Julian Scharf rediscovers music after cochlear implant, throws party for new ears
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Lost and sound
Julian Scharf once thought he'd never hear music again. But this song-loving papa's got a brand new bag, and he threw a party to celebrate.
The backyard party looks just like any other: friends laugh and swap stories over a beer, as children play on the grass. As the sun goes down, the dance floor fires up.
But for Julian Scharf, it's different.
He's only hearing the records he's spinning thanks to his "robot ear" — a cochlear implant that's embedded in his head.
"I'm just so happy that music's back in my life," says Julz, as he is known to his mates.
Doctors think Julian's hearing loss began when he was three, but he wasn't diagnosed until he was eight.
In the middle of last year, the Brisbane father of two rapidly lost the hearing he did have. His hearing aids lost clarity, and he was left "pretty much totally deaf".
"With my hearing aids out, I could mow the lawn and not hear anything, or use an angle grinder and not hear anything," the 32-year-old says, explaining his 'severe to profound' level of hearing loss.
"I could go clubbing and be standing right next to the speaker and not hear a thing."
As Julian's hearing faded, the world of music that had always filled his life got smaller and smaller.
He likens it to watching a house full of photo albums go up in flames.
"I was still always playing songs in my head. I'd always wake up with a song in my head," he says.
"I didn't stop grooving in my own way to the music I already had in my mental hard-drive.
"But I just couldn't add any new music. I couldn't hear it, I couldn't feel it."
Friendships built around music ground to a halt, and a devastated Julian mourned the loss of a future where he shared songs with his kids.
"With my childhood, it was all about music. We had this red double cassette album of the Beatles — all the super poppy ones from the early '60s, like Love Me Do," he recalls.
"Mum just used to play them all the time, in the car, wherever we would go, and it just melded into our brains. It made the time go quicker, it made things more fun.
"The idea of not being able to have those memories with my own children was really hard."
In May, salvation came in the form of a cochlear implant in his left ear. It was a scary step for Julian — if it didn't work, he'd be worse off.
But it did, and Julian's world "exploded".
Unlike hearing aids, which just make sounds louder, the electronic implant does the work of the damaged parts of the inner ear, or cochlea, to provide signals to the brain.
"The mapping process is pretty weird and interesting — you're getting your brain stem directly stimulated, and then over the next couple of months your head tries to make sense of that," Julian says.
Initially the quality in his left ear was "choppy" or "pixelated".
"It literally sounds like the audio equivalent of a low-resolution photo. Everything sounds like R2D2, and squawky, and chipmunky, and robotic," Julian says.
But it slowly got better, and Julian began to rediscover the music he thought he'd lost forever.
"I can hear music and feel the euphoric nostalgia again. I can hear it and feel the surge of energy again, and I definitely do not take that for granted," he says.
The party, complete with a garage disco, was his way of celebrating "old stuff, new stuff, good stuff, bad stuff, cool stuff, not-so-cool stuff" — and the trove of memories those tunes bring back.
On the playlist was everything from James Brown to Daft Punk, Led Zepplin, The Smiths, Joy Division, Michael Jackson, Blondie, AC/DC, The Dandy Warhols, David Bowie, The Cure and Coldplay — but not, Julian jokes, U2, who "still suck".
"We just played music all night — my cousins, and my wife, and my mum, and my friends danced all night. I was putting on record after record, it was really good fun," Julian says.
"There was quite a few people there that I haven't seen in a very long time.
"The best part was sharing music with [my son] Myles. At the start we played a few tracks together, and he decided what the next song would be. That was really, really cool."
Photo:
Myles Scharf plays with glow sticks at a party on November 19, 2016. (ABC News: Monique Ross)
When they talk about Julian, his friends use words like "courageous" and "brave" and "legendary".
But that isn't how he sees it. Julian says while things like playing guitar would be easier if he could hear like everyone else, it's not that big a deal.
"I can understand why they might think that. But it just is what it is," he says.
"I don't really see myself as being too different to anyone else. But every now and then I see someone with a different disability to myself, and I think 'wow, it must be really hard for them'.
"And then I have to do a little check on myself, and think 'I wonder if people might be looking at me in the same way'. And then I look at them again, and see that they're just taking it in their stride, so it's not that big of a deal, they're just doing their thing, like I am."
The quality of Julian's hearing is now better than ever before.
"It's amazing how little hearing I had, and how much more obvious that is now I have a cochlear implant. The contrast is huge," he says.
Music, which was always turned down so Julian could hear basic sounds and conversations, now plays constantly, and he's discovering new loves on a daily basis.
He recalls being "flooded with tears" three tracks into Jeff Buckley's Grace, loving Joy Division's "gorgeously heavy" Unknown Pleasures and thinks Led Zeppelin "sounds epic".
"Two days ago I put on this album by My Bloody Valentine — it's really heavy, thick, distorted guitar. It's 70 guitar tracks layered over each other, and it creates this tunnel of sound. And I would not have thought to be able to listen to that," Julian says.
"Jazz is so much better than it was. There's an album called Sketches of Spain by Miles Davis that I love. It's gorgeous — he actually recorded it with an orchestra. I can't remember ever having much of an enjoyment for any kind of orchestral production.
"It's definitely not just electronic music now, it's everything. And live sounds are phenomenal."
It's about to get even better for Julian.
Tomorrow he is getting a cochlear implant in his right ear, and says he is "full-blown excited".
"Right now there's no sound coming in my right ear at all. I can forget to put my hearing aid in, and not notice. I can have the battery in my hearing aid go completely flat, and not know how long it's been off for," he says.
"Still, every now and then I'll turn my implant off, and just listen with my hearing aid ear and think, 'I'm about to lose this, do I really want to do this?' And the answer is yes, I do.
"Because it just doesn't compare. With a hearing aid you can't hear the form of the song, you can't follow the beat."
And there are already plans for another party.
"We have so many songs to listen to. And the garage is already a disco!" Julian laughs.
Topics: music, hearing, arts-and-entertainment, human-interest, brisbane-4000, qld, australia
