Are We There Yet?

November 27 - December 3, 2017

By Jay Edwards

I can’t hear you, so I’ll just laugh and hope it wasn’t a question

~ unknown

So it seems I’ve been blessed with a mild form of tinnitus, that syndrome of regular ear ringing and/or buzzing. It’s not terrible and not constant, but when it’s there it’s very noticeable and pretty annoying. It’s hard to say what the cause is. Perhaps it’s that my rock and roll puberty came during the days of Led Zeppelin, Rush, and ZZ Top, to name just a few. They were loud and I played them that way. Mom ended up buying me some of those big padded headphones so I could plug them into my Marantz while she listened to Lena Horne or Streisand on her big RCA Console. Those headphones were huge and made me look like a NASCAR pit boss or maybe Princess Leia.

Perhaps my ear ringing … wait, scratch that, now it’s buzzing … came from all those times in the water, in Lake Hamilton, when I’d get too daring on a slalom, or at the Lakewood pool when I’d misjudge a high-dive, or in Destin that time with my brother Dean, when we ran into my fraternity brother Steve Arnett (Hairnet) during a storm on the beach when the waves were huge and I lost my boogie board and got slammed, ear-first into the hard sand that lay beneath the tides. Somehow I survived all those but now have singing static head, which will always be there to remind me how lucky I was.

These are all good possibilities, but a more likely reason for the buzzing … no, back to ringing now … is this mandatory advancement into my sixth decade. There are actually worse health related things that come from the so-called wisdom years; but you don’t want me to get too personal.

Speaking of tinnitus, did you hear (and if so, hopefully without ringing) about the guy in England who says he hears “God Save the Queen; in his head around 1,700 times every week. Ron Goldspink, 87, has musical ear syndrome, which is a form of tinnitus. “It started about three or four months ago,” said Mr Goldspink, who said the version he hears is sung by a male choir. “I complained about my next door neighbor, who I thought was playing music and keeping me awake at night,” Goldspink said. He also said that although it is sung very well, it can at times be “deafening,” and is driving him mad. Musical ear syndrome is a condition where people who have hearing loss develop musical hallucinations. The rare condition affects about one in 10,000 people aged over 65 in the UK. “I have no idea what caused it,” Goldspink said. “I just know it is a group of men singing and they sing it very well.”

Poor Ron. Makes my buzzing/ringing seem like nothing. But it made me wonder, if I had to have a song, just one song, continuously playing in my head, what would I want it be? Probably none from those aforementioned bands. It’s not that I still don’t love them, but if I am going to hear something 1700 times a week, it should probably be a little more mellow, like some John Coltrane or Miles Davis; or perhaps Van Morrison. Ones I hope I don’t get are “Achy Breaky Heart,” “Having My Baby,” “Muskrat Love,” or “Feelings.” And while I love songs like “A Day in the Life,” “Comfortably Numb,” and “Going to California,” I would hate to ruin them by playing them 1700 times a week.

So I guess I’ll count my buzz/ring as a blessing and go crank up the Klipsch, while I can still hear the big bass and before I hear KM’s car pulling into the driveway.

See all of Jay’s past columns on our website at www.dailyrecord.us.