Nanoprep 2023 Day 14: Pitch-shifted
By Robin de Voh on 2023-10-19
A squealing noise in his right ear, a dissonant additional chord that overlaid the actual sound, and a slight but noticeable delay in hearing it all. What a way to wake up. He'd only bought his electronic drum kit a short while ago, same with his new guitar, and now his hearing was going out? He sighed to himself as he sat, whistling to himself to find the tones that caused the dissonant sound in his right ear. Just thinking to himself whether this is what it's like to grow old. Bits just stop working randomly? This is your life now? He'd heard that was a thing.
He quickly looked up what his new instruments were worth on the second-hand market, in a weird form of proactive acceptance. If his hearing was going to go out, he'd simply have to deal with it. He could go to the doctor on Monday, 2 days from now, but in the meantime all he could do was google his symptoms.
No surprise, the internet told him he probably had brain cancer. Very helpful.
He sensed there was some pressure in his ear as well, so maybe it was circumstantial? By tweaking his query on google he found that it can be a complication of tinnitus, something he did have a little -- but not a lot. And a few links down it was also linked to... Sinus cavity being too full. Gross. None of this was helpful either. But at least some of the possible causes seemed to be less permanent or dangerous than brain cancer.
Since he couldn't go to the doctor yet, he knew he had to just deal for a few days, which actually suited him just fine. He generally wasn't too keen on going to the doctor, unless it was absolutely necessary. Not out of fear, but out of respect. He didn't want to waste the doctor's time with every little thing that went wrong. So he shrugged, thought about the resale value of his instruments, and then went on with his day.
He went on a hike with a friend, discussed his hearing issues at some point, and they didn't have many suggestions either. But the weather was great and the route was beautiful, so he actually forgot about it for a while. He couldn't remember whether his ear was bothering him the whole time out there, or whether it went away at some point, but by the time he got home, he noticed it was still right there.
The day after he decided to just take it easy. Take a bath. Then just sit in the steamy bathroom. Hopeful that maybe that could help clear his sinuses, if that was indeed the cause. But it didn't. He did smell great, though.
Later that day, the last day before he'd have to contact the doctor, he noticed something, though. The dissonant chord he heard in his broken ear had been a copy, pitch-shifted up, of what he heard in his left ear. But now, it seemed to be... Different?
He closed his good ear and focused. Yeah, it was still there. He focused even more, but couldn't make out what the sound was, because the neighbors decided that this was the perfect time to drill some holes into their shared wall.
He grabbed his keys, and went down to his storage room in the basement of the building. It was always quiet here, and it was again today. He opened his storage room, left the light off, closed the door again, and focused. One ear closed, the other open.
And then it hit him. It was singing. He opened his good ear again and heard nothing. The storage room was built from gypsum blocks, and it deadened sound really well. He closed his good ear again, and tried to make out whether it was just a pitch that was going up and down or actual singing.
And then he realized. It wasn't just singing, there were words. He could actually make out words. Not all of them, as it was still very soft in volume, but he was pretty sure it was in English. He didn't recognize the melody -- and there definitely was a melody, repetition and all, so definitely a song of some description -- and neither did he recognize the words.
"What the hell," he muttered to himself.
But when he did, the song seemed to wrap itself around his words and dance around them. He couldn't see that, of course, it wasn't 'dancing' dancing, but he heard something he could only describe that way. As if the song had become a duet and his 'what the hell' had merged with the original.
He made a random sound. Yep, that fit the song. He repeated the sound a few times and the song responded by making it work. He, on purpose, made some sounds that were off-beat, against the song's rhythm, and somehow it melded together perfectly, his odd timing just enhancing the song itself.
He stayed there for an hour, just experimenting. He wasn't questioning it at this point, he was just trying to figure out how it acted -- not where it came from, or what it was.
When he finally exited the storage room, he sighed as he closed his eyes against the light.
"Brain cancer's sounding just about right, now," he said, weirdly in tune with whatever his brain thought it was hearing in his right ear. "Definitely going to the doctor," he then added, as he walked back upstairs.
When he finally went to bed, having set an alarm for 7am so he could definitely make an appointment, he hummed some of his own songs, and the ear music weaved additional melodies that complemented his own. Some were so good he made a note of them, tried to remember them. He'd fall asleep before he'd committed them to memory, however.
No squealing noise in his right ear, no dissonant additional chord that overlaid the actual sound, and no slight or noticeable delay in hearing it all.
What a way to wake up.
He was actually disappointed. Not just because he'd woken up at 7am for no reason, but also because he now had no idea what it had been. Maybe it'd come back?
But it never did. And for weeks after, he'd wake up and whistle to himself, but found no additional music.
Afterwards, from time to time, he'd randomly start humming a melody, a fully formed thing. He'd play it on guitar, record it, and wonder where it'd come from. He didn't develop these, they just came to him, out of nowhere.
Perhaps what he'd heard was his inner muse, he thought to himself. And then he discounted the thought as romantic nonsense.
But the question of what it had been would never leave him.