Song Without Words, by Gerald Shea – review

At the age of six, Gerald Shea had scarlet fever. The sounds of birds passed into memory to be replaced by the sound of locusts. Not only had Shea developed tinnitus, he had lost the ability to hear high frequencies.   Broadly speaking, he could only hear vowels, not consonants. If you can hear vowels, you can grasp the intonation and the feel of what is said, but not get much meaning. He calls this his ‘language of lyricals’. Neither Shea nor his family realised that he was now partially deaf, and thus slightly out of sync with the world. My own experience of deafness is different: I was born deaf, so having ears that don’t work is ‘normal’ for me. And unlike Shea, I always knew that most people could hear, whereas I could not.

Shea’s young life was outwardly successful. Athletic ability admitted him to a good school; his quick brain got him into Yale, where, still able to appreciate music, he joined the illustrious (and wonderfully named) a capella group the Whiffenpoofs. Meanwhile, without realising it, he developed coping mechanisms. If he lost the conversational thread, he would tell an amusing anecdote or burst into song. Assuming that everyone else was better at understanding lectures than he was, he spent many hours reading to fill the gaps.

After Yale, Shea joined a high-powered New York law firm and life became increasingly difficult. By day he would write down what he thought he was hearing; by night he would make sense of his jottings. Time spent decoding the world meant that his romantic and social life suffered. The strain resulted in the unhappy Shea developing gastric ulcers.

He finally found out that he had severe hearing loss after undergoing a medical when applying for a new job.