MemberHi, my name is Fenton, I live in England, male - and as of today's date, I am now 57 years old.
My tinnitus tale begins on 9th July 2009 - a day I will never, ever forget. It was the day that changed my life.
I was sat at my desk, working from home, that day. It was about 11 am and there was nothing 'out of the ordinary'.
In hindsight, for the previous few months, I had been experiencing a high-pitched ringing in my ears that lasted for a few seconds or moments, dissipating quickly - I had dismissed it as the weird noises in our ears that we all experience, at short intervals, during our lives. But today was different, very different.
When it began, it completely overwhelmed me. The volume grew louder and louder as I sat there - in fact, it grew so loud that I leaped up from my chair and fell to the ground, falling momentarily unconscious. When I 'came back', the noise was everything. I was so shocked that this was even possible. It seemed impossible.
Thankfully, I have a guardian angel looking out for me. She is called Tracey, and she is my wife. I spent three weeks in bed, unable to think, talk, and walk. Those weeks are a blur; they consist of a blackness that is hard to penetrate. I was alive, but I did not exist. During this period, I learned that Nature could be extremely cruel beyond anything that I had imagined possible. The sound came in increasingly loud waves - it became my entire existence, all that I could conceive of.
I am weeping here, recalling this nightmare. The cruelty of it was beyond comprehension - what had I done to deserve this horror? How could Nature have blighted me so?
It was in this period of blackness and blight of sound that the images began to appear. When my eyes were closed, I would see ghostly images, generated by the sound that I was experiencing. I would see many images per second - almost like a movie reel, flickering and morphing into different images, generated in black and white, but each with implied colour.
I lived the next five years, until 2014, in a dreamlike state. I have little recollection of those years - the sound remained everything. I researched the frequency that I was hearing - between 11500-12250 Hz, oscillating several times per second, at circa 139 decibels. The images continued to be generated, and I would often fall asleep watching them, like watching a movie, with a soundtrack of soul-piercing noise. I was unable to work, and my angel supported us and my family through this period. She continues to do so, until this day. I cannot express how grateful I am for her wisdom, tolerance, and grace.
It was at the beginning of 2014 that I felt able to begin to translate some of the images that the sound had created into reality. I had no previous experience with art, at all - but felt compelled to create it. Thus, The Binary were born - binaryart.com. These are images of pure sound of mind, nterpreted into image. Once I had begun to produce The Binary, strange things began to happen.
Why am I telling you this - isn't this supposed to be a forum about tinnitus?
Well, it is all linked, I am convinced of this, now.
Through studying ancient texts, I found out that a Seer being 'born' is heralded by a noise that is unbearable to human ears. Ancient texts work in analogy - that a truth hidden within the spoken word should be interpreted for what it truly is - it's just a matter of seeing the truth for what it is. What is a Seer? A Seer is someone who sees reality in a way that other people do not see. A See-er. A Seer sees reality as it is. The ultimate irony of this reality is that truth of sight comes through sound.
Anyway, where am I going with this? I'll recap:
Tinnitus, as hard is it to believe, is a gift - once the horror of it has faded into the background, if you did bit know it. You should and must know it to be true. We are a privileged group. Hard to believe, but we are.
There is much more to say, but I will quieten for now.
One last thing:
The way in which I made my life bearable is this - I imagined that there were two 3-lane highways running North alongside one another. One 3-lane highway on the right, the other 3-lane highway on the left. On the right-hand side is the highway of tinnitus, chock full of speeding cars at high. speed, horns honking, revving their engines at full throttle - and on the left is a highway with no cars on it - and uncongested. I consciously switched to the left-hand highway. Occasionally, I have to take the right-hand lane to get to where I am going, but I know that I can switch back to the left-hand highway at the first available junction, because it is an option for me to take. This has helped me reduce the agony to less than more.
Be well, my fellow tinnitus-suffering human beings. Know in your heart that you are a part of a unique group of travellers that have the ability to see things for what they are, if you did but realise who and what you are...
Fenton
My tinnitus tale begins on 9th July 2009 - a day I will never, ever forget. It was the day that changed my life.
I was sat at my desk, working from home, that day. It was about 11 am and there was nothing 'out of the ordinary'.
In hindsight, for the previous few months, I had been experiencing a high-pitched ringing in my ears that lasted for a few seconds or moments, dissipating quickly - I had dismissed it as the weird noises in our ears that we all experience, at short intervals, during our lives. But today was different, very different.
When it began, it completely overwhelmed me. The volume grew louder and louder as I sat there - in fact, it grew so loud that I leaped up from my chair and fell to the ground, falling momentarily unconscious. When I 'came back', the noise was everything. I was so shocked that this was even possible. It seemed impossible.
Thankfully, I have a guardian angel looking out for me. She is called Tracey, and she is my wife. I spent three weeks in bed, unable to think, talk, and walk. Those weeks are a blur; they consist of a blackness that is hard to penetrate. I was alive, but I did not exist. During this period, I learned that Nature could be extremely cruel beyond anything that I had imagined possible. The sound came in increasingly loud waves - it became my entire existence, all that I could conceive of.
I am weeping here, recalling this nightmare. The cruelty of it was beyond comprehension - what had I done to deserve this horror? How could Nature have blighted me so?
It was in this period of blackness and blight of sound that the images began to appear. When my eyes were closed, I would see ghostly images, generated by the sound that I was experiencing. I would see many images per second - almost like a movie reel, flickering and morphing into different images, generated in black and white, but each with implied colour.
I lived the next five years, until 2014, in a dreamlike state. I have little recollection of those years - the sound remained everything. I researched the frequency that I was hearing - between 11500-12250 Hz, oscillating several times per second, at circa 139 decibels. The images continued to be generated, and I would often fall asleep watching them, like watching a movie, with a soundtrack of soul-piercing noise. I was unable to work, and my angel supported us and my family through this period. She continues to do so, until this day. I cannot express how grateful I am for her wisdom, tolerance, and grace.
It was at the beginning of 2014 that I felt able to begin to translate some of the images that the sound had created into reality. I had no previous experience with art, at all - but felt compelled to create it. Thus, The Binary were born - binaryart.com. These are images of pure sound of mind, nterpreted into image. Once I had begun to produce The Binary, strange things began to happen.
Why am I telling you this - isn't this supposed to be a forum about tinnitus?
Well, it is all linked, I am convinced of this, now.
Through studying ancient texts, I found out that a Seer being 'born' is heralded by a noise that is unbearable to human ears. Ancient texts work in analogy - that a truth hidden within the spoken word should be interpreted for what it truly is - it's just a matter of seeing the truth for what it is. What is a Seer? A Seer is someone who sees reality in a way that other people do not see. A See-er. A Seer sees reality as it is. The ultimate irony of this reality is that truth of sight comes through sound.
Anyway, where am I going with this? I'll recap:
Tinnitus, as hard is it to believe, is a gift - once the horror of it has faded into the background, if you did bit know it. You should and must know it to be true. We are a privileged group. Hard to believe, but we are.
There is much more to say, but I will quieten for now.
One last thing:
The way in which I made my life bearable is this - I imagined that there were two 3-lane highways running North alongside one another. One 3-lane highway on the right, the other 3-lane highway on the left. On the right-hand side is the highway of tinnitus, chock full of speeding cars at high. speed, horns honking, revving their engines at full throttle - and on the left is a highway with no cars on it - and uncongested. I consciously switched to the left-hand highway. Occasionally, I have to take the right-hand lane to get to where I am going, but I know that I can switch back to the left-hand highway at the first available junction, because it is an option for me to take. This has helped me reduce the agony to less than more.
Be well, my fellow tinnitus-suffering human beings. Know in your heart that you are a part of a unique group of travellers that have the ability to see things for what they are, if you did but realise who and what you are...
Fenton
