Just like you, Matt Wild plays (played?) in a rock and roll band and is constantly broke. He has all his original hair, however, and weeps openly at baseball games.Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Damage / Repair
I went duck hunting with my father and brothers two Saturdays ago, and almost lost all hearing in my left ear - and about 50% in the right - as a result.First, a bit of clarification: I am not a hunter, though I come from a large family of them. I have no objection to the concept of hunting - the killing of animals for food, sport and population control does not offend me - nor do I have a problem with most of the hunters I've come across. My father and brothers, for instance, vote Democrat, distrust the NRA and believe Ted Nugent to be a complete douche. They respect and actively protect the environments in which they practice their sport (much more so than people who profess to be environmentally conscious by occasionally sending a check to Greenpeace - myself included); the fact that they also kill some of the wildlife populating those same environments is just one of life's little ironies. Go figure.
But this World-Wide-Web-Log isn't about hunting, it's about serious hearing loss, as well as the feelings one goes through - at 29 years of age - contemplating what color hearing aid would best give off that certain "I'm a wounded, damaged soul; please have sex with me" vibe.
My reason for tagging along with my father and brothers in the first place was simple: I wanted to hang out with my family. Additionally, I thought it would make for a good "Subversions" column, fitting in nicely with my new "Christ, I'm Really Sick of Writing About the Same Three Milwaukee Bands, So How 'Bout I Go to Some Weird Event or Convention and Get Wasted" angle. Turns out, I should have just stayed home and gone to the fucking Pillowfight show.
So…Saturday morning. Barely 7AM. My brother and I are in a camouflaged skiff a half-mile out from the shores of picturesque Rush Lake. Two dozen decoys float in the water near our blind. For some reason, I sit in the front of the boat - closest to the decoys - while my brother sits in the rear with a loaded 20-guage shotgun at the ready. Looking back, I realize how ill planned and dangerous this seating arrangement was: obviously, my brother should have been in the front of the boat (duh), and I should have been in the back, quietly smoking my cigarettes and enjoying the sunrise. Instead, each time an unfortunate duck came our way, it almost always headed straight for the decoys (duh), requiring my brother to repeatedly shoot directly over my head.
Oddly enough, this wasn't much of a problem for most of the morning. By 7:30 AM, my brother had easily downed five ducks, and was only one away from his limit. It was an unexpected shot lobbed at this final, elusive duck that would prove to be the source of my weeklong hearing woes. Replaying the incident in my head, I'm not exactly sure what happened: my brother wasn't any closer to me than he had been before, and my ear certainly wasn't any nearer to his gun. Nevertheless, the moment he fired, I instantly felt my left eardrum explode. Then, nothing.
No sound. Zilch. From Saturday morning through Tuesday afternoon, nothing; my left ear was completely dead, and my right had developed a charming little ring. In addition, there was also a fair amount of pain. (To best experience this sensation, I implore the industrious reader to stuff his or her ear full of damp, dirty cotton, and strike it sharply with a stainless steel cheese grater every ten to fifteen seconds.) Needless to say, I fell into a pretty nasty funk: any future music projects would now be impossible, as would any film work that required two functioning ears. Small children would gawk in horror at the brick-sized hearing aid I would almost surely soon be wearing, and I would forever be known as "You know, Matt Wild, that guy who lost his hearing while duck hunting. What an asshole."
My mood was so dark and ridiculous that I spent days repeating the following passage like a mantra - a monologue by Orson Welles from his final film, F for Fake:
"Our works in stone, in paint, in print are spared, some of them for a few decades, or a millennium or two, but everything must fall in war or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash: the triumphs and the frauds, the treasures and the fakes. A fact of life... we're going to die. 'Be of good heart,' cry the dead artists out of the living past. Our songs will all be silenced - but what of it? Go on singing. Maybe a man's name doesn't matter all that much." Yikes.
Things did improve, however: on Tuesday morning, some sound could finally be heard in my left ear. That afternoon, I cashed in some sick time and paid a fairly useless visit to Columbia St. Mary's Urgent Care. After nearly an hour (3/4 of which was spent perusing a month-old copy of US Weekly) I was assured of three things: my blood pressure was normal, I didn't have strep throat, and both of my eardrums were not, in fact, obliterated. Two days later, with even more sound coming back - though now accompanied by some disconcerting distortion - I went to an ENT (ear, nose, throat) specialist. Again, I was told my eardrums were intact, and that my hearing was not only good, but above average. The distortion would simply go away on its own. Things would eventually be OK.
Now, more than a week later, I'm almost completely recovered. The pain in my right ear has disappeared, and the distortion in my left has become less and less apparent. Just to be safe, I've been carrying a pair of earplugs with me at all times, and I've tried to stay away from noisy places in general (though attending last week's Gallery Night and getting loaded at Comet one lonely evening proved to be bad ideas).
Relieved that the worst was behind me, I spent this past Sunday with my girlfriend, walking through the city we live in and love. We ate brunch at The Wicked Hop, explored the side-streets of the East Side, ate cake at a no-name coffee shop on Farwell, saw The Darjeeling Limited at the Oriental Theatre, and dropped by Von Trier for a friend's going-away/pizza party. It was one of those fleeting, autumn-lit days that always reminds you of your childhood, the kind of day you instantly recognize as perfect, even though you're still in the middle of it. Don't you just love days like that?
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