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To be seen and not heard?

Nailed it! Every so often, somebody does: they characterize something I never realized had a name; name something I never thought anybody else was aware of -was bothered by… It’s one of those epiphanies that makes me think there is more than one road to Damascus; more than one Paul…

Sometimes, there are little things that niggle at you, things that seem too rude to mention, too minor in the larger scheme of things to bother with. But like an itch, try as you might, it continues to nag, continues to beg for relief. Sometimes it is enough to look away, to try not to notice the ketchup on a friend’s chin, or the piece of lettuce between her front teeth; sometimes it is the polite thing to do. At other times, an attempt to try to engage their mirror neurons -the ones that positively demand you yawn when someone else on the elevator starts it off- will work: enlisting either the heads, or the eyes of others at the table to silently signal the perpetrator and guilt them into submission.

I have come to realize that my mother never taught me really important social skills, however, and so I have never learned how to channel my irritation into societally condoned manipulation. I therefore occasionally find myself as the lone conscientious objector in a herd of sheep who seem content to nibble quietly on the grass beneath their chins. Perhaps they don’t notice; perhaps their hearing aids are defective; perhaps I never should have worn mine.

No doubt you, my patient reader, are wondering why I am Jeremiading. The phonias -that’s what I’m on about. Misophonia, for example, is word apparently coined in 2001 by professor Pawel Jastreboff and his partner while working on hyperacusis patients who had a decreased tolerance to specific sounds or their associated stimuli.[i] These triggers are experienced as unpleasant or distressing and tend to evoke strong negative emotional, physiological, and behavioral responses (e. g., irritation, anger, anxiety) that are not observed in most other people. Often the triggers are associated with eating, or even loud breathing: unnecessary horking springs to mind.

Yup, that pretty well describes my reaction to disgusting table behaviours. I have never sought counselling for it, however; it’s never been bad enough for me to want to pay someone to change my mind. And anyway, I think I’ve been clever at covering my revulsion: two wrongs don’t make a right, you know. Still, full disclosure: I have to confess that, like many things in old age, I’m no longer very good remembering to hold grudges. I can usually turn a blind ear to things I don’t like -or let the little ear-things in one of my hearing aids drift from its proper location; I’ve become pretty good at that.

No, I’m afraid that over the years, I have become more of a philophoniac, although I’m not sure if the condition has been coined as such yet. But so many other sounds beg for my attention nowadays –beautiful sounds. Sounds that are more like gifts than noises. Music, I suppose, occupies most of the space and (of course) I have drawn attention to that in a previous essay.[ii] How could I not, when for me, it has more power to evoke strongly positive emotional, physiological and behavioral responses compared to the misophonal thing? How else would I explain the shiver I often experience with a particularly moving melody?

Still, music is only one item in the overburdened catalogue of auditory delights that I live for. There is, of a summer evening, a bird whose song entrances me like a whispered prayer; I hear it deep in the woods behind my house, and it pulls me onto the porch as the light begins to fade: the Swainson’s thrush. Perhaps it is so special to me because I used to associate it with going to summer camp when I was young. It’s a very plain olive-brown bird according to my Peterson Field guide; I’ve never actually spotted one in the forest, but that, perhaps, is what makes it so magical: it’s as if the trees themselves are greeting me.

And then, there is the sound of a contented sigh: my dog does that as he falls asleep and people reward me with it when they are enjoying themselves. I suppose the sound of a child’s laughter has a similar effect on me, although it energizes, rather than calms me; it is a door held slightly ajar to a world I once inhabited; it is an invitation to remember things that still live deep within me. Children are the unwitting purveyors of the music we hope to hear echoing in ourselves as we struggle through the years.

How, then, can we fail to appreciate the miracle of sound? Somehow, our brains can transform insensate vibrations arriving at our ears and imbue them with meaning. Is it that, or something more profound, more magical, that can sometimes allow sound to bypass meaning and transmute it directly into beauty… Or, I suppose, noise? What is the difference between dislike and appreciation anyway? Context? Mood? History…? Is the value of the sound we process, really only a function of the information it contains? The same shout can both annoy and inform. Why is that any different from the noise that offends at the dinner table? Perhaps I have a choice whether to be a philo, or a miso. Is it just because I am old now, and can no longer be bothered to mount the effort to be a misophoniac anymore? Or did I never really qualify as a card-carrying objector?

Some things are truly lost in the mists of Time, I suppose…

[i] https://psyche.co/ideas/the-reason-little-noises-drive-you-mad-is-about-more-than-sounds

[ii] https://musingsonwomenshealth.com/2020/05/20/whisper-music-to-my-weary-spirit/

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