Exercise #7

Ludwig hastily scratched notes on the paper with his pen, dipping and redipping in the black ink, leaning over his work. Then he set the pen in its stand again, turned back to the piano, and played the chords he had written. Not quite right, not quite right. He picked up the pen and scratched out the last two notes, leaned back over the piano. The ivory keys were cool under his fingers, and he had had to throw on another sweater. Fall was coming, but he hadn't yet started the fire crackling. The wind outside rustled the leaves in the trees, but he couldn't hear them. He barely heard their sounds when the windows were open, and now that they were shut, he heard nothing from outside at all. A clock ticked on the wall.

On a good day, he would be surrounded by silence. Today his work was accompanied by a persistent, high-pitched ring.

He pushed his fingers down on the piano, trying again the progression of chords. He thought that's what he needed – the tension of augmentation – but he was having trouble making out the higher notes. He pushed them harder, harder, harder, as his frustration rose, and the low notes echoed, but the high notes, the twist of augmentation he knew was there, he could not make out. He stopped. He slammed his ring finger against the high F.

There it was. Faintly. He hit it harder. Again, and again, and again, he hit it, trying to distinguish the sound of the F through the sound of the ringing, which he judged to be D, slightly sharper than normal.

It wasn't clear. He stood up, nearly knocking the ink from the table beside him, paced the room and ran his fingers through his hair.

How could he continue like this? The one thing he needs is to be able to compose and with each day that goes by he finds it harder and harder.

On his desk sit cones, instruments that are supposed to help him hear better. Stick them in your ear when people are talking to you, his doctors say. But how does it help his composing? His playing? How does he hold a cone to his ear while he plays?

It keeps getting worse. They cannot tell him how long it will be or even why it is happening.
He looks out the window and watches a bird as it sits in the tree, opening and closing its beak. All he hears is that sharp D. He cannot take it. He grabs his hair to have something to grab onto.