DEREK DARLING I had my first dizzy while I was at my doctor’s office, getting another diagnosis that I, at the age of fifty-one, had Type II diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. So, just to round it all out, I now have Meniere’s. I guess I was luckier than most as my diagnosis took about 2 weeks to confirm, not years as some did; and that it is happening now, not when I was a young man.
The hearing... the hearing started to go about 6 months after that. I was a sound engineer, mixing live shows, recording, playing, producing, and all that stuff. I noticed one day that the frequencies I was hearing were odd. It was like a notch filter had been applied to my ears, with random boosts and cuts, at random and dynamically changing frequencies.
I mentioned this to my audiologist, and he said, basically,"Yup, that's what happen". I took a year off and went back to school and got certified as a computer expert, and that's what I do now. On the 50% of days in a month when the frequencies don’t jump around and I can actually trust what I am hearing, I teach myself to play old jazz standards, just for fun.
It is such an odd disease, I actually understand the mechanisms involved, so I have that, at least. It comforts me somewhat, knowing what is going on, even though there is no way to change it. So, I am left with the ability to examine my own steady ride into decrepitude. Is that a word? It should be if it isn’t. You play the hand you’re dealt. Real art is not talent unleashed, it is talent beating against the constraints that reality places upon it.
