String Quartet No. 9: we thought we heard

Composer's Note:

I mishear a lot. Always have. And some things I misremember.

Now I mishear and misremember more than ever. It's not that my hearing has gotten worse, or my memory is declining, though those things are undoubtedly true. There is a bigger, cultural change afoot: the number of things we could potentially hear and remember, the number of words and sounds coming into our cognitive fields, has increased exponentially, to a degree that would have been inconceivable not long ago.

Maybe everyone else hears everything perfectly, maybe nobody else forgets anything; it's just me, struggling to hear, struggling to recall.

But I suspect I'm not the only one.