Eddy says...

so let's keep this blog moving.

i was gona post up something else, i was considering posting up my own experiences of tinnitus, but EDDy TM's little article from The Remix Update mailout was so passionate and so spot on that i thought it rude not to share his words of wisdom on tinnitus

I remember the carefree days of going to a gig, blasting my eardrums with glorious and beautiful music, then getting home with a ringing in my ears. How long it lasted depended on the volume, I guess. I'd always have trouble getting to sleep, but it would almost always be gone by the next morning or the day after that. I thought it was just part and parcel of going to a gig. Van Halen at Birmingham Civic Centre Coliseum in Alabama set an unbeaten record of about a week, but it always went away eventually. Then, one day, about a decade ago... it didn't.

I have a constant high-pitched tone in one or both of my ears, and it's something I carry with me always, wherever I go. I don't notice it in the day, there's too much ambient noise in London, even at night. It's when I go somewhere really quiet, in the countryside, that it really affects me. I lie down to sleep and, with the absence of planes, trains and automobiles, I realise the awful truth that I cannot hear the silence. That lovely sense of total quiet, of blissful peace, is something I will never experience again. Please don't let this happen to you. It's so easy to prevent it, just get some earplugs. Please.

If you're a musician, a DJ, a producer or if you simply go to a lot of gigs or clubs, then you MUST invest in a pair of fitted earplugs. It's the best £175 I ever spent. I never get that ringing after gigs anymore, and my tinnitus hasn't got any worse since I started wearing them, it's even got a little better.

If you're on a tight budget, then you can get decent off-the-peg earplugs for less than a round of drinks, and even those yellow spongy ones are better than nothing, and you can get them for about as much as a bag of crisps. They're not ideal sound-wise because they tend to muffle things, but that's got to be better than getting tinnitus.

The whole point is to raise awareness. The British Tinnitus Association, who have bugger all funding, yet still manage to pay for a phoneline so people who are having a hard time dealing with their tinnitus have someone to turn to and talk to.

As long as I have the power to do something about it, I'll communicate, pressure, evangelise, talk, listen, rant, and anything else I can think of to make sure that you don't find yourself in the same position as me and all these other huge hearted artists on the bill, of never hearing silence again.

Much love,
eddy X

www.tinnitus.org.uk



credit where it's due:

the article was half-inched from CMU