You were a very successful US lawyer. When did you discover that you were deaf?
When I was 33. I had moved into a new job at Mobil Corporation which uniformly gave hearing tests to all new personnel. The nurse rang about 20 different tones into a pair of earphones and I heard only five. After I took them off, she said, or I heard her say, "Were are day, were are your earring days?" She was asking me where my hearing aids were, and I laughed, disbelieving her. Fuller examinations ultimately traced the problem to scarlet fever at six. And that's when, for me, as a child, the most beautiful sounds slowly disappeared. Along with them went consonants and my world grew quieter.
Does scarlet fever always result in deafness?
Many people have become profoundly deaf from scarlet fever, including, most notably, Helen Keller, Alexander Graham Bell's mother and his wife, Mabel. Others, like me suffer significant cochlear damage, others less so; still others escape with their hearing intact.
What sounds do you recall from childhood that you cannot hear now?
The most moving element of my discovery was the day out in the country when I turned on my new hearing aids and rediscovered the sound of crickets. Other sounds followed: the birds, the rainfall, the footsteps, the breaths, the wind and the water . . . they had been absent from my life for almost three decades. Hearing aids help words somewhat, but in general, the struggle is still difficult.
Give some examples of what you call "lyricals" in your book.
The partially deaf interpret what others say through what I call "lyricals," in which those with limited hearing register the wrong words, or nonwords, in lieu of what is actually spoken. For example, if you said, "I thought of that," I could hear, "I lost my hat," a lyrical, and I would have to figure out your words through lipreading and context. There is poetry in lyricals too, as in "water happens after coral reefs," for "what'll happen after Nora leaves?" We start with our lyricals; and Joyce leads us to his berginsoffs, bergamoors, bergagambols, and bergincellies.
What are the "locusts" you describe?
Tinnitus is a constant buzzing in the ears, and I believe most deaf people suffer from it. I call these internal sounds locusts. As Emmanuelle Laborit, the eminent deaf French actress has said (or signed), "I am noise within and silence without."
What is the most important thing a parent can do for a partially deaf child?
Blackboards and other visual aids are critical instruments of learning for partially deaf children, as are books accompanying speech, cards around the upper walls of the classroom with letters and words. Headsets for television and radio are very effective. But above all the problem needs to be identified, as mine was not.
You play the piano and you sing. How does partial deafness affect your perception of music?
Music is of critical importance to the partially deaf because with hearing aids we can hear it, or important parts of it, without having to search for its meaning, as we must for the meaning of speech. Singing is a pleasure because you can hear your own voice and the voices of those beside you.
Song Without Words uses the terms "language in air" and "language of light". What do they mean?
Air is the medium of speech – without it we couldn't hear each other. The medium of the language of those born profoundly deaf, of sign language, is light.
How difficult is it to use phones and mobiles?
Telephones can be a kind of refuge for many partially deaf people, because of the proximity of the voice you are listening to, amplified by a hearing aid or the (modified) phone itself. The intensity of sound diminishes dramatically with even the shortest of distances. So on a land line, with the other's voice practically in your head, the lyricals are easier. Mobile telephones, on the other hand, are difficult because of weak signals, unclear voices and static. There, it's better to stick to text messages.
But in general conversation, why are hearing aids generally so inefficient?
Amplified sound that hearing aids channel to damaged epithelial cells in the cochlea make sounds louder, but language is still difficult to understand and they pick up a lot of extraneous noise.
Is there any advantage as a writer to being deaf?
The partially deaf may have an advantage at writing because lyricals give us an infinite vocabulary which enables us to slide more easily from one word to another when we are writing in the finite vocabulary of the English language.
Why did you call the book Song Without Words?
Several years ago I played one of Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words for a hearing expert who was examining me and kept a piano in his office. The title from Mendelssohn, elicits a number of ideas: lyricals are often a song without words, or of nonwords or the wrong words; sign language may perhaps be said to be a song without words, though signs are as wholly effective as words; birdsong and the sounds of nature, which I can hear only with my hearing aids, are, for me, songs without words.
Your book has received wonderful reviews. What were the most frequently asked questions on your book tours in the US?
I've received emails from a number of people who have been through the same experience of not knowing they were partially deaf until later in life, and have then changed their lives. Some hearing people have wondered how it could have taken so long to identify the problem not as an intellectual one, but an inability to hear correctly. But as I was growing up and then began to practice law, in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, there was little or no testing, and simply no reference point for an untested partially deaf child or even an adolescent or adult to measure himself against. And many aspects of your life – your sensitivity to loud noises (a symptom of hearing loss), your love of music, your ability to write well, make you think that you were quite normal – that you just had to work harder to overcome your intellectual shortcomings.
Any plans to come to Ireland?
Both sides of my family emigrated to the United States from Ireland in the 19th century. In many respects I feel at home in Ireland, and I am not far away living here in Paris. So I look forward to coming here—to see old friends and to talk about the book.
In conversation with Deirdre McQuillan
Song Without Words: discovering my deafness halfway through life by Gerald Shea (Da Capo Press, £17.99)
