i fixed my earphones

i fixed my earphones.

 

this was more of an emotional event than i had anticipated.

about 10 months ago, i made the mistake of falling asleep wearing my earphones, and when i awoke, the right earpiece was broken into two pieces. i must have rolled over it in my sleep and it snapped. i was traveling when it happened which made it pretty upsetting, but it felt like the loss of an old friend. the earphones were fantastic. they fit perfectly inside my ear and everything i played seemed to resonate in a hollow space behind my forehead. the music seemed more like it was coming to me from my mind than to me through my ears... at least that is how i could imagine it. i buried my face in my pillow and contorted my diaphragm into a completely exhaustive face reddening scream, and then i cried.

 

apparently super glue is a universally understood term, and i found myself sitting on the floor with some toothpicks and bits of paper trying to figure out how to mate the two severed halves. with a splinter tip of superglue, and shaky hands, i managed to mate the two pieces together and then i splinted them together with a piece of tape torn off my sketchbook binding.

 

after it dried, i nervously put the earsleeve back on the earpiece, put it back in my ear, plugged in some music, and hit play...

 

the effect was overwhelming and immediately obvious: the mended earpiece's volume was substantially muted and quieter, and in order to hear anything recognizable, i had to turn up the volume so high that it hurt my other ear.

 

my magical earphones would never be the same. once again i was crushed.

 

nevertheless, i continued to use them. even the pseudo-mono sound that i got was better than the other pair i had, and i just didn't have the budget to throw down on another $150 pair of earphones. over time, i just got used to the fact that i would ever after hear music through my ear instead of my mind.

 

until today.

 

what inspired me? i have no idea. i would like to think it was just time. i was listening to some music and i decided it was time to tinker. when i took off the earsleeve and peeked inside, i could see a small metal core with what looked like a screen at the bottom.

 

?what if the screen was simply clogged with superglue or something?

 

i looked around to see if i could find something that i could poke inside to clean the screen and i saw the little mini screwdriver attachment on my leatherman... perfect. i poked it into the core to see what i could scrape loose, but when i pulled it out, the whole core came out with it.

 

crap... now what.

 

then i dropped it somewhere on my carpet. shit.

 

but instead of panicking, i put the earsleeve back on and stuck the thing in my ear and hit play...

 

it... was... beautiful...  *sigh*

 

i just sat there and let the music flow into my head for the first time in almost a year. it felt like a first drink of water after days in the desert. it felt like the first night back in your own bed after a year on the road. it felt like home.

 

i've seen a lot of things over here that i really have no need of ever seeing again. i've watched people on both sides get killed. i can tell you what it is like to watch an armored personnel carrier get hit by an ied and burst into flames, with no one coming out. i can tell you what a rocket looks like when it explodes 50 feet from you. i can tell you what gunfire sounds like over a radio and how a tactical air controller sounds when he thinks you could be his last chance.

 

but i really can't explain why, when i filled my head with music for the first time in almost a year, my eyes couldn't stop watering.