The Oscars were last night and no I didn’t watch. To paraphrase Ogden Nash, my interest in the subject would have to grow to be even cursory. (And you thought the curmudgeon in the title was just for alliteration.)

Frankly, I’d sooner mindlessly stare into space. At least it wouldn’t be deafening.

Well, not the Oscars so much; they are, after all, on television and one can turn the volume down. One cannot say the same thing about what the Oscar celebrate: movies.

When was it decided – and who did this deciding and why weren’t we consulted? – that we shouldn’t just hear the sound but feel it vibrate down from our toes to the top of our tinny tin heads? How did going to a movie turn into a full frontal assault on our senses, from movement and colour and flashing lights to that ubiquitous noise they are careful to remind us is the patented Dolby surround sound?

Once upon a time one could go to a movie, yes even action ones without going deaf. I was first in line when those early Star Trek movies came out and I saw the first Die Hard in the movie theatre. It was loud, but I don’t recall coming out feeling like I’d just been put through the wash cycle.

In those days I wasn’t flinching and stuffing my ears with Kleenex or covering my eyes to protect them from the flashing lights that would end up giving me a migraine. The last “action” movie I saw, one of the Johnny Depp pirate movies, well, I left that so dazed and battered that I barely remembered what I’d seen.

How did deafeningly loud become normal? Or is everyone just deaf? 

So much of the noise around us we barely notice. The hum of computers and air cleaners and refrigerators; the constant hum of traffic, the honking, the music blaring out of car stereos … And of course everyone is in their own little world of sound, with those earbuds.

I’m not a total Luddite, I got an MP3 player years ago. I filled it with music. I listened. Then I realized than as I was walking I kept turning the sound up to compensate for the noise all around me – and if I had been listening for a few hours at night there was a constant ringing in my ears. It would go away but what I know about the sensitivity of the ear told me that if I kept doing this it eventually would not and the result would be tinnitus. A ringing that simply never goes away.

I doubt most of the people on the subway or the bus or walking down the street really pay that much attention. Which suggests to me that in a decade or two anything relating to enhanced hearing will make a fortune since most people will be partially deaf. (We should all buy stock now.)

A number of big names – William Shatner, Jerome Groopman (author of the best selling How Doctors Think book) – have gone public with their tinnitus. Experts tell us that it’s probably the result of prolonged exposure to loud noise.

Then there’s the Who’s Pete Townshend, who is essentially deaf. The Who, as you might recall, is credited with having performed the loudest concert in history, at least at the time, circa 1976: decibel level 120. That’s about as loud as a jackhammer. Almost as loud as a jet engine. That’s loud.

Respect the ear – or it’ll give up on you

The human ear is an amazing thing. Inner, middle, outer ear: each have their function, each play a role in funneling sound through tiny cilia (little tiny hairs) and through the ear drum, into the brain where it’s interpreted and experienced. A human ear can pick up the dripping of a faucet in the middle of the night on another floor, hear a symphony or a the swish of even a piece of paper falling to the floor.

It’s amazingly balanced between the inside, conduit to the brain, and the outside world. Precisely balanced in between are three small bones (the smallest bones in the body) that are shaped somewhat like a stick figure or one of those triangles your music teacher would have you play if you weren’t musical enough to actually play something normal (like me). OK, I played piano but she was the one doing that.

These tiny bones can easily work their way out of alignment after a blow to the head or trauma – I believe that today they can be repaired with microsurgery but it’s complicated.  In between are the smallest bones in the body that reverberate in response to the ear drum (timpanic membrane) vibrating in response to sound waves in your environment. Like the tiniest of precision percussion instruments, eventually turning into an electrical pulse that is interpreted through the neurotransmitters in your brain.

Culture often determines what we think of as noise versus music. That dripping tap of which I spoke earlier (which has been known to drive me insane and keep me awake) is, apparently, music to the Shinto-based Japanese mind. I don’t think that anyone truly enjoys a jackhammer however.

Currently I am surrounded by construction noise and have been for the least four months. It is exhausting, tiresome, intrusive and dreadful. And my ears hurt. Even with noise reduction headphones, the noise is unrelenting. The last thing I need is to go out for an evening’s “entertainment” to find myself surrounded by noise, be it the latest James Bond, war film or science fiction flick.

I hope you enjoyed the Oscars. And the nominated films. Just remember that once your hearing is gone, it’s gone. There’s no going back.