Losing Music
John Cotter
Reviewed by Sophie Trist
“Thanks to whatever is happening inside my head—whether it's genetic or environmental or… what else could it be?—my own body has become that angry god, rewarding me with health or punishing me with sickness, with torture in the ears or with a few days of normalcy.” Every person with a disability, whether they were born with it or acquired it later in life, like John Cotter, can relate to that quote. All of us have, at times, been at the mercy of our strange bodyminds.
Cotter began experiencing episodes of deafness and vertigo in 2008, symptoms which he is told may be caused by the mysterious and incurable Ménière’s Disease. In his new memoir Losing Music, Cotter grapples with his changing relationship to the music he loves, his own body, the world around him, and the very idea of being disabled.
Cotter's prose is lush and abundant without being self-indulgent. He moves effortlessly from reflections on the sound of the ocean, to his father's alcoholism, to his connection to Jonathan Swift, who is believed to have also suffered from Ménière’s. Other scenes are laser focused and beautifully excruciating in their detail: memories of being mocked by students for asking them to repeat themselves, the primal fear and suicidal despair of persistent vertigo, the soullessness of America's healthcare bureaucracy. Cotter's journey is both physical and metaphysical, as he seeks in vain a firm diagnosis and cure at the Mayo Clinic, then spends a month teaching at a rehab center for unhoused addicts in Colorado, where he reflects on the randomness of luck and chronic illness.
Losing Music is devoid of the noxious, sappy inspiration porn that taints so many disability stories. With brutal honesty, Cotter reckons with his own ableism, and his shame at needing hearing aids and being dependent on his wife. He does not want readers to pity him or view him as a hero for existing despite his disability. He's unsentimental about the physical limits Ménière’s places on him, but he is determined nonetheless to create, in whatever ways his bodymind permits. Losing Music is a lyrical read and a worthy addition to disability literature.