I’m attempting to demonstrate some of the distortions I experienced when my hearing was temporarily damaged.

I’ve slowly been assembling two difficult compositions that replicate events during the non-linear recovery of my ears.

They’re a work in progress.

action said to me ‘missing’ except in sound of words, echoes

what first one then the other (character) will talk about

The dynamic range of my ears was reduced, as if passing through a limiting amplifiers.

And they seemed to be independently subject to automated low pass filters.

silence of an object (possible) after the note stops, a form

of the body submerged in water which floats and dissolves

At times ambient sound was absent and at others it was distorted, inharmonic; similar to driven tape or valves.

This saturated base state was accompanied by dislocated events – an evolving and intricate tinnitus, discrete in each ear.

angle as if looking through (different) window, glass itself

subject to a perception of event which doesn’t take place

It is hard to illustrate the apparent flattening of the acoustic hierarchy between interior and exterior.

I was pulled from, but also pushed into muted surroundings. Sounds were untethered. I became an observer of myself listening.

slippage between an exterior situation and looking out at it

from the inside, (how) the woman’s head tilts to the side

Fiction tells a truth to the illusion of our emotions, that in turn tell a truth to the reality of our imaginations.

A composition might not fully convey the nuances of first hand experience. It might convey more.

after sound arrives, relation of object to its departure (p)

approximate to second color floating in a pale background

Although my ears are healed, tinnitus isn’t totally confined to memory. Certain forms still trouble me asymmetrically,

but the remaining artifacts are largely suppressed, like a blind spot in my hearing.

texture of air (applied) to body, through which sound itself

moving out  from the center of an event seems to disappear

To loose your hearing is to discover stillness or an emptiness of air through

which one encounters the world. It is to encounter imagination.

horizontal plane across which the feeling of water is (also)

echoed, which the imagination of the sound isn’t thinking

Tinnitus may be an inspiring soundscape, inaudible to anybody else.

My intent is that these compositions may allow it to resonate more universally.

Text in italics taken from Portraits & Repetition by Stephen Ratcliffe, 2002