first post to HOH and plural living. intro-but-not-quite. :-D

[oihanen.livejournal.com]

cross-posted to hard_of_hearing, multiplicity, plural_living, synaesthesis, and oihanen.

this covers a broad range of topics, but it is about hearing. plurality and synaesthesia play roles, though, for any who feel they can give advice. it would be much appreciated. we've been noticeably hard of hearing to ourselves since we were 12. we're 17, now, and it's only gotten worse. but depending on who's front, hearing changes. not drastically, but everyone thought we were making it up until a friend pulled us out of traffic we didn't hear behind us. some people still do, though. but who cares. screw them. the best explanation we've got for now is that the problems are "sporadic" without revealing to the physician community that we're batshit crazy. we're normally paranoid about doctors, but since communication and control is better, we're trying to get body glitches fixed while the peace lasts. i've already been to the ob/gyn without clocking her. i feel accomplished.

-beast


each of us has different levels of capability, some that aren't as disruptive as others. insiders with hearing difficulties on the outside aren't a major concern because their hearing suits their activities on the inside, like géve's fantastically clear upper-range hearing for her guard duties in the forest. she can't hear lower sounds like adult male voices when she's outside, but she's not particularly concerned.

fronters, though, are a little trickier.

my own hearing is muted, like someone has softened all the consonants and rounded the vowels. synaesthesia's no help in this case, because all i can tell is if someone's voice tastes like vanilla. i'm a devoted linguaphile, and my spanish teacher just had thyroid surgery, so that's made class really difficult, but she understands i don't pick up things the first or even tenth time i've heard them. she's been fantastic about the whole thing, as have a lot of my friends. some people can be jerks, but who needs them. probably didn't have anything to say i'd want to listen to anyways.

ladylighter and myself collaborate to play french horn together, but her problem is that all sounds are distorted. consonants flip themselves around. some sounds disappear entirely sometimes, but we haven't figured out when or why. she's synaesthetic, too, though, so she can compensate while in band because each scale (and note) has it's own visual pattern. that also means we have no idea what or where we're playing until the first note starts. outside of band, it's a lost cause for her.

beast has the best hearing of all, and she's perfectly smug about it. her consonants are only a little muted, but she gets most of the sound. i think if we get myself and ladylighter figured out, beast will come along.

we've tried squishing together the people with appropriate parts at different time, like ll's music-reading, my playing, turtle's hearing, beast's strong body, lelin's spatial awareness and balance (something none of us have) and géve's good vision, but it's too difficult to hold together and leaves everyone feeling like they've been put through a meat grinder.

-eve


and that about wraps it up. sorry if it seemed like i strayed off topic, but i've got a lot of people to cover and compensate for. hope that wasn't a horrible first post. we've got our first appointment with an audiologist in nashville on the 2nd. wish us luck? i have no idea how to proceed with explaining all of this except for the "sporadic" bit. even then, there's the chance that the dr will say it's just our imagination. until next time..

-eve

Comments

[pengke.livejournal.com]

You would probably get the best results if you could speak to your audiologist about being plural. It is very hard to determine the cause of something when it changes and the specialist doesn't know why it changes.

Plurality aside you should speak to your audiologist about the possibility that your problems are neurological. The fact that your hearing changes as different people take the front suggests that the problem is not completely with your ear's physical ability to conduct sound. The fact that it ties in with synaesthesia suggests that the problem might be with how your brain receives or interprets sounds and speech.

You may have better luck utilizing each other's strengths if you try out different combinations of collaborations rather than attempting to squish people together.

- A

Re:

[oihanen.livejournal.com]

squishing (gotta love those technical terms:), or collaborating, doesn't work for long anyway. i meant them as synonymous terms. we can get a couple people together at a time, but that's about it.

thanks for your thoughts on the syn. i was wondering if that might play in at all, and if i should mention. i think i should. i do agree that telling would be better, but not at this point.

i hadn't really thought about what's causing it. i tried googling some info, but it's greek to me. i should learn greek. :)

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[pengke.livejournal.com]

Well, if two of you can work together to play an instrument, pairs of you can work together to do other things. And if people have continuous awareness of what's going on outside of the body, you have more leeway. It wouldn't be perfect but you could have the person who hears best listen for someone calling your name or listen for the sounds of traffic without being at the front. Or you could call that person to the front whenever you're around traffic and have them listen for you.

And learning Greek wouldn't do you much good, Doctorspeak's in latin.

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[oihanen.livejournal.com]

latin, i know. we do the pair thing for some things, but it's not easy. music and driving being the biggies. and dealing with traffic, oh yesh. no more walking in the parkinglot for us. /self-deprecation

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Yes, what pengke said. good luck.

Re:

[oihanen.livejournal.com]

thank you.

[iamshadow.livejournal.com]

we've tried squishing together the people with appropriate parts at different time but it's too difficult to hold together and leaves everyone feeling like they've been put through a meat grinder

probably overtaxing the brain's neural pathways by trying to get so many up front, all interacting with the 3d at once AND interpreting it into a cohesive 'picture' that everyone can understand. That's why you all feel so crappy afterwards. Just thinking about it is giving me a headache!

While many individual singlets can concentrate on many individual tasks simultaneously, a multiple system can multitask up the front only so much before the physical limitations of the brain kick in. You're giving your brain the equivalent of a 10 mile hill run with only half an hour time limit.

It sounds like your system's co-conciousness and communication is pretty good. Maybe you could try using some form of relaying rather than having so many right up front. (of course this couldn't work with things like the balance)

Maybe for example ge`ve could try relaying what she's seeing on the page (since she's got the best vision) to ll, who could translate it and relay it to eve to play. That way, if ll can understand what ge`ve shows her without having to be up front to translate and pass it on, it's one less person up front jostling for space and body resources. (Just say if this is impractical or I've completely got the wrong end of the stick - your system works very differently to mine.)

Re:

[oihanen.livejournal.com]

yeah, that's why we don't do that often.

the relaying sounds like a good idea, though. we'll have to try it a bit. it's only slightly impractical, but i appreciate the comments immensely. :)

[tir-nan-og.livejournal.com]

Briefly,(difficult for us) I wanted to thank you for your fascinating post which turned me on to the fact that there is a community about synesthesia! Loved hearing about voices tasting like vanilla. Our own synesthia is strictly visual, so we are missing this experience.
The meat grinder experience of smooshing everyone together is most unpleasant, and ultimately unnecessary, although I have to admit we still try that around biological family.
Wouldnt worry about physicians or anyone else surmising that..hey, this person hears different ranges at different times..she must be MULTIPLE! Most people are neither that observant or that imaginative.
Appreciated the comment about the triumph of not clocking your ob/gyn. Once our midwife had this chirpy little blonde with her, and said, "This is my assistant. Would you mind if she.." My child's father said that for a minute it looked as if I would throw the assistant down the stairs, before I recollected myself and just howled, "NO!"

[oihanen.livejournal.com]

our synaesthesia is mostly hearing-visual, -taste, -tactile, and taste-tactile. the girl we share our stand with is the one whose voice tastes like vanilla. her best friend does, too.

"..she must be MULTIPLE! Most people are neither that observant or that imaginative."

haha, yeah. it always seems like the obvious answer to me, but you're right. most people are not that observant.

&&no one that annoyingly happy is getting anywhere near me. /grump

heh, thanks. :)