The Next Sound You Hear

What was that noise? It’s time to listen. Every day, particularly in the morning hours, I have been serenaded by a chorus of hundreds of songbirds tweeting and chattering through rain or shine. I can hear them while I work at home and when I walk the streets, they are every where. Their combined tunes are a singularly unique form of music both soothing and joyful. It can be hard to see them although the birds tend to stick together in large groups while keeping themselves well hidden in the trees. You can see the tiny creatures performing if you peer up into the branches from below. They are always there and a simple reminder of the power of sound to transcend us to another place.

The past few weeks were warmer than normal here for April. The usual magnificent foliage has been exploding forth producing all the thickly spread canopies and camouflages around the neighbourhood. You can almost hear the leaves and buds as they are popping out in a rapid profusion of growth. Another year, another Spring. What’s so different about now? I wonder if we are listening and hearing in perhaps a different way. For some of us, there are possibly many sounds in the background of our days that might seem foreign to our recent memory, we probably weren’t paying attention to them back then. It’s the quieter, more subliminal sounds that I’m thinking about. The birds chirping seem so much louder, small animals make a rustling sound through the trees and bushes, and lately I have been aware of the subtle watery ‘whooshing’ of small waves on the beach. The other day in the early evening hours, I happened to look out my window down to the street and saw an elderly man singing opera in Italian as he was walking along. It was one of those moments that I consider a gift, it brought tears to my eyes to hear him. It reminded me of how much I miss it and the memories attached are wonderful. I also wonder who else was listening, if any one was. Not everyone hears the same thing in the same way.

We can get so wrapped up in our own distractions that unless sound hits us hard we can be oblivious to it. Sound can be subliminal and barely discernable. How we each perceive it can vary greatly from person to person. I have often been accused of having the highly sensitive ears of a bat. What is bothersome to me is probably nothing to what most people will tolerate. Loud cellphone conversations, renovations and construction, amplified music, raucous party people, and noisy mufflers have been known to drive me to distraction. (Ear plugs have become a long-time faithful companion.) But as it happens, this is not such a negative issue after all. There happens to be a strong connection between hearing and memory loss with the major causes being stress, isolation, and too much quiet time.

Can poor hearing cause cognitive decline? The more severe the hearing loss, the more likely the individuals were to have cognitive problems. But even those with mild hearing loss had a greater rate of cognitive decline. Researchers have found that those with poor hearing took, on average, 7.7 years to show a 5-point drop on a standard test of memory function. It’s also been found that those with total hearing loss differ cognitively in subtle and not so subtle ways than those with the ability to hear. Hearing aids have been found to improve both memory and cognitive functions. Wearing hearing aids can negate this type of memory loss, as the hearing aids continue to funnel sound signals to our brain. If we start to use hearing aids as soon as we realize we have hearing loss, this will keep the brain functioning as normal and will result in less memory loss.

Sound has the ability to unleash long supressed memories or bring us unexpected surges of emotion whether inside or outside of our heads. It can lighten our step and make us smile. It can remind us of wonderful and often bittersweet times. I discovered my old ipod nano recently and have taken to listening to it during my long walks. It holds a compilation of a few decades worth of music that have taken me all over the world. I had transferred much of the selections onto a cellphone at one point. My personal soundtrack has played in many places; a house party in Bogota, Colombia, the beaches of the island of Providenciales in Turks and Caicos, prowled the streets of New Orleans and London. It has lived with me in NYC and now Vancouver. The memories are priceless and that much richer for it. I can’t imagine not being able to hear Pavarotti singing Nessun Dorma or have Hey, Jude, my theme song play at the strangest yet so meaningful of moments like recently in the bathroom of a coffee shop. And then there are the fog horns blowing, a train whistle in the distance, raindrops splattering the windows, my husband’s voice, and my cat’s meow. They are part of me, they are in my head, and they will all be the next sound I hear.

This essay was written by Jude Gorgopa, Reinvention Consultant and the founder of Clout Et Cetera and The Fundamentals of Clout. judegorgopa@gmail.com