Protect Your Hearing

Protect Your Hearing

(From the working manuscript of March On*)*

When people speak of hearing loss, they usually look toward the obvious culprits. The drumline. The brass section. The marimba vibrating through the risers. The trumpet player who cannot seem to leave Pictures alone.

It is easy to blame the sharp/edgy sounds — the cymbal crack, the piccolo cutting through the air. But the low tones do their work as well. The marimba’s warmth. The bass line that settles into your ribs. The steady hum of engines and traffic that never quite disappears. The ear does not judge whether a sound is beautiful or harsh. It only endures the force of it. Hearing damage is not a matter of pitch. It is a matter of intensity, and of time.

And it is not confined to rehearsal halls.

It lives in the city streets. In the Doppler swell of an ambulance that ricochets off brick and glass and concrete. In the firetruck that shakes the air before it comes into view. In the car at the red light, its windows trembling with bass. In the headphones turned up just past where they should be. In stadiums. In traffic. In the ordinary noise of living.

The world is loud.

Not in great bursts alone, but in steady persistence. And, then there is Mahler.

Inside the ear are tiny hair cells, delicate and finite. They take vibration and give it meaning. We are born with a certain number of them, and when they are lost, they are not replaced.

Birds can grow them back.
Fish can grow them back.
We cannot.

There are scientists who labor over this fact. They work with genes and synapses and quiet hope. Perhaps one day the body will learn again what it once knew. Today it has not.

Hope for the best. Plan for the worst.

Hearing loss does not arrive with drama. It comes softly. A faint ringing after rehearsal. A voice across the table that sounds farther away than it used to. The television turned up a little more each year. A slow adjustment to a quieter world.

Until you realize it is not the world that has grown quiet.

We teach our students to listen — for balance, for blend, for nuance. We ask them to hear one another. But we rarely speak of protecting the instrument that makes all of that possible.

Most damage is not the result of one great mistake. It is accumulation. Year upon year. Vibration layered upon vibration.

You can spend thousands on instruments and uniforms. For two hundred dollars, you can sit with an audiologist and have earplugs molded to your own ears. They lower the volume without stealing the music. You still hear balance. You still hear pitch. You simply stop injuring what you cannot replace.

They will let you choose the colors. Choose carefully. Casey and I did not. Neon has a way of announcing itself under stage lights. We accepted the lesson.

Protect your hearing.

Step out when you can. Wear the plugs. Turn it down. Teach your students that discipline includes care for the body that carries the music.

You are given one pair of ears.

If you want Beethoven to last longer than your ego, wear protection.

And if we are going to march on, it would be good to hear the cadence as we go.

March On.