Issue 21: What Beethoven's Hearing Loss Can Teach Us About Love

Shutting out the noise and focusing on the love in our relationships.

Feb 11, 2021

Hello,

Because my letters to you are a labor of love, I’ll start today’s letter with a fact about my writing process (specifically for the letters): even though I now use a content calendar, I try not to be rigid about the stories I curate. Instead of searching for stories, I allow stories find me. I have a bunch of regular reads/listens: One Great Story (thanks to Aanu for the recommendation about a year ago), Pocket is a goldmine (you can follow mine here), social media, newsletters, and whatever my boyfriend, colleagues, friends (shout out to Fu’ad), send my way.

This week though, because I knew I was going to write about love, I kept an eye out for love in LITERALLY everything. If you use social media, you can’t escape red hearts and romance movies in February. On Saturday, I watched Malcolm and Marie and wondered how I could use their arguments, the poignant dialogue to build a story around toxic affairs. I listened to this Invisibilia podcast episode, “Love and Lapses” about the decline of relationships due to memory loss and sickness and thought: this would be a great non-romantic love story to tell. After reading literally everything on my reading list, I came across this short article about Beethoven’s deafness and decided this was it; this was the one. I know you’re wondering what exactly this has to do with love. The truth is absolutely nothing. But as someone who loves to draw parallel lines, I’ll show you something.

Now Listening: Rage Over A Lost Penny

I had never cared for Beethoven’s life (or music) up until yesterday. I knew he composed his most complex and highly regarded symphony, while deaf, but I also knew of theories that claimed he could hear in his left ear. This particular article though, argues that Beethoven’s music became distinct after he lost his sense of hearing: he didn’t hear and this enabled him to construct symphonies without the distraction of hearing other composer’s work.

“Deafness freed Beethoven as a composer because he no longer had society’s soundtrack in his ears.”

Now Listening: Piano Sonata No.15 In C Sharp Minor

It’s the perfect analogy for shutting out the noise in the “digital age”. People often list out arbitrary rules on how you must love your partner, your parents, your siblings, your best friends, making up rules without context, forgetting that we’re all different and unique. These rules can serve as confirmation bias (I knew it: if Lagbaja doesn’t wish me a happy birthday, she hates me — not that she’s Jehovah’s witness), or metamorphose to envy (oh, God, look at what Barack Obama bought for Michelle, why won’t my boyfriend buy me this? — forgetting that you’re both struggling undergrads.)

When you suppress the noise, you get a lot of clarity on the standards you want in your own relationship and friendships. You get to define your own rules and create your story as you go.

I believe in unconventional ways to express love. Not in the sense that it’s unnatural (or violent), but that it defies societal expectations of what it means to love. Valentine’s day is sweet and well-meaning, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to or can’t afford to. I feel the same way about grand gestures like a lavish, public proposal. I prefer genuinely thoughtful expressions of love: did you buy me this soup bowl because you know there’s no place to find egusi in Norwich and know I love egusi and would suffer if I went one more month without, or did you buy it because it's a commercial celebration and it’d be odd not to gift me something. It’s perhaps why I was so intrigued by this story of the spiders who eat their mothers alive. Matriphagy. What is described as extreme in human terms, could be/is for the mothers, a selfless act. A sacrifice.

And sometimes, we don’t know enough about how to love until it’s too late. This podcast about Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr.’s relationship with his mother broke my heart. Humans are complicated and messy; we tend to love in brazen ways. Or rather, we do brazen things and call them love. It’s only after, in hindsight, that we sit, analyze our actions and realize we could have done better.

Based on this, I decided to ask a few close friends what they had learned from expressing their love over the years. Here’s what they said:

“Love leaves room for redemption. Over and over again.”
- Loretta.

“Love is tolerant.”
- Dunni.

“Love can be many things, and take many forms, including absence.”
- Esther.

“We underestimate how much of love is being consistent in doing administrative work.”
- Tochukwu.

“Even difficult people are deserving of love.”
- Ona

“Love is a choice. When my best guys call, I always pick, even though I don’t feel like it.”
- Bolu

“Love is learning and understanding that people are different from you, but you have to accept it and set the boundaries that allow you to love them wholly. I’ve learned to expand myself and be less selfish, to give and be more understanding. Somehow, I have grown softer. There’s this confidence because I know they’ll always be there.”
- Akachi.

“You don’t have to love two people the same way. Just because they're your family doesn’t mean you must love them. Love isn’t automatic. Love is an expression, a constant choice, especially on days you don’t particularly like the person. The wrong kind of love will break you and guess what will piece you back together again? Love from family, from friends who have become family and love from you to yourself.”
- Iyin.

What have you learned from Love?

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