From the New York Post: Marlee Matlin, an Oscar-winning actress who is deaf, explains how she will experience the music when she appears on the popular TV show “Dancing with the Stars” next month.

“In a dance studio, I like the music to be turned up loud so I can follow along the bass line,” Matlin told The Post in an e-mail. But mostly, it’s about that rhythm I have inside me. I’ve got groove because my heart beats just like everyone else’s. The trick for me is to use what I’ve got to synch up with the music that comes through my dance partner’s moves.

“In the end, it sounds complicated, but it’s really not a big deal. Just ask the 30 million other deaf and hard of hearing Americans, and they’ll say the same thing. There’s music out there but a lot of it is about the music you have inside.”

Matlin says that she wears two digital hearing aids and without them she can hear essentially nothing. “They do a few things; they amplify the higher frequencies which I can’t hear, they sharpen the lower frequencies which I hear better and then they mix it all together and amplify it.”

Earlier post here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 28th, 2008 at 8:38 am and is filed under celebrities, deaf/hard of hearing, entertainment, television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post