Cut From Steel

His hearing went at 28. He wrote the Ninth deaf.

Ludwig van Beethoven told a friend late in life that his hearing trouble started in 1798. He was twenty-eight, already the most talked-about pianist in Vienna. By 1801 he was writing to Franz Wegeler and Karl Amenda about the ringing in his ears. He described the humiliation of asking people to speak up.

Beethoven wrote a letter to his two brothers on 6 October 1802, from a village outside Vienna called Heiligenstadt. He described how close he had come to ending his life. Only his art held him back, he wrote. That letter never went in the post. His friends found it among his papers after he died in 1827.

He kept working anyway. Around 1818 his hearing had fallen far enough that visitors wrote to him in notebooks instead of speaking. He never went completely deaf … in his final years he could still register low tones and sudden loud sounds. Music itself was gone to him.

The Ninth Symphony was performed for the first time on 7 May 1824, at the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna. Michael Umlauf conducted it. Beethoven stood on that stage for a piece he could not hear, and the audience heard what he never would.

You are not being asked to write a symphony. The task is to book a hearing test. Beethoven had no say over his ears. You do.

The volume knob is not the problem

You turned the television up again last night. Nobody said anything, because everybody in the house gave up on that argument a while back. You told yourself the sound mix on these new shows is badly done. I have used that same line.

You also asked a man at dinner to repeat himself twice. The restaurant was loud, so you let it go. In other words, you found a reason that was not you. Most men run that play for years.

Mayo Clinic reports that people wait an average of five to ten years after a screening before they act on it. Johns Hopkins puts the typical wait at ten years. You are not unusual if that describes you. The repair simply keeps sliding to the bottom of the list.

It is not age. It is these three.

So why does everybody seem to mumble at fifty-eight? I have three better answers than your birthday. Let me take them one at a time.

01 / The Noise You Already Banked

NIDCD says long or repeated exposure at or above 85 decibels can cause hearing loss. A lawn mower sits in that band. Motorcycles run from 80 to 110 decibels. You spent thirty years around engines, saws, and loud rooms with nothing in your pocket. Human hair cells do not grow back once they go. NIDCD does call noise damage the one kind of hearing loss that is completely preventable. That helps you going forward rather than backward.

02 / The Brain Working Overtime

You do not hear with your ears alone. The brain does the assembling. When the signal thins out, the brain burns effort filling the gaps. The 2024 Lancet Commission put hearing loss at 7% of dementia cases worldwide. That ties it with high cholesterol for the largest single item on its list. Read that sentence carefully. The Commission is describing an association across whole populations. Nobody has proven it causes dementia in you.

03 / The Room You Stopped Walking Into

You skip the loud restaurant now. The small table in the corner suits you better. Johns Hopkins links hearing loss with social isolation. The brain scans also show a faster rate of atrophy. Falls go on the same list, because your ears feed your balance. Pulling back looks like a small preference. In other words, the withdrawal is the part that compounds.

Take it back this week

You can book the test this week. Mayo Clinic notes that most insurance covers a routine hearing screening, and that your primary care office can run one. The appointment is short and it does not hurt. You walk out with a chart instead of an excuse.

I want to be straight with you about hearing aids. The ACHIEVE trial followed 977 older adults for three years. Across the full group, the hearing intervention did not slow cognitive decline. In one pre-specified higher-risk subgroup of 238 adults, it slowed three-year decline by about 48%. That is one subgroup inside one trial. A hearing aid may help you hear your grandchildren. No trial has shown that it prevents dementia.

One last thing. An hour in a sound booth costs you almost nothing. The ten years you spend pretending cost you the room.

— Travis

Insider Member's Corner

6 free habits that protect what you can still hear:

You didn't put in 45 years to settle for beige.

01 / Style · Ray-Ban Aviators

Bausch & Lomb built these for military pilots and put them on public sale in 1937. General Douglas MacArthur wore a pair when photographers caught him coming ashore in the Philippines in October 1944, and the shape has not moved since. You want the metal RB3025 in gold with the green G-15 glass. Buy them from Ray-Ban or a real optician rather than a street table, because the fakes scratch inside a month.

02 / Home · A Proper Home Bar

You do not need a mahogany saloon in the basement. One shelf at the right height will do, a bar spoon, a jigger that actually measures, and heavy glass that feels like something in your hand. Stock four bottles you genuinely drink instead of twelve you are trying to impress somebody with. One good drink made slowly at home beats three bad ones bought out.

03 / Travel · A Scotch Distillery Tour On Islay

Islay is a small island off the west coast of Scotland with ten working distilleries open to visitors. The list runs Ardbeg, Lagavulin, Laphroaig, Bowmore, Bruichladdich, Caol Ila, Bunnahabhain, Kilchoman, Ardnahoe, and Port Ellen. Most men arrive on the CalMac ferry from Kennacraig, which takes about two hours. Laphroaig still runs a working malting floor and cuts its own peat. A standard tour starts around five pounds at Bruichladdich and climbs to roughly seventy at Ardbeg.