When I woke up on Monday this week I found that my right ear was hurting slightly, and the level of hearing in that ear had significantly decreased. At first I thought it was nothing; maybe I had just slept on it wrong. But as Tuesday and Wednesday brought more significant pain (and deafness) I booked myself in to see the campus GP. Today I was lucky to find out that it was nothing more than impacted wax that had lodged itself deep in my ear: not the most pleasant subject, but perfectly treatable.
Nevertheless, the past few days have been an interesting experience as I have essentially been living my life in mono. When I was younger I remember seeing a sticker on the front of some cassette or CD proclaiming 'Now in stereo'. I didn't understand at the time why this was such a big deal, but after a few days of living with only one functioning ear I have realised how important the second sound receptor is.
Stereo has much more importance than allowing fifteen year old aspiring sound engineers to play around with the panning effects in Goldwave. It plays an important role in depth perception, situational awareness ('Can you please sit on my left? I didn't hear you when you were talking') and the overall quality of the listening experience. Hearing through only one ear after living my life in stereo is like seeing a rainbow in grayscale – it feels hollow, tinny and incomplete. There is a beautiful symmetry to stereo that can't be understood until you lose one half of the soundscape.
All this reminds me of an old saying: “We're given two ears and only one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” That's bullshit. We're given two ears so we can cop records (and life in general) in the glory of stereo.
