Chicago author's debut gets Hollywood's attention

CHICAGO - A newly-released memoir about hearing loss and the healing power of music has caught the attention of Hollywood.

Soundtrack of Silence – set in Chicago – tells the story of a man who lost, then regained some of his ability to hear by leveraging his favorite songs.

"This is a very surreal and wonderful experience for me because a lot of what took place in the book happened at 864 Paulina, just south of here," debut author Matt Hay told readers during a book signing event Thursday night at Volumes BookCafe in Wicker Park.

As a Chicagoan in his early twenties, Hay's neurofibromatosis – a condition that led to tumors forming on his brain and spine – gradually chipped away at his ability to hear.

"I had surgery to remove a brain tumor, surgery to remove a spine tumor. I couldn't walk very well. I couldn't smile or blink. My whole life was just losses," he said.

The now 47-year-old was a newlywed when his hearing started to fade. He and his wife had just bought a unit in a Wicker Park three-flat. But with his hearing aids less and less effective by the day, Hay decided to consume all the music he possibly could before his world went silent.

"We saw Paul McCartney at the United Center. We saw Phish at Allstate Arena. We saw Jimmy Buffet," he said. "Guster at the Guinness Oyster Fest, O.A.R. at the House of Blues."

Hay committed to memory the songs that would – years later – inspire the title of his memoir: creating a "Soundtrack of Silence."

"I was really building a soundtrack for a life I had already lived and wanted to remember for the rest of my life," he said.

But the soundtrack he memorized – comprised of everything from the Beatles to Elton John to Bing Crosby to Jimmy Buffett – did more than just seal musical memories. Hay said his favorite songs – now lockboxed in his head – played a key role in learning how to hear all over again, after doctors outfitted him with an Auditory Brainstem Implant or "ABI" in 2004.

At first, there was little improvement. "I couldn't hear anything. My world sounded like a bottle cap in a garbage disposal for years," he said.

But one day, he and his wife were driving on the North Side, when Hay swore he recognized a song that came on their car radio. His wife was there to confirm he had indeed named the tune.

"I'm deaf," Hay said. "And I heard music again."

That moment was the first milestone in an unlikely comeback.Soundtrack of Silence was just released by St. Martin's Press and has already caught the attention of Hollywood. Last week, actor Channing Tatum posted a screenshot of the book to his nearly 17 million Instagram followers, with the caption: "His beautifully unique love story truly inspired me, and I can't wait to adapt it..."

"For [Channing Tatum] to think, 'this is something I want to share and associate myself with very publicly,' meant a lot to me," said Hay. "But I think more than anything, it made me a little bit cooler in the eyes of my teenage kids."

With his ABI, Matt Hay has slowly gone from not being able to identify sounds at all, to now being able to recognize more than one hundred songs when they're played out loud.

Soundtrack of Silence is currently #1 on the Amazon Bestseller List of Biographies of People with Disabilities.