I haven’t written in a while.
In April, I contracted COVID-19 for the first time. The isolation period—during which I felt variously flu-ish and cold-ish—wasn’t fun, but it got better. Then, not long after venturing back into the world, a heavy brain fog set in.
Brain fog is difficult to describe—in part, because it complicates my relationship with language. Physically, it feels a bit like my skull is stuffed full of gauze and cotton batting. I can feel the inflammation. But that’s just the physical sensation when sitting quietly. I lose track of my words more often when speaking to other people. My capacity to do things that require discursive meta-awareness—as with writing and editing text—is substantially reduced: sometimes I find a narrow tunnel of focus through the fog, and sometimes I don’t. (That’s why I haven’t posted in a while, and why I’m keeping this short.)
The most complicated part is my new relationship with sound.
Competing auditory stimuli, such as people talking over one another, can be overwhelming. In normal times, I can get the kids’ school bags ready for the day, while my wife tells me about an article she just read, and while my kids talk excitedly to each other or to the dog in the background. But when the brain fog is thick, these same stimuli leave me feeling confused about what to do next and unable to express my confusion clearly. This kind of internal discomfort, if I don’t stay grounded mindfully in what’s happening, can draw forth impatience and reactivity.
At the same time, though, sound is a lifeline. The singing of birds, nestled in open awareness of passing cars and other neighborhood sounds, feels spacious. And drone sounds—and ambient drone music in particular—are deeply soothing, even clarifying.
As a musician with roots in ambient music, these truths about my current relationship with sound gave me a way forward: I began shaping sounds to resonate with my brain fog. I ended up with a collection of ambient drone pieces, each of which acts as a kind of tuning fork—or perhaps a distant fog horn—that rings through my brain fog, aligning the inflamed spaces in sympathetic resonance. (The music is at the end of this post.)
My reason for writing this is to affirm, for myself and for anyone else who has experienced or is experiencing COVID-induced brain fog: I am different right now, but I am enough, and I’m learning to remember that I’m enough.
I may not be able to write a nuanced reflection on fatherhood right now, but I can still respond with love and tenderness in my parenting. I may not be able to navigate overlapping streams of speech right now, but I can listen intently to more-focused sounds, point out something beautiful, and even make something beautiful, too. The balance of my capacities is different right now, but the resources I do have can still shine in the moment.
I would love to be “back to my old self” sooner rather than later, but I cannot control my recovery. In the meantime, through patience and kindness toward myself, I am getting to know the subtly and not-so-subtly different me who exists right now, and learning that he is enough.