Earlier this week we all piled into the van and went to the Weird Al concert. My inner twelve-year-old was thrilled. Weird Al, well, he rocked.
I was inspired to finally see Weird Al in person after a really lovely story about him appeared in the New York Times magazine early in the pandemic, a moment of joyful weirdness blinking on like a firefly in the darkness of April 2020. The show was everything I’d imagined—energetic, delirious, funny, frenetic, virtuoso, and with an accordion.
Also, it was loud*.
It’s been so long time since I’ve been anywhere that loud! At one point, there was some wild bass that seemed to emerge from the floor, an earthquake of sound, while the usual things—guitar and drums and keyboard and Al’s unexpectedly amazing voice—seemed to halo around the theater’s ceiling. It was a full-body sonic moment. (My kids wore earplugs. My husband wore earplugs. Why did I not wear earplugs?)
When I woke up the next morning, all I could think was that my ears needed something different. Something quiet. Waves or the wind through the trees or even just fresh air. If my ear could pull me by the ear, that’s what it was doing. The dog jumped in the car and we drove—the dog, me, my two ears—to an open space on top of the bluff.
I’m not sure if I’ve ever had the sensation of really being led by my ears. I’ve definitely run out of steam on podcasts and turned them off, or pulled out my earbuds after a while listening to music, but this felt different. Loud noises bend the tiny cells within the ear, the stereocilia, like blades of grass. The vegetation of my ears felt like it had been hit with a hard rain.
I feel like I’ve lucked out: a day later, I can still hear the cricket that just started up outside, and the sound of the walnut tree’s growing leaves in the wind. Thank you, resilient tiny cilia. Still, there was part of me that loved the feeling of having my ears know what they wanted, and following where they led. I’m not sure this is how it actually happens, but this is how I imagine my ears: walking along the bluff, their tiny cochlear hairs (some of them, anyway, the ones that aren’t already toast) beginning to unfurl themselves with the distant sounds of incoming waves. Next time, my friends, I will bring you a small umbrella, shaped like an auditory canal.
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*I know, I know, if it’s too loud, I’m too old–but my kids said that it was so intense they needed to take a month-long break from Weird Al after the show.
Image of ear mushrooms by Flickr user Rob Oo-offline under Creative Commons license.