Amigod: Touch Me To Hear Me

There was a concept called Sony United back in 2013 that incited all employees of Sony-owned companies to build cross border projects among its diversified businesses and help each other in electronics, film, music, gaming. It was an incredible learning opportunity for me, and ideas like this made me love the company even more. This one gave the first glimpse of interconnectedness. The pilots created under this umbrella are the best stories we wrote with my colleagues, also if some of them sounded crazy at first hearing.

To tell the truth, I was quite confused when 

 approached us with the paradoxical idea to collaborate on a campaign supporting the cause of people living with hearing loss, and told us he is looking for an artist who would write a song about this theme. I was able to keep my concerns to myself, since a major local artist and his manager attending the briefing laughed out quickly and loud on the idea. Their reaction made me think. An excellent professional like Peter would not come up with a project he does not have a solid foundation for. It is us who lack the background, the knowledge to see his point.

I went home, and one of those lovely coincidences happened to me right after the meeting. You have to know that I rarely watch TV. Sometimes I join my wife or our kids for a film, or I watch the news when something especially noteworthy happens in the world or watch a football game just for fun, but this is not a daily routine of mine. Even more, it was not my habit in that time, so browsing aimlessly among 100+ TV stations and stopping at a national tv channel already airing an Australian film titled Listen To Your Heart, was sheer luck. The romantic drama tells the story of a girl who lost hearing in childhood and a young musician working in a restaurant. 

 wrote the script of the film, played the role of the struggling singer/songwriter, and wrote the soundtrack for the movie. The way Danny falls in love with Ariana, who can’t hear the music she inspires him to write, solved the puzzle I was faced with.

First thing next morning, I called Peter and asked his permission to work on the song with Leander Köteles without any obligation from SONY to use it if they dislike the result. While waiting on the DVD – I have ordered on eBay right after I finished watching the film on TV – to arrive from Australia, I tried to tell Leander about the proposition without much success. He wrote a beautiful, but disappointingly short jingle for the cause, unable to imagine a song for the deaf.

I started to research to give him some leads which way to build the song from the tiny musical idea he created. It was a painful process. Trying to imagine the world without sounds. Envisioning my life without music. On the other hand, I have found a lot of interesting facts and figures about the topic. It is marvelous that hearing-impaired people use their fingers to feel the resonance of objects, even dance to the rhythm of the music touching the tables, chairs in a disco, or a concert hall. I dived deep into the mythology and science of silence to be able to feel their deficit. And found wonderful stories about silence and emptiness. My favorite one being the story of the Room Of Silence in Berlin, where people, regardless of their world view and religion, can meditate. At the end of my quest, I sent a short poem titled Can’t stand the silence to Leander as the brief:

I’m staring at the world with empty eyes
Sense no colours, nor shapes
It’s like looking through ancient dim lens
And I can’t even recall your face
Is this the night or I’m blind?

I’m helpless in the cold Room of Silence
Harpocrates despises me
The God Of Silence drowns me
Meretseger kills me
She who loves silence hates me

Please
Teach me to hear you
Please
Hear me to touch you
Please
Touch me to teach you

I hear you, and I see you again clearly
I touch you and your songs lift me
You teach me to be whole again

I cannot describe the joyful surprise I felt when he sent the song some days later, to hear some of my words sung by an extraordinary singer like Leander, to became unintentionally co-writer of a beautiful song like Touch Me To Hear Me: