Pounding the Pavement, Catching Some Bass

Yesterday I brought my first audiobook, a set of Bible-thumping sermons, since I've decided to convert. If I'm going to get a platinum chip put in my head, I might as well accept the Lord Jesus as my savior. Through a process known as the Immaculate Implantation, Jesus was born again as a little platinum child in my head. There were no drills inserted into me. My head is still virginal and intact.

Anyway, I actually got THE ROAD, Cormac McCarthy's latest novel, which beat out our beloved Alice McDermott's AFTER THIS for the Pulitzer Prize last year.

THE ROAD envisions a post-apocalyptic world where I wouldn't have batteries for my implant and I'd have a tough time updating this blog. Actually, more like a world where I already would have been starved or cannibalized. It seems like a fitting companion to BLOOD MERIDIAN, McCarthy's brutal novel of the Wild West. Anyway, the narrator has a Gregory Hayesesque low voice, except when he does the child's voice, which makes him sound like a gay man doing a voice-over for Santa's reindeer in a Christmas special. Okay, it's not that bad. He's actually a grat orator, and it's a pleasure to read along as part of my aural rehabilitation with the implant.

Voices are starting to sound a lot better, and the audiobook helps a lot. The narrator has the lowest voice of any I've yet heard with the implant, and he actually sounds fairly normal. Now that I'm getting into the lower frequencies, I'm beginning to yearn for the lowest of the low. Lawd Jizus couldn't keep me for long. That's Lucifer stabbing a pitchfork in my brain, old Light-bringer tripping my wire. So the lowest of the low. Where's the bass? Why does the beat of every song I listen to sound like high hats exploding in my head? Why do cars passing sound more like wind whispering through the trees?

I started tinkering with the EQs on my computer, trying to figure out which frequencies were coming in and which weren't. Each frequency stimulates a different electrode in my cochlea, and it's my brain's job to connect the dots and figure out the corresponding sound. It's not quite that simple, as Ryan, my audi, will adjust the program on the processor and turn up the electrical signal going to each electrode as necessary. There may be dead zones in my ear, or more likely, areas that need a higher threshold of stimulation. Right now, the electrodes are at a low simmer, just getting things warmed up. I can't go the big leagues without some practice first.

So where's the bass? I've always heard the low ranges better. I was starting to get a bit frustrated. Raging thoughts went out randomly, and I felt the sudden urge to throttle a particularly unlikable ear doctor I had 20 years ago, who wanted to give me a cochlear implant back then, at a time when that basically involved taking parts from the busted-up radios of El Rancheros, using a chisel to make the incision, etc. Today I wanted to implant the doc with a squeaky toy, even though I haven't seen him in 20 years and he really has nothing to do with anything. Thankfully I've spent the last twenty years wearing a portable phonograph behind my ear, winding in new sheet music on the hour.

And then tonight, lo... the bass. Not quite the gut-rumbling stuff that pours out of souped-up Corvettes and Gospel churches, but a couple thousand khz lower than what I heard yesterday. What happened? Willpower? The silky smooth bass of the guy narrating THE ROAD? The threats and cajoling I've been giving to this pouty little platinum child in my head? It's not quite the chest-thumping bass I'm used to, but it's a big improvement.

This is kind of fun. I get to be a big baby all over again, growing up and learning new sounds. I'm getting a first-hand lesson at neural plasticity and relearning the world from a phenomenological standpoint. It's fascinating.