The Muse - Snap Classic

When a young man is told he is going deaf, he sets out on a challenge to memorize the songs that defined his life. He had no idea that those songs would come back to him in the most unexpected way. And a musical savant shares the inner workings of his amazing gift. STORIES The Soundtrack of Silence When a young man is told is he going deaf, he sets out on a challenge to memorize the songs that defined his life. He had no idea that those songs would come back to him in the most unexpected way. Thank you, Matt Hay, for sharing your story! A version of this story https://www.kqed.org/news/11383461/soundtrack-of-silence aired on KQED’s Q’ed Up https://www.kqed.org/news/program/qedup. Produced by April Dembosky. Sound Design by April Dembosky, Leon Morimoto & Renzo Gorrio. Sudden Savant Although most musicians spend decades honing their craft, musical genius Derek Amato never had to practice a day in his life. One day, he just sat down at the piano and his fingers began to fly across the keys with ease. As an immediate musical genius, Derek is one of the few people on Earth diagnosed with Acquired Musical Savant Syndrome. Derek takes us into the inner workings of his amazing gift. Produced by Anna Sussman & Pat Mesiti-Miller. Original score & sound design by Pat Mesiti-Miller. Season 16 - Episode 52 Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:08Glynn Washington?

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• 1:21Speaker 01

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• 1:57Glynn Washington?

  In ninth grade, my English teacher told me that I couldn't possibly have written the assignment that I turned in. When I asked her why, she frowned exasperated in front of the class. She said, "Now, we both know that you are too dumb."

• 2:19Glynn Washington?

  I fell silent. But later, I wrote again because she told me I couldn't. I wrote dark words, red words, and these words fueled by hate were hateful, notebooks of rage. Then a friend whom I secretly loved, she read one of my Fury pages and asked why. And I started to answer her. But if I said a stupid teacher said a stupid thing, I would sound stupid to her. "Write something nicer," she said. So if I did, I wrote a love letter.

• 3:04Glynn Washington?

  But I didn't call it that. I couldn't call it that. Instead, I called it a story about a ball and a stick and a parrot. She laughed as she read and clapped. And finally, she kissed me on the cheek. And then, she went out with another boy.

• 3:33Glynn Washington?

  Still, still, still, still, because I know who she really liked. Today on Snap Judgment, we proudly present The Muse. Amazing stories of the person that makes the story happen. My name is Glynn Washington. Never forget, a magic castle has many bricks. When you're listening, listen. Snap Judgment.

• 4:18Glynn Washington?

  Do you remember those audio tests you had to do at elementary school? The ones where the tones change pitch and speed and you raise your hand every time you hear something different? Well, for Matt Hay, this childhood rite of passage is where it all started. Snap judgment.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  I never raised my hand enough in the whole, like, tone test. I can even remember sometimes raising my hand because I felt like it had been too long since I heard a tone. So I was just making it up.

• 4:50Speaker 03

  Matt faked his way through hearing tests for years as a kid. He just ignored the fact that his hearing was not as good as everyone around him. And then, when he was 18, he applied to West Point for college. He had to go to Fort Knox for the physical.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  And I failed. I got a letter from the government that I had failed because of substandard auditory acuity.

• 5:12Speaker 03

  But still, he ignored what was happening. Until he couldn't hear people on the phone, he went to see a new audiologist.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  And she said, you know, your results are just coming back really weird. I'd like you to have an MRI. Like, nobody goes into an audiogram and comes out with a diagnosis of getting an MRI.

• 5:31Speaker 03

  The scan showed two tumors in his head, pushing up against his left and right hearing nerves. Doctors diagnosed him with a rare condition called neurofibromatosis type 2.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  It affects 1 in 40,000 people and, like, we had never heard of it because why would anybody have heard of it?

• 5:51Speaker 03

  Within a year, he was basically deaf in his left ear. The tumors in his brain were getting bigger. Couple of years after college, his right ear started to falter.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Everything grew really fast. I mean, it went from non-issue to major issue.

• 6:08Speaker 03

  Matt went back to the doctor. At first, this visit seemed like all the others.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  You know, the same generic pictures on the wall, the same generic wax paper on the table that they make you sit on.

• 6:19Speaker 03

  The doctor sat in front of him, in the same white coat, on the same wheelie stool.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  The doctor said, you know what? You're probably going to lose your hearing. It's not that big of a deal, which is a bold statement for somebody that's not going to lose their hearing.

• 6:34Speaker 03

  He told Matt, these tumors can grow anywhere and do way worse damage than hearing loss. He could become paralyzed, go blind, even die.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  And so this was really the first moment in my life, you know, not a girlfriend breaking up or losing a basketball game, but a first real moment where basically it doesn't matter how hard you work and it doesn't matter how kind you are, you're going to be deaf.

• 7:03Speaker 03

  The doctor said it could take a few years, or it could take 10.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  When something takes 10 years to go away, it's hard to like, prepare for the moment, you know, it's like waiting for a steamroller.

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Matt was 22. He figured while he still had some hearing in his right ear, he'd sign up for a sign language course. Once a week, he filed into a makeshift classroom at the Chicago Parks Department.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  You know, those old school desks with names carved in them had the little place underneath where you could put your treffer keeper. So there was a little bit of intimidation of, well, it's my first day of school.

• 7:39Speaker 03

  Matt was not good at it.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  It took me about, it took me about six weeks to learn the alphabet. So that's what, four or five letters a week. I also think most of the people in the room were there to learn sign language because it would be neat. I was there to learn it because it was a need. And it's not as fun to learn something out of need versus just a want.

• 8:05Speaker 03

  He also started learning to read lips and developed a distaste for mustaches. But there was this other thing he did that nobody taught him, that there was no class for.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  When you have a neurosurgeon say, hey, you're going to lose your hearing, but that's not that big of a deal, you very quickly want to start hearing things like, listen to those songs that, that really meant a lot to you because you might not ever get to hear them again.

• 8:32Speaker 03

  He started listening to his favorite songs on repeat, over and over.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  So when you think about getting a song stuck in your head, that usually just happens till you hear the next song and then that one gets stuck in your head. I found myself in a moment where I thought, what songs do I want stuck in my head for the rest of my life?

• 8:54Speaker 03

  It was the late 90s. Between Matt and his two roommates, they had one computer. It was on a folding table in the corner of the apartment.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  That we referred to as the portal of knowledge.

• 9:05Speaker 03

  Matt used it to look up song lyrics. He let his roommates fight over what to put in the Sony 5 disc changer. And Matt read the words while he listened, etching the songs into his brain.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  "The Beatles" was probably the first music I was a student of.

• 9:31Speaker 03

  He and his roommates would geek out, counting the crescendos and deciphering hidden messages.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  That was probably my first introduction into music is more than one layer.

• 9:45Speaker 03

  He did a lot of his music appreciation work on long drives in his Silver Dodge Intrepid, rotating through Phish, The Beach Boys, or Prince. It just feels like a very heavy

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 9:57Speaker 03

  choice to make. And so I sort of see it as you're choosing the soundtrack for the rest of your life.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  And I don't think that's like an overly dramatic way to put it because I didn't know if I would ever hear again. And so, what song do you want stuck in your head from age 25 to 85?

• 10:24Speaker 03

  Matt went for a lot of greatest hits and a few B-sides.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  It was one of those, like, I really need to start cramming for Prince.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  When his hearing went, he wanted to be able to hear the songs in his head, but also conjure the memories he associated with those songs. This one took him back to high school, when he and his good friend Stephanie first got their driver's licenses.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  And I have great memories going down, driving down the highway in her Subaru Legacy with all four windows down on a summer evening. And just Seven turned up all the way and all of us singing horribly along with it.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  Matt says he was really deliberate about choosing songs he associated with good times. He was not memorizing angsty teenage rock anthems or depressing ballads.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  I never connected with melancholy. That was just not how I've been programmed.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  If there was a song I associated with sadness or loneliness, it's not something I would have latched on to.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  So when I think about Good Vibrations, I just think about three buddies in an apartment. You know, we're all working and getting a real paycheck for the first time in our lives, and we've got our own place. And we're going out in the city, and we come back from a night out and just let's play some Beach Boys.

• 12:35Speaker 02

  And at time, I can remember thinking like, but I don't think people appreciate just how great this song is. So that became one that I thought, I really need to like, capture that song.

• 12:50Speaker 03

  Around the same time all this was happening, Matt met a girl, Nora. It was at a New Year's Eve party in Chicago.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  At some point in the night, got in this really great conversation with Nora and was just really struck by her. She's incredibly intelligent.

• 13:08Speaker 04

  He was funny.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  I remember her just being this very joyful person.

• 13:13Speaker 04

  He was kind.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  And she was also very cute.

• 13:16Speaker 04

  And he was cute.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  And so I positioned myself to kiss Nora at midnight.

• 13:21Speaker 03

  He got Nora's phone number, and the next week, he called her. Nora was in med school in Indianapolis at the time, and a couple of weekends later, Matt was on his way for a visit. He left work on Friday evening, then stayed until 4:00 a.m. on Monday. It was awesome.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  So we started doing that once a month, then it became every other week, then it became every week.

• 13:45Speaker 04

  He had a good side, so I would always walk on that side, talk on that side. And it became habit, so that was no big deal, really.

• 13:55Speaker 03

  She started going with Matt to his doctor's appointments, and she started taking those sign language classes, too.

• 14:05Speaker 03

  They doubled down on music together.

• 14:10Speaker 03

  They went to concerts and festivals.

• 14:14Speaker 04

  You too?

• 14:16Speaker 02

  Paul McCartney.

• 14:17Speaker 04

  Phish.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  Camping at Phish shows.

• 14:21Speaker 04

  Beck.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  You know, I can remember Nora taking her radio in to the bathroom and smell her perfume and overhear the music she's listening to as she's getting ready to go out.

• 14:43Speaker 03

  "Beautiful Way" was always the song.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  You know, I'd go on and peek in, and she's singing to herself and just probably having more fun getting ready, listening to music than she had going out.

• 15:04Speaker 03

  Matt remembers this time Nora helped him and his friends move into a new apartment.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  And I remember listening to Beck and being in our new apartment with boxes everywhere and dancing to Beck. And it was the first time I told her, "I think I'm falling in love with you."

• 15:29Speaker 02

  I think when you have the right moment in your life, and the right person, and the right situation, that the song that's there when that happens can become really powerful for ways that you didn't expect, or maybe you can't describe.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  When I would think, oh, I'm losing my hearing, I would think, Nora, I want to make sure that I remember what these sound like.

• 16:01Speaker 04

  And he had a spinal tumor in his neck that became awful, to the point where he couldn't really move, sleep, do much at all.

• 16:13Speaker 03

  Matt was going to need major surgery to remove it, but he and Nora had only been dating nine months.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  I was like, hey, I get it. Like, you don't owe me anything. I'm going to be in rehab. I don't know what life is going to be like for me. I totally get it. If you, this is more than you wanted to sign up for.

• 16:35Speaker 03

  Nora dropped out of med school. She says her priorities shifted after falling for a guy with a disease that reminded her of how short life was.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  We listened to this on the way to surgery.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  You know, "Don't worry about a thing" is a good theme on your way to brain surgery.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  This is the song that we did, "Do Something Other Than Cry."

• 17:13Speaker 03

  But the surgery wasn't all right. The doctors removed the tumor from the top of his spine, but there was a complication.

• 17:20Speaker 04

  He woke up from that surgery and couldn't walk. And he had sensory loss from the waist down.

• 17:31Speaker 03

  Doctors told him they didn't know if he would ever walk again.

• 17:35Speaker 04

  And the doctor casually said, "Well, wherever we are in a year, that's where we'll be."

• 17:41Speaker 04

  And that's all anybody really knew.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  Matt moved into a rehab center and he was by far the youngest person there. The schedule was not designed for 23-year-olds. Lunch was at 11:00, dinner was at 4:30, lights out at 6:00. So Nora would come break him out of there.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  And she'd take me to the mall and push me around in a wheelchair. And we got in trouble for staying out too late, which was like 5:30. 23-year-old rehab rebels.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  Matt saw what he had. A girl willing to give up med school to sneak him sandwiches, to snuggle in his twin bed watching the World Series. A girl who, after visiting hours, trained for a marathon to raise money for research into neurofibromatosis too.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  I thought, you can't not marry. You can't not marry the girl that does that.

• 18:45Speaker 03

  Two years after surgery, Matt and Nora got married and bought a condo in Chicago. Life was normal and happy. But Matt could no longer hear soft sounds, like the door opening when Nora came home from work, or her heels on the kitchen floor.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  Our system was when she would walk in the door to flip the lights on and off. Because otherwise I'd be doing something and all of a sudden she'd be there and it would scare me.

• 19:12Speaker 03

  Talking on the phone was a big problem. Matt couldn't follow conversations, so it would only work if he asked the questions, simple questions. And remember, this was before texting.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  For me to be able to call and say, did you need me to go to the grocery on the way home? She'll say, one for yes, two for no. She'll either say yes or no, no.

• 19:33Speaker 04

  It was August 18th of 2004, and Matt had come home for lunch that day. We had lunch on our rooftop, and I remember him walking away and I yelled to him and he didn't turn, which then with one ear, he could have, should have. And he went back to work.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  I can remember being in the elevator in my office at work and somebody was making small talk and for no reason at all, it sounded like they were underwater when they talked to me.

• 20:03Speaker 04

  He called me and he said, things are sounding weird today. It's tinny, it's...

• 20:11Speaker 04

  Muffly, like something's not right.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  So I hopped on the train and I went home and Nora, as soon as Nora got home from work, I said, I think, um, I think we're done.

• 20:30Speaker 04

  We were told this is how it could go.

• 20:34Speaker 02

  And there's a place on Division Street, Adobo Grill, that has great margaritas and great guacamole, the table side guacamole.

• 20:43Speaker 02

  So we went and got guacamole. Like, what are you doing? You lose your hearing? You go get margaritas and guacamole. And I can, so I can remember, um, walking there and just sitting across, having margaritas and telling each other, I love you.

• 21:03Speaker 04

  He wanted me to laugh.

• 21:10Speaker 04

  He wanted me to laugh so he would remember that.

• 21:15Speaker 04

  And hear me say, I love you.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  You can mouth the words, I love you to somebody. You can sign, I love you to somebody. But I wanted to make sure, I wanted to make sure I remember what it sounded like.

• 22:02Glynn Washington?

  If you're about to descend into total silence, what are the last words you want to hear? Matt's journey continues in just a moment. Stay tuned.

• 22:24Speaker 05

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• 23:04Speaker 05

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• 23:20Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the Muse episode. When last we left, Matt Hay was coming to grips with the biggest challenge he had ever faced. Snap Judgment.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  A lot of people think being deaf is like living in absolute silence, but not for Matt.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  I would have one ear that sounded like a roaring freight train, and the other ear would sound like a cryptic organ. And it's constant sound coming in at different pitches and what feels like different volume.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  They don't exactly know what causes it, but it's almost like phantom limb pain where your brain wants to hear something. And when it can't, it manufactures its own noise.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  But in terms of the outside world, he got nothing, even fire alarms, nothing.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  I would leave doors open, leave cars running, burn pizzas in the oven.

• 24:20Speaker 04

  I remember the first couple of days I would forget. I would see something, or I'd go to tell him something, or I'd say, "Matt, Matt." And then I'd be like, "Matt, Matt." He doesn't hear me. Like, it doesn't matter how loud I yell anymore. I remember sitting there in my condo, looking right at him, screaming and just being reminded like, wow, this, this has changed.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  Matt and Nora had taken those sign language classes, but they never got past the beginner level.

• 24:51Speaker 04

  When the time came, when we needed it, that's not how we communicated. It was more finger spelling or even charades.

• 25:02Speaker 03

  We're not just talking about, did you feed the dog? Will you get the mail? They're in their mid twenties, just building a marriage. And the only way they could talk about anything was to spell out every word they wanted to say.

• 25:15Speaker 04

  It was super frustrating, super frustrating. And at a time when I needed him, I mean, we even had to learn, we had to learn to communicate, but we had to learn how to fight, too.

• 25:25Speaker 03

  They couldn't yell anymore.

• 25:27Speaker 04

  And it's hard to, when you're mad, to slow down and enunciate and keep eye contact because sometimes you want to just throw something and walk out of the room, but you can't.

• 25:43Speaker 03

  Matt and Nora were talking about massive decisions or doing charades about them, like how Matt needed another brain surgery to finally remove the tumor on his hearing nerve. And there was an experimental part of the surgery, too, that really scared Matt. Doctors were going to implant a new hearing device right at the bottom of Matt's brain. It's called an auditory brainstem implant, or ABI.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  One of the things that really scared me most through this process was I, I like to research, I'm in marketing research, I research things as a career. And so, and I went to research the ABI, or I want to talk to people about the experience. There was nobody to talk to.

• 26:28Speaker 03

  At the time of Matt's surgery, only 200 people in the world had one of these devices.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  And the one person I finally get in touch with was just miserable. They were really unhappy with their ABI, they were really unhappy with their experience. Even if it does work, you should expect what they would describe as hearing life noises, buzzers, alarms. And at that point, when you can't hear anything, that even sounds great.

• 26:54Speaker 03

  There was only a 50/50 chance that the device would work at all, but those were better odds than not going through with the surgery and never hearing again.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  Despite Nora's best efforts, it's still a very isolating, lonely feeling. Because if I'm gonna live my life deaf, I'm always gonna be the guy that puts people out. I'm always gonna be the guy that needs something captioned. I'm always gonna be the guy that...

• 27:20Speaker 03

  He decided to go for it. So a month after Matt and Nora sat over margaritas, saying their final "I love yous", Matt had the ABI device implanted in his brainstem. And a month after that, the doctors filed back into his hospital room and turned on his new ears.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  At first, it just sounded like water running, sounded like somebody smashing up newspaper or wrapping paper. Things were just very robotic. And the sound you're used to, you know, you can kind of tell. You can locate noise. You can kind of feel noise coming in your ears. This was totally different because the sound came from the inside out. It went directly to my brain. So it bypassed the, like, feeling of being able to hear.

• 28:09Speaker 03

  Normal hearing relies on 60,000 nerve fibers. Matt was down to 21 man-made electrodes. And all the sound coming through the ABI device was just gibberish. Everything sounded the same.

• 28:23Speaker 02

  Clapping, or a dog bark, or an oven timer going off. Everything just had the same kind of "wrong", "wrong", "wrong", "wrong".

• 28:37Speaker 02

  Charlie Brown's teacher is probably the best analogy I can make. There was no clarity to anything.

• 28:44Speaker 03

  But every couple of months for the next year, Matt went to the audiologist so he could essentially tune the ABI. He would adjust each of the 21 electrodes until those sounds gradually came into focus.

• 29:00Speaker 03

  The guy to do that was Matt's audiologist at the House Ear Institute in Los Angeles.

• 29:05Speaker 07

  I'm Steve Otto.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  He's kind of like a piano tuner.

• 29:08Speaker 07

  And I've been doing that for 30 years.

• 29:10Speaker 03

  Making all the electrodes on the ABI device work together in harmony.

• 29:14Speaker 07

  So I test each one of the 21 electrodes, and I'll ask the person, "Oh, what's it sound like? What's-- is it low pitch? Is it high pitch?"

• 29:22Speaker 02

  So if anybody's gotten fitted for glasses, and you go in and they put the big discs in front of your eyes, and they say, "Which is better? This or this?" And the A goes from really blurry to being really crisp.

• 29:34Speaker 03

  Once Matt was able to distinguish basic sounds, the oven timer from the dog barking, it was time to try a word test.

• 29:42Speaker 07

  Smile. And they hear the recording, say a word, and their job is to repeat the word. School.

• 29:48Speaker 03

  This is really hard for new ABI patients to get right.

• 29:51Speaker 07

  Sink. They say, "You know, when you say 'mom,' what I hear doesn't go with what I see on your lips." Meat.

• 29:59Speaker 03

  For those first several months after surgery, Matt was communicating one word at a time. And yet somehow, to Nora and Matt, it seemed like the perfect time to talk about whether or not they should have kids. But Matt was coming off his second brain surgery.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Then I start wondering, you know, can I be a dad? Can I-- am I even going to be happy? Or can I do all of the things that I want to do as a parent? Would I ever hear the sound here my kids talk?

• 30:30Speaker 03

  The power of that fear, the power of that longing to communicate with his own children, could actually help him. Otto says having kids or a job are the main predictors for how well people do with the ABI. Six months after surgery, Matt was going to have both. He was back at work full-time. His boss found him a new market research job that he could do online. And Nora was pregnant with twins. Matt says he wanted to hear his kids' first words.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Just like anything else. Practice, practice, practice.

• 31:05Speaker 03

  Just as it was slowly taken from him, sounds, one by one, started to sound familiar again.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  The sound of my wife's heels on hardwood floors when she would come locking in. So I can hear the door open because that was a soft sound. But I would know she would be home because of the click, click, click of the heels.

• 31:25Speaker 03

  There was one time he was coming back from the grocery store, walking up the stairs to their condo.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  And I kept hearing this whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.

• 31:34Speaker 03

  He stopped and looked around. He examined the heating vents.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  When you only have one ear, you can't identify where a sound comes from. So I hear this whooshing sound, but I have no idea if that's from above, below, right next to me.

• 31:48Speaker 03

  He put the groceries down and retraced his steps down the stairs.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  And so it wasn't until I had walked back down and back up that I realized it was the sound of the seam on the inside of my jeans rubbing against each other. And I had been, maybe 20 years since I had heard something like a soft and subtle as the sound of your own pants rubbing against each other when you walk.

• 32:12Speaker 03

  Then one day, he and Nora got into the car. Usually, they turned the radio off. But this time, Matt recognized a rhythm coming out of the speakers.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  That first moment of hearing Crazy Game of Poker, it was like a little light went on. I thought, you know what? Maybe this is going to be an option.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  If you've ever seen the movie Pleasantville, it starts out black and white. And there's a scene where something happens and one person is in color, but everything else is still in black and white. And it's almost like, whoa, wait, what's happening? That's how it felt to me.

• 32:51Speaker 03

  He realized he could go back to the catalog of songs he had memorized to train himself how to recognize sounds.

• 33:00Speaker 03

  He decided to listen on repeat again. He'd go for drives and pull out his old CDs. Just the simple stuff, songs with minimal lyrics and really clear rhythms.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  So I could say, hey, is this Let It Be? Because I got the like bum, bum, bum.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  Particularly Beatles, that was just clean and like an easy melody. And you know, some of their songs only have 10 words.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  You know, I wasn't, I wasn't really hearing the music. I was identifying the music.

• 33:44Speaker 02

  That maybe I'm not getting the like, unique moments within the music, but I need to manage my expectations.

• 33:55Speaker 03

  But it was enough for Matt to realize that he might be able to recapture a fuller spectrum of hearing than he first thought.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  After I lost my hearing, my goal was to be able to hear people say hello and I love you. It gave me motivation to set that finish line a little bit farther out.

• 34:15Speaker 03

  Because now he and Nora had two little babies, a boy and a girl, Luke and Madeline. A couple of years later, they had another daughter, Kate.

• 34:26Speaker 04

  There was a moment when Luke and Maddie were babies. We had two rockers in the nursery, so we'd like sit side by side and read and play the Beatles lullabies.

• 34:48Speaker 03

  And in the middle of the night, when they were a bit older and couldn't sleep.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  My mentality was, let's come up with a new song to sing.

• 34:56Speaker 03

  So he turned back to the repertoire in his head.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  Prince, I can't really think anything offhand that is going to console a crying toddler. Michael Jackson, what's next? And I'm working my way to U2.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  And so I would sing and probably butcher the lyrics, but that's the beauty of singing to a two-year-old. I can remember, Kate, sing the U2 song, sing the U2 song.

• 35:23Speaker 03

  He looked up the lyrics and read them while he listened back to the song, just like in his old apartment with the portal of knowledge.

• 35:32Speaker 02

  When I listen to "All I Want Is You Now", the memory it takes me back to is Kate being an infant and toddler. And there aren't very many songs at all that I listen to now where my memory is of something that occurred after I lost my hearing. And I didn't realize that until right now.

• 35:54Speaker 03

  Luke and Maddie are 11 now. Kate is nine.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  When you go to bed, do you remember what song you asked me to sing?

• 36:02Speaker 08

  That song, I remember that one.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  You would say, "Sing me your two songs." You say...

• 36:07Speaker 08

  Oh, yeah, that one.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  Diamonds in a ring of gold.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  A story too made untold, but are there promises we made?

• 36:20Speaker 08

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:45Glynn Washington?

  Thank you so much to Matt Hay for sharing your story with The Snap. A version of that story first aired on KQED's Queued Up Podcast. Go get that one. The sound design was by April Dembosky, with additional support from Renzo Gorrio and Leon Morimoto. That story is produced by April Dembosky.

• 37:13Glynn Washington?

  Now then, when Snap Judgment returns, do you ever want to be a genius with all the fuss and bother and hard work? Well, then, do I have a story for you. When the Muse episode continues, stay tuned.

• 37:58Glynn Washington?

  Snap Judgment, Underground Studios. Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the Muse episode. My name is Glynn Washington. Now, we often imagine that there's a person behind the person that's doing the big thing, someone that inspires you to persevere and all that. But what if there was another way? Our next story begins when a man named Derek Amato went home to visit his mother. Snap Judgment.

• 38:37Speaker 09

  In 2006, I went to visit my mother in the Midwest right before my 40th birthday, and I got together with a couple of high school friends for a barbecue. And we were at the swimming pool in the apartment complex. You know, one thing led to another. It became doing backflips off the side of the swimming pool into the water. And I went running along the side of the pool, and I dove in towards the shallow end. Well, matter of fact, the very shallow end. And I remember striking the bottom with the upper left part of my head. It was just this enormous bang.

• 39:20Speaker 09

  It was as if someone just stuck two, you know, sticks of dynamite in my ears, and my head exploded.

• 39:30Speaker 09

  I remember coming out of the water and reaching immediately for my ears because I thought my ears were bleeding. I couldn't hear anything, so I absolutely had no, no understanding of what was going on. And I guess I made it towards the edge of the pool, and when I got to the edge of the pool, I collapsed, and they pulled me out onto the, to the concrete, and I went unconscious.

• 39:58Speaker 09

  I don't remember anything after hitting my head, but they took me to the emergency room and I was diagnosed with a major concussion with no bleeding. They sent me home to my mom's house and I slept for about four days.

• 40:16Speaker 09

  I remember waking up on the fifth morning. My neck was sore, my head was pretty swelled up in that upper area, my eyes were blackened. And I knew my hearing wasn't right and I didn't know at that time that I had lost almost half of the hearing from the impact in my left side. Everything was dampened. But I felt reasonably okay, just a little beat up. That evening, I went over to my best friend Rick's house and I went over to visit him and he's got a little studio and he was playing his guitar and so he sat down to take a break.

• 40:55Speaker 09

  And I had this incredibly strange, bizarre feeling that I simply needed to go sit down at that little keyboard he had up there. I've never really been a musician, but it was just... it felt right. So I went over and sat down at it and my fingers began to play as if I had played pretty much all my life. And this is the very first piece that I ever played.

• 41:41Speaker 09

  And Rick looked at me and I looked at him and I didn't know what to say. I was freaked out. What are you supposed to think when you all of a sudden sit down at a piano and you've never touched one and your hands are moving at a rapid pace and doing things that you've never, never even tried? We didn't know what to think. It was like eerie, intense, and at the same time, beautiful.

• 42:15Speaker 09

  I wasn't sure how to really explain it to my mom. I didn't know where to start. So I asked her, while we were having a cup of coffee, if she would go with me to the music store that I would like to show her something. And we jumped in the car and headed over to the music store. We walked in and went over to one of the pianos with my mom. I sat down and I started playing and she started crying.

• 42:50Speaker 09

  And then the salesman come over and said, "How long have you been playing?" And I said, "Well, about five hours." And of course, he gave me the strangest look, like I was pulling his chain. And my mom sat there crying. I played for maybe 10, 20 minutes for her. We got up and got in the car and it was a very quiet drive back to the house.

• 43:18Speaker 09

  A week or two goes by and I reached out to Dr. Darryl Treffert, whom was the advisor for the film Rain Man. I was diagnosed with acquired musical savant syndrome, which is immediate musical genius or immediate ability.

• 43:41Speaker 09

  My mind basically creates a pattern of black and white squares that almost go in like a ticker tape in a circle.

• 43:51Speaker 09

  So these black and white squares are my brain's musical notation.

• 43:59Speaker 09

  For some reason, those black and white squares tell my hands where to go.

• 44:10Speaker 09

  I don't capture all of them. There's absolutely no way to. They're going at a pace that is so intense that I can grab and display some of it, but certainly not all of it. The doctors refer to this as synesthesia. Those black and white squares dictate what I play. I have no control of what comes next. I have no idea what those notes are gonna be. So sometimes it's pop, and sometime it's rock, and sometime it's Beethoven-ish.

• 44:52Speaker 09

  From my understanding, there's about thirty acquired savants on the planet, and I am the only one to be an acquired musical savant from a brain injury.

• 45:10Speaker 09

  Before the accident, I was a pretty typical aggressive businessperson. I was making great money. I'd go to work and chase the almighty dollar, and then I'd come home and go to bed and do it all over again the next day. But after the accident, because of all the attention I was getting, I just didn't, I never went back to corporate America. It's a challenging road when you just walk away from your job and think you're gonna become a superstar because of a gift the next day. It doesn't quite happen like that. It's been the financial struggle, and it's been brutal. I have a 1984 Winnebago. Little did I know it would become my shelter for, well, quite a while. I was homeless.

• 45:56Speaker 09

  I didn't have any running water and no heat, and I ate nuts and dried fruit and tuna that comes in those little foil bags. You know, you start to second-guess yourself, and you say, "Am I being selfish? Am I chasing a dream with a gift that may not possibly pay your bills?"

• 46:24Speaker 09

  It's a bit intense when doctors and the world start putting a title on you that is so profound. And you know, just because you fall into the title of a savant doesn't mean you're the best piano player on the planet. My skills are above average, maybe, but I've never known how to read music. I still don't get it. It just makes absolutely no sense. I can't even get a grasp where a C or a D or an E should be on the piano. I can hear the tone, I just can't, I can't show you where it is. I'm just able to take what I'm seeing being produced in my mind and make some sense of it with my hands.

• 47:14Speaker 09

  People call me and say they wanted me to get involved with their charities. I go in and I do like a 40 or 70 minute storyteller set. I play a little, I talk, but the work I get is sporadic and when I get invited to perform or speak or what have you. There's a price tag on everything we do in this lifetime. And I get overwhelmed and overstimulated and sometime I'm just exhausted and I go into my little space where I feel okay. And that's usually in the studio. That's my comfort zone.

• 47:51Speaker 09

  You know, I get asked often what it would be like if I wake up tomorrow and if it's not here. And when I sit down at the piano, it's always a surprise. So, I live in the moment and I think I'm going to continue to live in the moment because that's what brings me joy.

• 48:36Glynn Washington?

  Yes, that happened. But Snapers, please, please, please, please, please do not try to reproduce the effect at home. It can't be done. I've tried. Big thanks to Derek for sharing his story with the Snap. Some of the music for that story, including the song you just heard, was played by Derek himself. The sound design was by Pat "Mcd" Miller. It was produced by Anna Sussman.

• 49:19Glynn Washington?

  Okay, so do you want more amazing storytelling in your life? Well, I know a perfect way to make it happen. Subscribe to the Snap Judgment Podcast and bring the magic with you wherever you go. iTunes, Stitcher, however you get your podcasts, hit this one, snapjudgment.org. Snap was brought to you by the letter Y, the color blue, and chocolate. Snap is lots and lots of chocolate. Additional production support provided by the Uber producer, Mr. Mark Ristich. Boom Boom, Pat "Mcd" Miller. Anna the Truth Sussman. Shayna, Rockstar Sheely. She's Back, The Attack of Liz Mack. The Thinker, Joe Blozenberg. The Doer, Renzo Goryo.

• 50:03Glynn Washington?

  The Dreamer, Eliza Smith. Taylor Cot knows things. Leonid Motel knows things. Nancy Lopez knows things. And then there's Jasmine Aguilera.

• 50:31Glynn Washington?

  And even though this is not the news, no way is this the news. In fact, you could tell a story about your high school muse on the national radio airwaves. And when she reaches out on Facebook to let you know she randomly heard something that reminded her of back in the day, and suddenly you feel exactly like you did then, you would still, still not be as far away from the news as this is, Snapers. But this is PRX.