Award ceremony in 1978.
Throughout the years following my discovery, a D flat appeared in
my life on many occasions. One of the most memorable occurred in
1976, the first time I tore the gastrocnemius muscle in my right leg
playing basketball. I was going up for a right hand slam dunk when I
heard a pop that sounded much like a D flat, a major seventh below
middle C. The pain was such that I remained airborne for several
minutes in an extraordinary exhibition of levitation, trying to avoid
the moment when I would land. I think I actually swooped around
the hoop and returned to the other end of the court before crashing
to the floor in a heap.
Seventeen years later, I tore it again going up for another slam
dunk. I know it wasn’t a coincidence because the first time I tore
it, I met a certain modern dancer whom I adored for the first time,
and the second time, it happened the day before I learned that she
was divorced and wanted to meet me again. In both cases, the pop
sounded like a D flat, and both times I failed to listen to the CMBR
sending me a painful warning to limp away, hobble off to Urgent
Care, drag myself into a distant corner rather than become involved
with her again. I heard the D flat, but I was tone deaf emotionally.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when a D flat appeared
in my right ear around 1996. During a break in rehearsing the
steel drum ensemble I’d formed at OSU (Oregon State University)
three years before, I noticed a high-pitched humming in my right
ear. I thought it was still just a noise from the room, but it kept on
humming even when I went out into the hall to get a drink of water.
Not only that, after I put my hands over my ears the humming was
still there.
When it hadn’t gone away by the next morning, I knew it was
tinnitus, a neurological problem that does not originate in the ear,
but in the brain, resulting in the perception of sound even though
there is no external sound. It’s like the phantom pain experienced by
amputees. The word comes from the Latin word tinnere, meaning ‘to
ring or tinkle or experience tintinnabulation’. It’s an onomatopoeic
word describing the ‘tinkling’ sound you might hear, although >>