The Train in the Night is Nick Coleman’s account of hearing loss and music appreciation. From Ben Hamilton’s review of the book:
[E]ventually [Coleman] was diagnosed with sudden neurosensory hearing loss, which, if you’ll excuse the phrase, is even worse than it sounds. Unable even to walk without vomiting, his life became a test of endurance. … Taunted by the “monument” of his record collection, Coleman missed music even as he craved silence. But superstar neurologist Oliver Sacks told him that the “depth” and “spaciousness” which he’d lost could be regained through imagination and memory. “One might expect,” said Sacks, “that such a power, whilst not available (or less available) voluntarily, could occur spontaneously by association with emotion, a memory.”
Hamilton considers what the book suggests about the nature of fandom:
There is inevitably something life-denying about a fan’s addiction to any art form, and Coleman only partially hides from this dilemma.
For him music is a shield, a by-product of hypersensitivity, a symptom of loneliness, and the only way to make sense of life. “I think music was the laboratory in which I learned to contain and then examine emotion,” he writes. This line of thought is followed to its bleakest conclusion: that his obsession was an escape from, rather than a refinement of, reality. But he stops before things can become utterly hopeless. Instead, burdened with what could have been a ruinous impediment, he reaffirms his love of music. It’s just that the damage to his hearing has made it accessible through “pain and exultation” rather than joy and pleasure – pain because of the buzzing mesh through which the melodies must travel; exultation because he can hear anything at all. This may seem like a bitter consolation, but it’s enough to build on. The worst has happened and yet something remains. He hasn’t changed. His body has.
The Dish 