By Russ Riendeau, Ph.D.
According to Riendeau, this abstract painting, “Optimism,” came about because he felt the need for some bright, cheerful colors in a world of gloom and confinement.
I'm a business professional, writer, composer, and behavioral psychologist with moderate and severe hearing loss that continues to lose ground.
I wear hearing devices but over the years as I have struggled with my hearing, I could feel and see changes in how I interact with others, in social situations, with family, and, more personally, in how I started to withdraw and become more introverted and retrospective.
This wood piece by Riendeau, “Spirit of the Saddle,” is made from a retired equestrian saddle. A local magazine in Chicago will be featuring this image on its June cover to raffle off to fundraise for a local equestrian therapy center that works with autistic kids.
These changes are both good and bad for different reasons. I sought new ways to express myself as a musician and writer, discovering abstract painting, sculpture, and drawing. Art seems to be an innate way humans cope with challenges, and makes sense in the changing world around us. Poetry writing, too, became for me a creative and dynamic way to express my struggles. I have a new book of poems and prose, “With Both Feet,” that is due out late this summer.
I hope my poem below will give others a sense of understanding they are not alone as well as letting typical hearing people know about the needs people who are hard of hearing need to better communicate.
Paint Has a Sound
Deafness has me in her crosshairs. I feel her breath in my ear.
Chasing me down a dark alley, I the prey. Footsteps behind me I felt, not heard.
Invading my space, rearranging my place, the world I knew, now replaced.
Not a startling noise in years has caused me to spin and turn.
No jumps or jolts, broken is my audio periscope.
Words lost of intrigue, intimacy, entice me, yet never to be cut on my dulled edge of frequencies.
Anatomy of vibrating bones and nerves, in such a glorious casing of human skull, still assassinated by disease, riddled with decay; violent decibels shredding the strongest of primitive structures left in disarray, shambles.
I am both victim and the accomplice to this sinking silence.
Inward, I retreat. Where else would I go? Withdrawing from voices too exhausting to discern, I stumble upon a rejoiceful solace--new expressions for my ideas—an escape from pain and isolation in silent
struggles.
Paint has a sound, you know?
She vibrates, laughs, breathes, cries in a world of non-noise. Colors rage more brilliant, pungent with life I used to only hear, not feel or really see.
Pigments now my trumpet to counter, not to reject sounds showing neglect. Sounds, like a broken mirror, can’t reflect.
Paint has a sound, you know?
Just listen.
Russ Riendeau, Ph.D., is a partner and the chief behavioral scientist at New Frontier Search Company, a talent acquisition company in Illinois.
