The Music of Nothing

I care a lot about music for someone who's going deaf.

My mom says she thinks it started when I was much younger, the details of which are not important, but at the epicenter of all this she had a child who learned to sing do-re-mis before she spoke them and yet would one day cease to sing at all. They found out at some standard procedure audiometry exam when I was in third grade; a little bird whispered, "By the way, you can't hear in your left ear". So it goes. We had hope, of course, as all people do before they're told not to. Year after year, the hearing worsened, deteriorating... into nothing.

For all that I profess as to the virtues of silence, I am a person favoring a steady susurrus of faint classical music, jingling bells in some room far away, slow breaths, and the drum of an almost-broken washing machine. Such sounds are my constant companions. When I step outside, I hear the birds twittering, gentle breezes caressing the trees, and the faint beat of footsteps, and mechanical noises that come with living above a city. I love the sound of rain and the sporadic cackles of fire. I love the pulse and sound of my heartbeat, two senses I can't untangle. I love the color of someone's voice as they laugh and the shape it makes as it hangs in the air. And names. Oh, I love names.

When I was reading Stargirl (Jerry Spinelli), I became enthralled at this character who so embodies everything I am and want to be. As soon as I heard her names, I knew that for a single second, my soul was understood. Yes, names. Susan, Stargirl, Hullygully, Mudpie, Pocket Mouse...  Someone like me. All through my life I've felt that names were a different kind of meaningless than everyone thought. They're meant to encompass who we are, and yet, we carry around (most of us) only one, like a weight around our proverbial neck, through the entirety of our lives. One can hardly be expected to remain the same person they were a few short moments after their birth. Names are to reflect who we know ourselves to be.

In 2012, Emma was the top girls' name in 31 states; since then it's carried through as the overall greatest statistic, into 2015. One Emma will hardly be like any of the others. Stargirl.... she will be someone different. Better yet, she will be herself. Yet, we stereotype names so blindly-- Every person I meet named Blake, I instantly shy away from in a certain apprehension that comes from my memories. It's even worse in racial profiling cases-- Studies have shown that interviewers are more likely to hire a person with a "white-sounding" name, even if the resumes are identical.

In sixth grade, I first came to the conclusion that names have this profound impact. I then made attempts to legally change my name, to no avail, and perhaps that was for the better, since the name I picked was "Echo Silver". Since then, I have absorbed more fragments of thought and personality than I could ever have imagined. So of course, I've gone by many titles-- Olive, Hollownight, Rachel, Flower, Opal, Harley, Cricket, Madhuri, and finally, currently, Ariel. Each of these names was once so dear to my heart and harmonious to my ears, but now they have each in turn become foreign and replaced. It is something I can never understand; all I can say is that I am changing.

It's more clear to define who I am by saying I collect succulents, Moroccan pottery, and sand than to say my name is Julia. How much easier it would be to know someone without a name there to impede the way, if such things were only whispered secrets among the closet of friends.

This reminds me of a plane flight to Seattle I took this February. I was seated far away from my family, and began nearly shaking with fright as some stranger took his place next to me. It was a long flight; and I began it by tracing over the lines of an already completed drawing and skittishly avoiding human contact, In the end, boredom got the better of me, and as I noticed his open laptop-- "What are you working on?" We talked for hours upon hours, and he was by far one of the most fascinating people I have ever met. It was psychology and cinematography and the human condition and wizards and puzzles and everything I could ever want to talk to someone about.

And the plane touched ground.

I realized then that I never asked his name,  never said mine. I had, in every literal sense, brushed souls with a stranger. So I asked him, and he said something that can never escape my memory--

"If I tell you, you'll forget me. You'll remember me as a name and before you know it, this will all fade away. But if I don't tell you... You'll never forget that guy you met on the airplane. You'll have to remember what I said and who I am instead.."

He left, dragging his suitcase behind him. He was right. I've always been left with a sense of wonder muddled by hints of agony for never knowing. It's very likely that I will never see him again. But if I do... I won't ask his name. It's the most magical thing in the world, the sound of resonance in a soul that will always be remembered.

But yet... I'm afraid. I'm afraid of going deaf because playing the Moonlight Sonata is the only thing that can heal me when I'm distraught. I will never know the sound of an instrument I haven't heard yet. I won't write songs or chirp back to birds or watch my anguish dissolve to the lull of a piano. Yet... I might have something better. I'll get to feel the vibrations of a person's chest as they sing some serenade, one day. I'll know what eyes look like when there are words trapped behind them, how some words taste bitter on lips and the quiver of a touch feels like the words I love you. I'll feel the sand rattle with crashing waves, the purr of a kitten as it resonates in the delicate bones of my fingers, the exact depth of a piano key as it plays the brooding C that I always hold for too long; I will never have to hear another name.

I may not have working ears, but perhaps in that all encompassing silence I will finally, truly hear.