I had one good ear that afternoon, and it let me hear Golaski’s voice. What I also heard: the brush of my feet in grass and dry leaves and the pops of breaking twigs. Wind: the stop and start of it you can’t predict, or control. Skittering insects, chirps of forty birds, fifty clicks, chitters, squees, throat clearing, a rusty hinge squeal, a piping, pinched flutes, calls like a finger on a wet glass, return calls. The green insect almost too small to see— you couldn’t make out its shape, just a speck of green… the sound of lake water lapping a shore, the coos of doves interwoven with less familiar birds, the harmless buzz of insects with beautiful names: nyenje, usubi, nyuki.
— John Cotter, Losing Music: A Memoir (Milkweed Editions, April 11, 2023)
Book Review by Lisa Zeidner titled “In his moving memoir, John Cotter anticipates a world without sound. ‘Losing Music’ offers readers a compelling portrait of what life is like with the rare and incurable condition Ménière’s disease. (Washington Post, April 12, 2023)
