Lost a bit again...

...feel a bit lost today.

Can't explain why, but I assume it is because of my 'hearing' and cochlear processor being remapped (see yesterday if you need to understand more). It's almost like a stage of grief, 'losing' the hearing I had before which was on the previous processor, (even though it wasn't working properly, although I was okay with it in the house, but not noisy situations outside the house), and having to readjust to all sounds being different.

Had some You Tube Videos on today, practising listening to the voices, it's some lads who explore abandoned properties, and I had got used to their voices the way my processor was mapped previously. But I can't make out what they are saying now at all with the new mapping on my processor...my brain needs time to readjust. I just feel like crying.

I have been painting with encaustics today. Not happy with anything I have done today. Very disatisfied. Here are two pics I have done today. So this is my contribution for my a picture every day challenge to myself for 2017.

I have just taken my processor off, going to make a cuppa, feed the beasts, and then put it in again when I come back in this room. And turn on my music and try again to listen to that. The audiologist reminded me again yesterday that cochlear implants were not designed for music. And that I would not be able to hear music. I don't accept that. I mither them each time I go to try something different to enable me to listen to music. Each time, they explain to me that I can't hear music with the processor. Each time I tell them there must be a way, and that modern technology is surely much more capable than this. The audiologist tells me again that I have only 18 working channels (all wires), whereas a hearing person has 30,000 or so channels in each ear, so by default being able to listen to music is a no no with a processor. I know I can never listen to music the way a hearing person can, and I am told that listening to music is a subjective experience. But I know, and hold firmly in my heart there is some way I can listen to music and derive the emotional benefit from it, even though I have never heard it. I need that music for my heart and soul.

Ever since I was a child I had my hands and ear pressed against a radio to feel sound. When I was a teenager my hearing friends listened to pop music and I wanted to do the same. So I got hold of a record player and bought old juke box records from the market...the ones without a centre and played them on my record player, lying on the floor, with my head pressed against where the sound was coming out to feel the vibrations, and in this way knew what song was being played because of the title on the record. I couldn't feel the words. No idea what the words were, although I did buy New Musical Express which had the words of the song, and so I 'sang' along, much to the distress of everyone around me.

I want to hear those songs now.

I have the cd's and have been practising listening to them. But I have had a few different processors, and different mappings of the processors, which has meant each time , I have had to learn to re hear whatever it was I managed to learn to hear before from the records with the previous processor and re-mappings.

By the way my cd's are mid 60's to very early 70's, same artistes and songs of the records I had all those years ago. I spent hours and hours with those old records trying to get something from them, and I did. They were played on repeat. I wore tracks out.

Now I have cd's to replicate those songs. I got a very big CD player but I have worn out the repeat function on the player itself. It doesn't like me any more, and behaves intermittently. I need them on repeat. It puts me in a place I want to be. There are a couple of old CD players in the garage someone gave me when I had the cochlear implant. I need to search for them. But they are not as big as the one I have in the house.

A long day tomorrow, Diabetic appointments, and then I have to be somewhere the rest of the day. So I am now going to try and persuade this CD player to play my tracks I like on repeat...they have a certain rhythm (I think is the word)...