Would you rather be blind or deaf? This is a question people ask on a regular basis. Surprisingly, they even ask me.
“Would you rather be blind or deaf?” They’ll say. Or they’ll say “I’d rather be deaf than blind”. (Funny that no one’s ever said the reverse to me. I wonder if anyone says “I’d rather be deaf” to the blind girl.)
It’s a question that interests me, and that I’d most likely ask. But it’s really quite a silly question. Mostly because those that ask it have no idea of what it is to be “deaf” or “blind”. They don’t know the changes that one must go through, and the habits one must break or learn. They don’t know that it changes not only “sight” and “sound”, but how you interact with humanity and your environment.
Would you rather be deaf of blind? Me- gimme deaf any day. But only because I’ve already done it. I’ve lived it. I am it. I have all the coping mechanisms in place, I’m at terms with it, it’s something that bothers me little if at all.
But if I were to choose, having been neither, which path to take at this point in my life? What would I say? Would I give up the music? Would I give up the rainbows and the sight of grass waving in the wind under blue skies? Symphonies or paintings? The sight of a waterfall, or the sound of it?
Would we be talking about full deafness, or more moderate deafness such as the hearing loss I proudly call my own? Would we be talking full blindness, or partial blindness? Which shade of gray?
There are implications that accompany the “loss”, you see. You cannot walk into a movie theater and be guaranteed that you’ll understand what is going on. So you’ll avoid them, and people go to an awful lot of movies, so you’ll be confronted with the “movie question” on a regular basis. You cannot just attend a lecture or class. You need to first find an interpreter and jump through hoops. And there aren’t a whole lot of interpreters out there–so chances are you won’t find one, or you’ll pay $500/hour. You cannot just jump in and out of small talk conversation with the greatest of ease. “Small talk” becomes a series of calculations and guessing games and learning experiences that make it very hard to concentrate on what to say next. “I’d learn a script”, you’re probably thinking. But it’s not that easy, because when you lipread your mind has no room for a script. When you lipread, your mind has no room for your name, your age, or anything else memorised. It’s fully contorted in looking up endless series of things an endless database.
There are implications that accompany blindness, too. Although I cannot even imagine them, having never been blind.
So to say “I’ll take this set of implications over that one”, with absolutely no perception of what you’re taking on.. It’s absurd. You cannot know how much you’d miss a particular sound or sight. You cannot know the delight you’d experience upon having it return. You can only know that you have a preference for a certain thing. But how do you know, that upon yielding one sense or another, you wouldn’t discover that you’d chosen in error and wished it reversed?
Life is a series of unknowns.
But I don’t say that. I say “deaf, of course”. And all around me nod in satisfaction with my answer.
What would they do had I said “blind, but I was never offered that choice by God.”?
June 30th, 2005 at 8:29 am
You’re completely right - how can one say they would rather live with one than the other, having no idea of what each entails? However, when someone who has dealt with both is asked that question, she gave a pretty interesting answer:
“The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex, if not more important, than those of blindness. Deafness is a much worse misfortune. For it means the loss of the most vital stimulus–the sound of the voice that brings language, sets thoughts astir and keeps us in the intellectual company of man.”
-Helen Keller
June 30th, 2005 at 10:21 am
I’d take deafness any day. After all, it is the ability to see that gives purpose to my creativity. In some ways, deafness can be our own prison.
And then there are those like Beethoven whose latent deafness has caused much alienation and grief. If he were given a hearing aid, I wonder if it would’ve saved his music or force him to compose harder to a higher level?
June 30th, 2005 at 10:40 am
That’s what I think about when people who haven’t ever been deaf/blind talk about things like that.
“You have no idea how profoundly isolating it is to be deaf. To be given the choice of being isolated in your culture of birth, or to choose an entirely new culture, possibly uproot your life, learn a new language, and essentially become someone you wouldn’t have ever otherwise become.”
June 30th, 2005 at 12:01 pm
Beethoven wearing a hearing aid!
LOL - for some reason, that really tickles me:)
June 30th, 2005 at 12:38 pm
Oh you’re tickled? I’ll have to tickle you harder.
How about Goya, the famous spanish artist? That works. As Sara says, being deaf can be culturally isolating and yet this is what I think makes it difficult for deaf creatives to get through that barrier.
June 30th, 2005 at 2:54 pm
Being an _artist_ is culturally isolating, Sanctum.
There’s this element of “oh wow, I see the world. Look everyone! It’s the world… why isn’t anyone looking or seeing? Oh dear.”
Even the hearing artists that I know feel isolated to a large degree.
June 30th, 2005 at 3:51 pm
Guys, I laugh about the Beethoven hearing-aid deal simply because I’m pretty sure that if Beethoven had to hear his own music thru hearing aids - it probably would’ve promptly extinguished all desire to produce any more masterpieces.
It’s the QUALITY that completely suffers with music being translated thru hearing-aids. I used to house-sit for this lady who had this big beautiful baby grand - the first thing I would do is toss the hearing aids, lean in very close to the keys, and play my favorite Beethovens. Even though all I could hear was a faint murmur, it was enough because it was SO much richer and felt more 3-dimensional than the pathetically jumbled noise my aids produce - it…just…makes…sense. Same story with nightclub music played at dangerously loud decibals - the difference is so great, I almost cry with relief at how good a stupid booty song can sound without aids.
Artists are about quality and Beethoven would definitely take no substitutes.
June 30th, 2005 at 4:22 pm
Julie,
Absolutely. Music via hearing aids sucks. I refuse to listen to music with my hearing aids because it all sounds like a bunch of garbledygook. Whereas without them, it’s quite wonderful
“But you can hear MORE” people will say.
“Yes, but I can appreciate LESS”, I say.
July 1st, 2005 at 10:35 am
Sara,
Yes, to create something that others may not ‘get it’ can be an alienating experience. It’s a proces that we go through and generally it’s like a zen trance. I think it depends on the kind of art they do and how far it’ll push people away…but I think really, that when it comes to going to galleries or viewing a piece, it’s really an intellectual activity that takes up mental energy from the ’sheep’ and they have to try to interpret what we, the creatives, are seeing or attempting to portray.
. He was almost socially cut off.
.
It’s the process of creating by ourselves when drawing/painting which isolation occurs. . .like madmen, we lock ourselves into the studio chambers away from civilization until after seven days, the piece becomes complete.
Or not.
And it continues.
Julie…as for Beethoven..well I keep my hearing aid on because it’s the only way for me to talk on the cell phone. Without it, I can’t hear anything. Even though I know what you meant by hearing some tonality of vibrations from the piano and each key, if you go from far right to the left, gets heavier in note. So the higher the pitch, the less it can be detected by my ears..but somewhere in the middle and left, it has a soprano-like tone. Used to have a grand piano at the old house for years..so I can remember having heard sounds of that kind. You said you listen close to the keys..but do you listen onto the piano’s base? In other words, the wooden chamber above the keys where you open it and see the strings…that’s where the sound is generated as far as I remember.
Maybe if Beethoven had a hearing aid, it probably would’ve ruined his composing because he’s not hearing exactly what he used to hear and that throws his ability to compose the notes. But when he turned deaf..well, you know his history
With great creative genius, comes with high a price of social loss, lack of marriage prospects, and alienation and the loss of hearing increases that price.
So did de Goya, the painter..he was isolated and went almost mad as he did the artwork of Saturn, however, he was’nt insane..just socially isolated and yet his work viewed society with disdain of some point.
As for nightclubs, I go to them once in a while and never take off my aid and I’m not worried about blowing out my eardrums there…and can always turn down the volume if it gets too loud
July 1st, 2005 at 12:21 pm
I can hear each tone of the piano, but the lower ones aren’t something that I hear as sound. They vibrate in my chest and in my head. I can feel them but can’t hear them–and am never certain if they’re supposed to make sound or merely be felt like a butterfly beating its wings against my inner spaces.
But as the notes climb higher and higher, they become louder and more shrill and more clear. (I hear high sounds, not lows. My hearing loss is ass-backwards)
What is weird is that I hear almost all music, almost all noises–water dripping, paper ripping, dogs barking, horns honking.. But speech frequencies, despite being fairly “high” on the spectrum, just drop out. Poof.
July 1st, 2005 at 8:46 pm
I’m with you all the way on this Sara. I deeply dislike the sound of music through hearing aids and with headphones and a powerful amplifier - and feeling the vibrations through the floor too - I get a far more natural and genuine effect without them. It’s interesting what you say about the piano; what you experience is almost a mirror image of what I find - the upper frequencies start to disappear - quite strange, and at times quite frustrating. Mind you, there’s also the special horror of pitch-bending (not just distortion - but actual alteration of pitch - it’s a very strange phenomenon). I must write a post about that one day. I was interested to find that I’m not alone in this one - the French composer Gabriel Fauré apparently experienced exactly the same thing, though I’ve yet to find a single ENT doctor or audiologist who can comprehend it.
As for the original question…well I have poor vision (legally blind) and I’m deaf - so it’s not really a choice and I’m oddly happy as I am - but that shouldn’t surprise anyone reading this blog.
The latest theories about Beethoven’s deafness are intriguing - analysis of a lock of his hair has shown extraordinarily high levels of lead and the speculation (only that) is that this may have been one of the causes of his deafness as well as - obviously - his death. I don’t know about that - it leaves all sorts of questions unanswered (this lock of hair was from the very end of his life - I’d be interested to know about lead concentrations in one from about 1801-2…). Enough of this rambling!
July 2nd, 2005 at 2:48 am
Sara:
I considered this for a couple of days, it’s a tough thought.
I’ve dated deaf gals and I know what that world is like from the outside, it’s tough. When I was dating them, I could still hear them walking from room to room in otherwise silent homes. I could hear sniffles and sighs.
I hear breathing and the clocks ticking. The hum of electronics and the outside sounds of the world in it’s rush. I work in radio and DJ weddings. I hear a myriad of sounds daily.
While I was in the Marines, in boot camp, we had “Egress Training” because so many Marines died after the crash by drowing inside helicopters. They put big clunky black helmets on us. Completely blinding us. We all sit packed in this training frame, simulating the inside of the helo. Suddenly the cage drops and you feel the cold rush of water. You’re blind and submerged in around 25 feet of freezing water and you have to get out and surface. 20 guys panicking and fighting to get out before they run out of air and even though you still have a “mental image” of where you are, it means squat at that moment.
Even though that was my most frightening moment in the Marines (in my life I would hazard), I would still choose blindness over hearing loss.
I know that the blind learn to hear better than most of us who can see. I also know that the deaf learn to see more than those of us who can hear.
I would still choose blindness.
That’s the best I can do to explain, I hope it suffices?
July 2nd, 2005 at 3:46 am
I pick blindness, mostly because I know it and it doesn’t really scare me. Deafness does, just because I’m used to navigating by sound. Crossing streets and the like, I couldn’t imagine having to do it any other way.
Blindness seems to be much more mainstreamed than d/Deafness. Is it or is it just my own experience?
I had a conversation with a Deaf girl a long time ago. She went to the Deaf school and I the Blind. We were the only girls on our bus. I can sign, but can’t see well enough to pick up on hers (she goes waaay too fast) We sat in the same seat and wrote back and forth for about 3 hours. It was enlightening. She tried to explain the D/d difference and things about Deaf culture. She said once that the Deaf kids resented the Blind kids, I don’t know how much of that was true. It didn’t make much sense to me. We talked like this every weekend. I haven’t seen her since that year though. I miss her. She went back to public school. *sigh*
July 2nd, 2005 at 9:32 am
I don’t know if pitch bends for me or not, since the way I hear things has always been the way I hear things. I only know that there is garbling/distortion from speech–which definitely has a whoooole lotta stuff going on that makes it highly incompatible with my ears–above and beyond what my audiogram would suggest.
ENT’s and audiologists irritate me. They’re unwilling to take into consideration my past methods of discriminating speech, and adjust my hearing aids so that the speech markers that I used to use actually make it through. (Sibilants/high sounds) instead, they insist upon cramming all the sounds onto an extremely narrow band that seems to entirely eliminate all the recognizable speech markers that I ever used. I’ve developed the ability to use other markers, but it’s still frustrating and makes me mispronounce my name as “SHAARRRRHN” instead of “Sara”. Bleh.
I’m not legally blind, but I’ve got a whole range of eye-issues and practically lived as “legally blind” for about 5 years (4th grade-9th grade) because wearing glasses totally threw off my ability to lipread. (I went from 90% accuracy to about 20% accuracy, and freaked out and refused to wear glasses. Ever.) I got contacts in 9th grade, which took care of the “dead peripheral vision” issue and the “obstructed field of view” issue and which allowed me to adapt to the whole “more detail” thing.
Blah blah, now I’m rambling.
Fascinating about Beethoven’s possible cause of deafness. Jeez. I’ve been watching a lot of PBS lately where scientists are using tiny bits of evidence gathered to come to conclusions about a whole lot of things–including what happened in the Jamestown settlement (theory: arsenic poisoning driven by religious motivations).. and basically the question of “how were the continents populated”. It’s amazing that they can take this little bit of hair from someone so long dead, or a tree sample or a bit of bone, and come to so many conclusions and build so many bodies of evidence, etc.
I love science.
July 2nd, 2005 at 11:01 am
I always thought “if trapped and blind, I’d find my way out and see which way I floated”. I tend to be extremely buoyant, and have to actively swim downward in order to stay under water.
But I have no idea how practical that would be, or if my brain would hold onto its calm or insist that instead of floating I was sinking.
I’m terrified I’d turn upside down and try despearately to swim for the bottom.
August 1st, 2005 at 9:50 pm
Well, I’m deafblind, so I don’t really have much of a choice there, do I? lol. You guys are lucky to only be deaf or only blind. I think I would choose blindness ver deafness though. Blindness is something I enjoy, it makes me different. But deafness is lonely because I do not hear the words my mother speaks or the music which I play on my piano or tuba or violin. THAT to me is most distressing.
August 2nd, 2005 at 8:45 am
Hi Annie. You have a very cool attitude to your blindness and it’s great that you are playing so much music even though you are a deafie as well. I understand the distress and frustration of not hearing things, especially as I used to be hearing (and I am a musician). Have you lost your hearing or have you always been deaf? Anyhow, nice to meet you here
And that’s a great website you have too.