“When I Go Deaf” – Low
(Words/music: Mimi Parker, Zak Sally, and Alan Sparhawk, available on The Great Destroyer, Sub Pop 2005)

Even though I haven’t touched drums in an embarrassingly long time, I still consider myself a drummer.  I started playing the drums sixteen years ago, and for many of those years (the first eleven, we’ll say), it was a bit part of my personality.  These days, mostly due to time and logistics (as a drum set takes up a lot of room and creates a lot of noise), I call myself a “lapsed drummer” in the way that non-practicing Catholics still identify with their religion; I grew up playing the drums, and in many ways they shaped who I am today.  Thankfully, in high school, I started wearing ear protection (learning to play the drums by listening to Dave Grohl might not be good for the ear canal) while practicing, otherwise I’d have some serious hearing loss.  While my most recent hearing test turned out fine, I still fear that I’ve chipped away at my ability to hear higher frequencies, so the lingering fear of going deaf sits in the back of my brain.  

“When I Go Deaf” is less about actual deafness than it is about the burden of creativity.  Alan Sparhawk greets the eventual loss of hearing as a freeing moment releasing him from, among other things, the need to fight with his lover and the relentless songwriting process.  It’s interesting because it goes beyond the “I’d die if I went deaf because I couldn’t listen to music anymore” stock answer that so many of us throw out casually.  Instead, Sparhawk focuses in on these “freedoms” in a slightly ironic way.  He focuses in on the ways that words hurt relationships – lies, arguments, etc – but doesn’t note how words probably brought his narrator and his lover together in the first place.  Sure, we say things (intentionally and unintentionally) that hurt those that we love, but we often overlook the power of communication to bring two individuals together in the first place.

However, the fourth verse is the most interesting one to me.  On the surface, it seems like the narrator is complaining about having to be a songwriter.  Instead of taking this as a “pressures of being famous” song (as Low never really earned a high enough profile to warrant that type of song), I see two possible readings to this line.  On one hand, the freedom from having to scratch out couplets comes from a dedication to express the idea in one’s head as accurately and completely as possible.  In a way, if the medium was unavailable, the narrator no longer has to spend hours or days carefully crafting a song in order for it to match the idea in his head.  Alternately, this (along with the previous verse) could be freeing in that it forces the narrator out of a rut.  If all he has known was writing songs, he might slip into this medium automatically without having to consider if it’s the best way to express the idea.  If he goes deaf and can’t write songs, he’s free to express himself in other ways that aren’t necessarily constrained by rhyme schemes or song structures.  In either case, the bottled up idea no longer controls the artist.

Sonically, “When I Go Deaf” is gorgeous, as it builds from the slow strums and flawless harmonies to the sonic blast at the end of the song.  It’s an odd aesthetic choice for a band so associated with producing quiet, fragile arrangements, and this deliberate choice suggests one final blowout before the silence rolls in.  I know that if I eventually go deaf, I’d love for my final moments of hearing to be similarly grand.

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