peaceful sensations

Its Saturday night. I’m having a glass of wine, listening to Mozart, and reflecting on how much life has changed. I still can’t accept its been 9 months with my cochlear implant. I ask myself why. So much has happened in this short space of time. But to spare endless ramblings, I will limit this entry to my experiences with music.

I used to enjoy Rock and Roll, its energy, its feel on the chest, the vibration, and perhaps the feeling that I was normal, listening to and enjoying what everyone else was. I cannot believe how much this has changed, that it has even become more ‘noisy,’ complicated. Strings have a new meaning to my sense of music. I find myself relaxed and absorbing the music with more of myself.

I loved the Christmas season this year. I used to feel the music with my body, I now process the music by distinguishing the notes, instruments and harmony. I spent my life TRYING so hard to make sense of the lyrics, not so much the music, but for the “hidden” words. Now it is irrelevant to me. Classicals bring out feelings that I haven’t experienced before. I search to make sense of the specific instruments. It is as though music has a new language to me. Before CI, listening to music required practice and focus and the aim was towards the lyrics, to get their meaning. Now, I enjoy a different relationship with music. It has a different purpose in my life, a different enjoyment. A relaxation that is unknown to me and I wonder if it is similar to what hearing people experience listening to music. I think in the past, there was a success element: if I ‘could’ recognize what I was listening to, it was an achievement. Now it is an enjoyment.

Another thought. It’s tough to be in this space and time without sharing what I feel with someone else who understands. It’s difficult to draw attention to my experience with teenaged co-habitants. They are very much into music (also involved in Band at school), spending much of their spare time with music blaring from their rooms, maybe even taking it for granted. Even though my girls have good taste, and I thought I would enjoy the heavy energetic rhythms, I look forward to something more peaceful. When they are home, I have succumbed to “tuning out” to the point of turning off all noise. But I have to chuckle. I can still see my mom’s smile when I played Jim Croce or Journey or Carol King over and over as loudly as I could, every day! Now I wonder if her smile was saying something different, perhaps something more like my own now, with my girls. A smile of tolerance, beneath which was a longing for something more peaceful, easy, harmonious, light, but yet fully aware that it meant something to me … as a mother would. How unexpected is this change for me. Music has a whole new feel.