Losing Music

A Memoir

By: John Cotter

Narrated by: John Cotter

“I was in the car the first time music seemed strange: the instruments less distinct, the vocals less crisp.”

John Cotter was thirty years old when he first began to notice a ringing in his ears. Soon the ringing became a roar inside his head. Next came partial deafness, then dizziness and vertigo that rendered him unable to walk, work, sleep, or even communicate. At a stage of life when he expected to be emerging fully into adulthood, teaching, and writing books, he found himself “crippled and dependent” and in search of care. When he is first told that his debilitating condition is likely Ménière’s Disease, but that there is “no reliable test, no reliable treatment, and no consensus on its cause,” Cotter quits teaching, stops writing, and commences upon a series of visits to doctors and treatment centers.

What begins as an expedition across the country navigating and battling the limits of the American healthcare system quickly becomes something else entirely: a journey through hopelessness and adaptation to disability. Along the way, hearing aids become inseparable from his sense of self, as does a growing understanding that the possibilities in his life are narrowing rather than expanding. And with this understanding of his own travails comes reflection on age-old questions around fate, coincidence, and making meaning of inexplicable misfortune. A devastating memoir that sheds urgent, bracingly honest light on both the taboos surrounding disability and the limits of medical science, Losing Music is refreshingly vulnerable and singularly illuminating―a story that will make listeners see their own lives anew.

©2023 John Cotter (P)2023 Blackstone Publishing

beautifully expressed personal reflections

this compelling memoir illustrates a challenging transformation driven by desire to live life fully

the author is in your ear

You should listen to this book! John Cotter's voice was absolutely made by God himself for audiobook narration. I will usually pass on an audiobook read by the author, but I'm so glad I took a chance on this one. Losing Music comes to life with the author's own expressive inflections. The characters sound like real people. Because he knows exactly how the different people sounded in dialogue at that precise moment! He captures each character perfectly with the richness of their quirks, emotional states, and regional dialects. And the dramatic pauses! Don't get me started on the dramatic pauses! When he is unable to hear someone talking, and you as the listener also experience a muffled sound, it is heart-wrenching. When the sound goes completely silent, you will gasp. Go ahead and read the other reviews for the content of this memoir (trust me it's perfectly written) but if you're on the fence about listening, I promise you will not regret your choice. Even if you don't know anything about the subject or author, you will love hearing this. And you will realize how precious a thing that is.

Vulnerability Stripped Bare

John Cotter's recounting of being stricken with Meniere's disease is so brutally honest that the reader/listener can't help but feel the fear, heartbreak, panic, and sense of helplessness that must be common amongst its sufferers. At the same time, he educates us about Jonathan Swift's own battles with this illness. Cotter manages to tell his story without it being a pity party, instead allowing us insight into the realities of a complicated and potentially devastating diagnosis.