I don’t pretend having important insights into human hearing. I have certainly not done any scientific or sociological research in the area. I have no more medical knowledge than any alert and inquisitive patient. So, why bother publishing anything about the subject?
I am writing in part for me, in part for others with an interest in hearing. Writing down what I have experienced helps me to formulate and to understand that experience. But that understanding and my memory of my experience will certainly evolve. Thus, I reserve the right to return to these pages and change anything at all.
I do maintain a log of the results of my hearing exercises. This log is of inestimable value in helping me focus on my greatest hearing problems. But such a log does not record my emotional states and my beliefs about myself and my experience.
Furthermore, many people facing hearing issues are faced today with choices that were inimaginable only a few decades ago. Not only are sophisticated external devices available to help hearing and comprehension. Various forms of surgery are able to restore hearing in many people who otherwise would be as deaf as a dollar bill.
I hope to share with these people some personal information that may be of use to them. I hope to return to the community something the community has shared with me and many others with great alacrity.
These pages are not a diary, although there is a chronological sense to the articles. Maybe I am not sufficiently attuned to my inner workings to see enough to recount my hearing on a daily basis. Hearing changes, but tends to change very slowly, except when punctuated by accidents, diseases and other mishaps. Thus, my sense of time is more like the chronology of an 18th century novel.
I owe my decision to write these pages to two other external influences. I have just finished reading Siri Hustvedt’s book Memories of the Future, a sort of epistemology of the self, of memory, of writing and of fiction. And a neighbor of mine, a neurologist having worked with children and adults with hearing issues, asked me if I keep a journal. This site is, in part, an answer to his question.