I'm Deaf In My Right Ear

I’ve been keeping a secret my whole life. It’s the single thing that I keep closest to me than anything in the world, to the point that most of my family doesn’t even know.

I’m completely deaf in my right ear.

Since I’m exposing my income, myself, my feelings, and my tribulations then I might as well press ‘publish’ on what scares me the most.

There are some things that you’ll notice if you were in my presence:

1.) my phone is always in my left pocket
2.) i will always walk on someone’s right side
3.) it’s usually years before I discover that only one of the ears on my headphones work
4.) i can read lips pretty well
5.) i have a remarkable sense of balance (i bet you’ll never tackle me in football)
6.) when writing music I pan all the instruments to one ear, then I go back and “spread them out” to both ears when I’m sequencing them.
7.) when sitting at a table i will only sit on one of the 2 opposing corners. Like this:

Some occurances are strange, like when someone screams “hey buddy, I was talking to YOU. What are you deaf?” Almost every time I stop short of saying “Well, actually…”

Some ‘asks’ about the balances on my mixes have made me want to discuss this sooner (more on that tomorrow).

Some things are actually funny, like how I sleep 11 hours a night. This is probably due to the fact that I can’t hear anything when I sleep because I sleep on my good ear. Like, after I wear eye shades and put my ear to the pillow, it’s as if I’m in a soundproof and sunproof room.

To be clear: I’m not deaf. In fact, I have remarkable hearing. When I was younger the doctor told my mother that I would likely grow up to have surround sound in just one ear. In short, the good ear would “learn” and “pick up the slack”.

So how did this happen? Well it’s one of two theories:

1.) I had a pretty bad concussion when I was 2 years old while playing army with my brother and sister. I built a fortress out of chairs, then I proceeded to climb the fortress (I know, dumb move). Anyway, I fell on my ear and got knocked out. It was so bad that I got rushed to the doctors.

2.) It could have been since birth.

But there’s no way of knowing, nor would it change anything at this point. The thing is that I don’t know what it’s like to hear “real” surround sound. Or when someone complains about mono vs. stereo audio files I just sort of smirk and go along with the conversation. I never really know what they’re actually hearing.

So why am I telling you this? Why now? Well, people judge a lot, and people are depressed a lot at their imperfections or obstacles. Like when someone is walking down the street, you have no idea of the current state of what they’re going though or what disabilities they have.

So, do I think this helps with my music? Well, I write music, so I’m not sure how a deaf ear can help with one’s creativity of songwriting or guitar playing. If I were a music recording engineer then I’d feel differently.

I read a few months ago about how Crayola’s Senior crayon maker is color blind. Which got me thinking: for all I know someone has 9 fingers and was told that they can’t be a musician. Or maybe someone else is deaf in their right ear, too? So maybe if everyone knew about other people the things that they can’t see, then the world wouldn’t seem so scary and intimidating.

I’ll explain more about this tomorrow, because there’s a lot on my mind and why I don’t talk about it.

In closing, now you know why I prefer a blog to a vlog. Writing strips out the pain of having to deal with syncing and panning audio :)