear up on it's own. He figured I'd fallen hard on the left side and gotten some river water pushed through my ear drum in the process. It did clear up, and I figured he'd nailed it, but it's also pretty likely I fell at least as hard on the right side and never had an infection on that side.
So that's the history. At the time of the houseboat, I was working in the sound business, and I wasn't unconcerned about going deaf, even though it was temporary. I was still pretty young and stupid and bulletproof. I lost my stereo image for a week or so, but I could still hear fine out of my right ear, so I worked with my head slightly turned and trusted meters and instinct for any stereo imaging concerns. Life went on, my ear went back to normal, and my career as a professional sound guy marched forwards....
